Export behavior and corporate governance

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to study how firms’ export behavior is associated with their corporate governance. Design/methodology/approach This study uses whole population data of Estonian small and medium-sized enterprises: 9,530 exporters and 73,619 non-exporters. Several theory-driven corporate governance variables and exporting variables (based on previous studies) are used. Binary logistic regression is applied to study how exporters’ corporate governance differs from that of non-exporters. Eight additional continuous dependent variables are used to portray exporters’ internationalization with ordinary least squares regression. The robustness of the obtained base results is checked for younger/older and smaller/larger firms. Findings Having female board members did not lead to a higher likelihood of export activities. Experience – tenure’s length, board members’ age and other board memberships – provided mixed results. Having a larger board was associated with a higher export propensity and larger exports but a lower export share. A larger share of a chief executive officer’s shareholding was associated with lower export propensity, exporting less overall and activities on a smaller number of markets. The presence of a majority owner was associated with larger export share and export turnover, but more focus on the main export market. Firm age and size affected the results. Originality/value Previous studies about the interconnection of corporate governance and exporting have relied on varied theoretical explanations and limited sets of variables. This paper provides an extensive insight by using corporate governance variables emergent from various theoretical explanations accompanied by a large set of dependent exporting variables. The latter enables obtaining a more holistic view of the interconnection between the two phenomena.

How Does Managerial Experience Predict the Internationalization Type of a Young Firm?

“…Thus, it can be hypothesized that life-long experience is not always an asset, probably because of increased rigidity in decisionmaking and as a result, lower readiness for trying something new [27]. This conclusion supports some earlier studies stating that being involved in a managerial position for a lengthy time makes people to be less interested in excessive risk taking [48] and, therefore, entering far-away markets [28].…”

“…The first column in Table III explains the context each respective variable represents, while the calculation of variables mostly relies on known applications in past studies. For instance, many variables portraying internationalization from Lukason and Vissak [28] were applied in this study.…”

“…For predicting which firms would internationalize early and rapidly, different variables have been used: firm size, managers' attitudes, language skills, education, network contacts and prior international experience, but also information diversity, innovativeness, perceived risk, and export barriers [18]- [21]. From these, "experience, knowledge, expertise are valuable, rare, inimitable and nonsubstitutable resources" [27, p. 351] that can affect firms' internationalization favorably [28]. Managers' and founders' prior experience from international operations is especially important for young firms as they have not had time to learn from their own activities [29].…”

The internationalisation process of UK SMEs: exporting and non-exporting behaviours based on a four forces behavioural model

“…Future researchers should think about which other independent variables should be incorporated in their future export models because other variables may play a more significant role in explaining export behaviour. Furthermore, the study by Lukason and Vissak (2020) reveals some significant and non-significant corporate governance indicators that are related to export behaviour. The non-significant ones are listed by Lukason and Vissak (2020, Conclusions, p. 66) as: "Female members on board did not increase export activities"; and "Factors of experience, tenure length, board members' age and presence of other business ties (board memberships) showed mixed influences".…”

“…In a more recent study, Lukason and Vissak (2020) used nine dependent variables and seven independent variables to measure the export behaviour of firms. One of their findings presented in Table A5 (Lukason and Vissak, 2020, pp.…”