ABSTRACT
Since 1990 a growing body of literature has focused on the specific role of SMEs in international competition. The internationalization of SMEs is of particular scientific interest because such firms have specific features that affect their attitude to global expansion, compared to that of multinational enterprises (MNEs), the traditional subject for study. Their managerial styles, the role of the entrepreneur, relational social capital, and scale and scope of activities are completely different from those of big firms. Moreover, SMEs usually have to cope with constraints on (or more difficult access to) key resources: financing, management capabilities, skilled labor, information (Erramilli and D’Souza 1993; Lu and Beamish 2001). It has been suggested that new paradigms and multi-theoretical frameworks are required to understand SMEs’ behavior (Malhotra et al. 2003). The literature focusing on the internationalization of SMEs takes different theoretical positions, which have been mapped and analyzed by numerous authors.1 These contributions can be categorized mainly within the theoretical
perspectives stage theory (Cavusgil 1980), network theory (Coviello and McAuley 1999) and FDI theory. We provide a brief review of the literature related to the three main internationalization theories (stage, network, and FDI), with a specific focus on stage theory.
