The Type and Number of Resources and the Performance of Early Internationalizing South Korean SMEs

Abstract

The growth of research into ‘born-globals’ (Bell, 1995; Madsen and Servais, 1997) led to research that has expanded our knowledge of early internationalizing SMEs (Jones and Nummela, 2008). The literature has investigated the major drivers of the internationalization process of SMEs and the problems associated with fast growth in international markets (Chetty and Campbell-Hunt, 2003; Sujrez-Ortega, 2003). These drivers include: the role of learning; the transmission of knowledge; the acquisition and development of tangible and intangible resources; the acquiring of competencies and routines; the importance of social and relationship capital in the development of trust-based networks; and a host of industry and country-specific issues (Chetty and Blankenburg, 2000; Loane and Bell, 2006; Ojala, 2009; Zucchella et al., 2007). Many of the major drivers of the internationalization of SMEs embrace factors that are connected to the resource-based view of the internationalization process of SMEs (Westhead and Wright, 2001). There have been many empirical studies of the effects of the key resources that are thought to drive this process on the inter nationalization of SMEs (Andersson et al., 2004; Chetty and Blankenburg, 2000; Coviello and Munro, 1997; Knight et al., 2004). These studies have focused on different types of resource thought to effect the rapid internationalization of SMEs. There are few studies, however, based on large quantitative studies of the effect on performance of such resources.