ABSTRACT
International business literature (Brennan and Garvey, 2009; Dunning, 2000) advocates foreign direct investment (FDI) as a means to have access to strategic assets in foreign locations. Firms operating within a globalization setting use FDI to take advantage of human capital differentials, together with production cost gaps (Buckley and Ghauri, 2004). Despite the existence of various barriers, e.g., liability of foreignness, liability of smallness, lack of financial means and market knowledge (Lu and Beamish, 2001; Zahra, 2005), small firms are increasingly engaging investments abroad (Kuo and Li, 2003), more particularly in high-tech sectors (Fujita, 1995; Keeble et al., 1998).
