IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jadmsc/v10y2020i4p92-d445488.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

SMEs’ International Strategic Groups and Top Managers’ Psychological Characteristics

Author

Listed:
  • Ângelo Miguel R. Cabral

    (CeBER, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, 3004-512 Coimbra, Portugal)

  • Fernando Manuel P. O. Carvalho

    (CeBER, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, 3004-512 Coimbra, Portugal)

  • José António Vasconcelos Ferreira

    (GOVCOPP, Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal)

Abstract

This research analyzed the small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) international strategies concerning the scale and scope of the international activities. The major purpose was to study the international top managers’ psychological characteristics as distinctive capabilities within the defined international strategic groups. The international top managers’ cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence were taken as main characteristics to act in the international business environment. Therefore, we took as the main motivation to perform the present investigation the need to understand which psychological characteristics may help the international top managers to pursue high degrees of internationalization in their firms. This study was conducted in Portugal, and the sample was composed of 307 Portuguese SMEs’ international top managers directly responsible for the firms’ international decisions. The multinomial logistic regression method was used to test the hypotheses. The firms were classified into three international strategic groups based on the internationalization scale and scope. The degree of internationalization reflects that combination, creating groups with a high, medium, and low international exposure. The main result indicates as a distinctive capability, the international top managers’ cultural intelligence within the firms that exhibit a high international strategic positioning. Regarding the main contributions, this article contributes to the bodies of knowledge of international SMEs, cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, and networking. This study also contributes to upper echelons theory and the resource-based view.

Suggested Citation

  • Ângelo Miguel R. Cabral & Fernando Manuel P. O. Carvalho & José António Vasconcelos Ferreira, 2020. "SMEs’ International Strategic Groups and Top Managers’ Psychological Characteristics," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-22, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:10:y:2020:i:4:p:92-:d:445488
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/10/4/92/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/10/4/92/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Imai, Lynn & Gelfand, Michele J., 2010. "The culturally intelligent negotiator: The impact of cultural intelligence (CQ) on negotiation sequences and outcomes," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 83-98, July.
    2. Jan Johanson & Jan-Erik Vahlne, 2009. "The Uppsala internationalization process model revisited: From liability of foreignness to liability of outsidership," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 40(9), pages 1411-1431, December.
    3. Gary A Knight & S Tamar Cavusgil, 2004. "Innovation, organizational capabilities, and the born-global firm," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 35(2), pages 124-141, March.
    4. Morais, Flávio & Ferreira, João J., 2020. "SME internationalisation process: Key issues and contributions, existing gaps and the future research agenda," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 62-77.
    5. Alan M. Rugman & Alain Verbeke, 2005. "A Perspective on Regional and Global Strategies of Multinational Enterprises," Chapters, in: Analysis of Multinational Strategic Management, chapter 8, pages 104-119, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Daniel Sullivan, 1994. "Measuring the Degree of Internationalization of a Firm," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 25(2), pages 325-342, June.
    7. Lorenz, Melanie P. & Ramsey, Jase R. & Richey, Robert Glenn, 2018. "Expatriates’ international opportunity recognition and innovativeness: The role of metacognitive and cognitive cultural intelligence," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 222-236.
    8. Carvalho, Vânia Sofia & Guerrero, Eloísa & Chambel, Maria José & González-Rico, Pablo, 2016. "Psychometric properties of WLEIS as a measure of emotional intelligence in the Portuguese and Spanish medical students," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 152-159.
    9. Rabindra Kumar Pradhan & Lalatendu Kesari Jena & Pratishtha Bhattacharya, 2016. "Impact of psychological capital on organizational citizenship behavior: Moderating role of emotional intelligence," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1194174-119, December.
    10. Gerschewski, Stephan & Rose, Elizabeth L. & Lindsay, Valerie J., 2015. "Understanding the drivers of international performance for born global firms: An integrated perspective," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 558-575.
    11. Noor Ismail & Olli Kuivalainen, 2015. "The effect of internal capabilities and external environment on small- and medium-sized enterprises’ international performance and the role of the foreign market scope: The case of the Malaysian halal," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 418-451, December.
    12. Freixanet, Joan & Renart, Gemma, 2020. "A capabilities perspective on the joint effects of internationalization time, speed, geographic scope and managers’ competencies on SME survival," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(6).
    13. Lin, Wen-Ting & Liu, Yunshi, 2012. "Successor characteristics, organisational slack, and change in the degree of firm internationalisation," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 89-101.
    14. Hosseini, Mojtaba & Brege, Staffan & Nord, Tomas, 2018. "A combined focused industry and company size investigation of the internationalization-performance relationship: The case of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the Swedish wood manufactu," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 110-121.
    15. Marian V Jones & Nicole E Coviello, 2005. "Internationalisation: conceptualising an entrepreneurial process of behaviour in time," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 36(3), pages 284-303, May.
    16. Navarro-García, Antonio & Arenas-Gaitán, Jorge & Javier Rondán-Cataluña, F. & Rey-Moreno, Manuel, 2016. "Global model of export performance: Moderator role of export department," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1880-1886.
    17. ,, 2000. "Problems And Solutions," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 287-299, April.
    18. Gary A Knight & S Tamer Cavusgil, 2004. "Innovation, organizational capabilities, and the born-global firm," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 35(4), pages 334-334, July.
    19. Caputo, Andrea & Ayoko, Oluremi B. & Amoo, Nii, 2018. "The moderating role of cultural intelligence in the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict management styles," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 10-20.
    20. Gerschewski, Stephan & Xiao, Simon Shufeng, 2015. "Beyond financial indicators: An assessment of the measurement of performance for international new ventures," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 615-629.
    21. Ang, Soon & Van Dyne, Linn & Koh, Christine & Ng, K. Yee & Templer, Klaus J. & Tay, Cheryl & Chandrasekar, N. Anand, 2007. "Cultural Intelligence: Its Measurement and Effects on Cultural Judgment and Decision Making, Cultural Adaptation and Task Performance," Management and Organization Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(3), pages 335-371, November.
    22. Cerrato, Daniele & Crosato, Lisa & Depperu, Donatella, 2016. "Archetypes of SME internationalization: A configurational approach," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 286-295.
    23. Saeed Nosratabadi & Parvaneh Bahrami & Khodayar Palouzian & Amir Mosavi, 2020. "Leader Cultural Intelligence and Organizational Performance," Papers 2010.02678, arXiv.org.
    24. Henry Mintzberg & James A. Waters, 1985. "Of strategies, deliberate and emergent," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 257-272, July.
    25. Oesterle, Michael-Jörg & Elosge, Corinna & Elosge, Lukas, 2016. "Me, myself and I: The role of CEO narcissism in internationalization decisions," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 1114-1123.
    26. Pangarkar, Nitin, 2008. "Internationalization and performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 475-485, October.
    27. Acedo, Francisco J. & Jones, Marian V., 2007. "Speed of internationalization and entrepreneurial cognition: Insights and a comparison between international new ventures, exporters and domestic firms," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 236-252, September.
    28. Zizah Che Senik & Brenda Scott-Ladd & Lanny Entrekin & Khairul Adham, 2011. "Networking and internationalization of SMEs in emerging economies," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 259-281, December.
    29. Gunkel, Marjaana & Schlägel, Christopher & Engle, Robert L., 2014. "Culture's Influence on Emotional Intelligence: An Empirical Study of Nine Countries," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 256-274.
    30. Leask, Graham & Parnell, John A., 2005. "Integrating Strategic Groups and the Resource Based Perspective:: Understanding the Competitive Process," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 458-470, August.
    31. Hsu, Wen-Tsung & Chen, Hsiang-Lan & Cheng, Chia-Yi, 2013. "Internationalization and firm performance of SMEs: The moderating effects of CEO attributes," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 1-12.
    32. Soon Ang & Linn Van Dyne & Christine Koh & K. Yee Ng & Klaus J. Templer & Cheryl Tay & N. Anand Chandrasekar, 2007. "Cultural Intelligence: Its Measurement and Effects on Cultural Judgment and Decision Making, Cultural Adaptation and Task Performance," Management and Organization Review, The International Association for Chinese Management Research, vol. 3(3), pages 335-371, November.
    33. Shaker A Zahra, 2005. "A theory of international new ventures: a decade of research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 36(1), pages 20-28, January.
    34. Denicolai, Stefano & Zucchella, Antonella & Strange, Roger, 2014. "Knowledge assets and firm international performance," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 55-62.
    35. Martineau, Charles & Pastoriza, David, 2016. "International involvement of established SMEs: A systematic review of antecedents, outcomes and moderators," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 458-470.
    36. Contractor, Farok J. & Kumar, Vikas & Kundu, Sumit K., 2007. "Nature of the relationship between international expansion and performance: The case of emerging market firms," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 401-417, December.
    37. Kuivalainen, Olli & Sundqvist, Sanna & Servais, Per, 2007. "Firms' degree of born-globalness, international entrepreneurial orientation and export performance," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 253-267, September.
    38. Shaker A. Zahra, 2020. "Technological capabilities and international expansion: the moderating role of family and non-family firms’ social capital," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 391-415, June.
    39. Sabina Nielsen, 2010. "Top Management Team Internationalization and Firm Performance," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 185-206, April.
    40. Saeed Nosratabadi & Parvaneh Bahrami & Khodayar Palouzian & Amir Mosavi, 2020. "Leader cultural intelligence and organizational performance," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 1809310-180, January.
    41. Peerayuth Charoensukmongkol, 2015. "Cultural intelligence of entrepreneurs and international network ties," Management Research Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(4), pages 421-436, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ângelo Miguel R. Cabral & Fernando Manuel P. O. Carvalho & José António Vasconcelos Ferreira, 2020. "International Performance of SMEs’ International Strategic Groups," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-24, September.
    2. Fariborzi, Hadi & Osiyevskyy, Oleksiy & DaSilva, Carlos, 2022. "The effect of geographic scope on growth and growth variability of SMEs," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(5).
    3. Baum, Matthias & Schwens, Christian & Kabst, Ruediger, 2015. "A latent class analysis of small firms’ internationalization patterns," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 754-768.
    4. Rubina Romanello & Maria Chiarvesio, 2019. "Early internationalizing firms: 2004–2018," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 172-219, June.
    5. Jiang, Guohua & Kotabe, Masaaki & Zhang, Feng & Hao, Andy W. & Paul, Justin & Wang, Cheng Lu, 2020. "The determinants and performance of early internationalizing firms: A literature review and research agenda," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(4).
    6. Domurath, Anne & Coviello, Nicole & Patzelt, Holger & Ganal, Benjamin, 2020. "New venture adaptation in international markets: A goal orientation theory perspective," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(1).
    7. Acedo, Francisco J. & Coviello, Nicole & Agustí, María, 2021. "Caution ahead! The long-term effects of initial export intensity and geographic dispersion on INV development," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(6).
    8. Dominguez, Noémie & Mayrhofer, Ulrike, 2017. "Internationalization stages of traditional SMEs: Increasing, decreasing and re-increasing commitment to foreign markets," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1051-1063.
    9. Farhad Uddin Ahmed & Louis Brennan, 2021. "A review of methodological diversity within the domain of international entrepreneurship," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 256-299, June.
    10. Khan, Zaheer & Lew, Yong Kyu, 2018. "Post-entry survival of developing economy international new ventures: A dynamic capability perspective," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 149-160.
    11. Hashai, Niron & Zahra, Shaker A., 2022. "A double-edged sword? Founder Teams' Prior International Experience and INV International Scale-up," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(2).
    12. Farhad Uddin Ahmed & Louis Brennan, 2019. "The impact of Founder’s human capital on firms’ extent of early internationalisation: Evidence from a least-developed country," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 615-659, September.
    13. Stephan Gerschewski & Natasha Evers & Anh Tuan Nguyen & Fabian Jintae Froese, 2020. "Trade Shows and SME Internationalisation: Networking for Performance," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 60(4), pages 573-595, August.
    14. Johanson, Martin & Martín Martín, Oscar, 2015. "The incremental expansion of Born Internationals: A comparison of new and old Born Internationals," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 476-496.
    15. Farhad Uddin Ahmed & Louis Brennan, 2019. "Performance determinants of early internationalizing firms: The role of international entrepreneurial orientation," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 389-424, September.
    16. Donbesuur, Francis & Zahoor, Nadia & Boso, Nathaniel, 2022. "International network formation, home market institutional support and post-entry performance of international new ventures," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(3).
    17. Meschi, Pierre-Xavier & Ricard, Antonin & Tapia Moore, Ernesto, 2017. "Fast and Furious or Slow and Cautious? The Joint Impact of Age at Internationalization, Speed, and Risk Diversity on the Survival of Exporting Firms," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 279-291.
    18. Głodowska Agnieszka & Pera Bożena & Wach Krzysztof, 2019. "International Strategy as the Facilitator of the Speed, Scope, and Scale of Firms’ Internationalization," Journal of Management and Business Administration. Central Europe, Sciendo, vol. 27(3), pages 55-84, September.
    19. Gonçalo Rodrigues Brás & Miguel Torres Preto, 2021. "The consequences of intrapreneurship in exporting firms: a structural-model approach," CeBER Working Papers 2021-06, Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra.
    20. D’Angelo, Alfredo & Buck, Trevor, 2019. "The earliness of exporting and creeping sclerosis? The moderating effects of firm age, size and centralization," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 428-437.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:10:y:2020:i:4:p:92-:d:445488. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.