The negative influence of the entrepreneur’s level of higher education on the attractiveness of European SMEs as alliance partners in Brazil: the role of practical experience and international entrepreneurial orientation

Abstract

Notwithstanding the contemporary relevance of alliance strategies for SME internationalization, especially in the case of uncertain business environments, few studies have investigated human resource issues in the context of SMEs prior to alliance formation. Even more scarce are studies looking at the impact of a manager/entrepreneur's characteristics on pre-alliance formation, despite recognition of the expected crucial role of the entrepreneur in this context and of the strong connection between an entrepreneur and their SME. Drawing on international entrepreneurship theory and empirical observations from an exploratory study, we propose a post-hoc conceptual model. The exploratory empirical part of our study employs a sample of entrepreneurs from biotechnology SMEs in the United Kingdom and Germany intending to ally in a large emerging market (i.e., Brazil). Our empirical observations suggest an anomalous (at first glance) negative association between the entrepreneur's level of higher education (a construct at individual level) and the attractiveness of the SME as a partner-firm vis-à-vis alliance formation (a construct at firm level). Our post-hoc model emphasises the role of practical experience and the corresponding levels of international entrepreneurial orientation as theorised variables mediating the observed empirical relationship. We develop theoretical propositions, and suggest practical implications and future research directions.

A systematic international entrepreneurship review and future research agenda

“…The importance of the entrepreneur in business internationalisation was portrayed more specifically in the study of Vanderstraeten et al (2020). Other themes involve previous international experience of international entrepreneurs (Forcadell and Ubeda, 2020;Jones and Casullo, 2013), the role of education (De Mattos and Salciuviene, 2019;Jafari-Sadeghi et al, 2018;Sułkowski and Patora-Wysocka, 2020), knowledge (Fernhaber et al, 2009;Korhonen and Lepp€ aaho, 2019), human and entrepreneurial capital (Jiao and Robinson, 2011;Salman, 2016;Wach, 2017) and multicultural issues (Dimitratos et al, 2016a;Selmer et al, 2018;Szymanski et al, 2021).…”

"Start-Up" in E-Learning Mode as a Basic Project of the Final Year of Entrepreneurship Education

“…The study of De Mattos and Salciuviene [17] of the relationship between the possession of higher education and the success of international alliances held by the entrepreneur presents interesting conclusions. The research revealed a significant negative correlation between the above-mentioned factors.…”

Employee Proactiveness to Engage in Sustainable Consumption Leading to Societal Benefits

“…The above proactiveness orientation can be related to international entprepreneurship theory, explaining behaviours of employers in an international environment, based on the characteristics of an employer (e.g., exploring and identifying opportunities and devising a strategy how to use those opportunities to benefit from them) (de Mattos & Salciuviene, 2017).…”

“…In our research, we use international entrepreneurial orientation to uncover the entrepreneur (Lumkin, 2011;De Mattos & Salciuviene, 2017) who could have high or low propensity to engage with responsible and sustainable consumption depending on moral identity dimensions that could be manifested through different types of international entrepreneurial orientation in engaging with responsible and sustainable consumption. We posit that highly proactive, innovative Millenials would have a tendency to manifest higher engagement in sustainable consumption within the three key areas responsible for the highest proportion of CO2 emissions: food, mobility and housing, while less proactive employees will be less willing to engage with responsible and sustainable consumption, but using theory of hierarchical progression (Wooliscroft et al, 2013in Watkins et al, 2016 enabling simple steps of collaborative learning in online video games could gradually move those employees to higher engagement with responsible and sustainable consumption within the three key areas responsible for the highest proportion of CO2 emissions: food, mobility and housing.…”