Export promotion programs are provided by governments to help firms, especially small and medium-sized ones, overcome real or perceived obstacles to exporting. To date, there has been limited empirical evidence of the effectiveness of these efforts. This study clarifies the ways in which export promotion programs bolster the export competence and export activities of firms by drawing on the results of a survey of small and medium-sized Canadian high-technology firms. The results suggest that using a greater number of government programs influences the achievement of export objectives and export expansion strategies, and enhances export marketing competencies. By segmenting firms by level of export involvement, a clearer picture of the benefits and limitations of export promotion programs emerges. These results suggest that sporadic and active exporters gain the most from export promotion programs, while there is little impact in the short term for more experienced international firms who derive most of their incomes from exporting.

No abstract

Clinical and health services research is continually producing new findings that may contribute to effective and efficient patient care. However, the transfer of research findings into practice is unpredictable and can be a slow and haphazard process. Ideally, the choice of implementation strategies would be based upon evidence from randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews of a given implementation strategy. Unfortunately, reviews of implementation strategies consistently report effectiveness some, but not all of the time; possible causes of this variation are seldom reported or measured by the investigators in the original studies. Thus, any attempts to extrapolate from study settings to the real world are hampered by a lack of understanding of the effects of key elements of individuals, interventions, and the settings in which they were trialled. The explicit use of theory offers a way of addressing these issues and has a number of advantages, such as providing: a generalisable framework within which to represent the dimensions that implementation studies address, a process by which to inform the development and delivery of interventions, a guide when evaluating, and a way to allow for an exploration of potential causal mechanisms. However, the use of theory in designing implementation interventions is methodologically challenging for a number of reasons, including choosing between theories and faithfully translating theoretical constructs into interventions. The explicit use of theory offers potential advantages in terms of facilitating a better understanding of the generalisability and replicability of implementation interventions. However, this is a relatively unexplored methodological area.

The authors provide empirical support for the importance of a proactive export orientation in driving export success in the uncertain high-tech environment. Regression analysis demonstrates that proactive and conservative export strategies and motivations produce opposite effects on multiple measures of export performance for these small and medium-sized Canadian high-tech firms in the information technology and telecommunications sector.

No abstract