On the Resource-based, Integrative View of Small Firm Internationalisation: an Exploratory Study of Nigerian Firms

Abstract

The past three decades of research into SME internationalisation have yielded a number of frameworks that sought to illuminate and explain the process through which small firms internationalise. These include the ‘stage of development’ approach, the network perspective and the business strategy/contingency/resource-based frameworks. Judging by its pervasiveness and the amount of academic debate that it has generated, the stage of development approach would appear to be the most dominant. This may be about to change, however, as consensus appears to have emerged among academic researchers and policy makers that SMEs negotiate varying paths to internationalisation (Madsen and Servais, 1997; Bell and Young, 1998; Coviello and McAuley, 1999).