The role of innovation and internationalization support in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises’ export performance

Abstract

Although research concerning the internationalization and innovativeness of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has received increasing scholarly attention, it mostly neglected internationalization support and underexplored post-crisis contexts. Greece recently faced a severe economic crisis of international concern, which resulted in a unique business environment to examine the mechanisms of innovativeness and internationalization. This study examines the roles of innovativeness and internationalization support in export performance using survey data of 262 Greek manufacturing SMEs. Our findings indicate that innovation helps firms improve their export performance, but the different definitions of export performance and innovativeness caused sizeable differences. Internationalization support is important for the export performance of firms, and SMEs receiving high levels of internationalization support can overcome the lack of innovativeness and increase their export performance.

Digital transformation and export performance: a process mechanism of firm digital capabilities

“…Small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) internationalisation might need more stable resources, a lack of legitimacy abroad and short-term resilience (Pastelakos et al, 2022). Numerous studies have been conducted over the past 50 years to determine export performance, defined as the outcome of a firm's activities in the export market (Chen et al, 2016;Morgan et al, 2004;Sousa, 2004).…”

The importance of institutional and financial resources for export performance associated with technological innovation

“…There are also issues related to the equal weighting for radical and incremental innovation, or innovation of different quality (Taques et al, 2021). As a multidimensional construct, export performance can be captured by export diversity which is related to the breadth of export activities and is usually measured by the diversity of export markets (Paeleman et al, 2017;Pastelakos et al, 2022), as well as export propensity and export intensity. Due to data availability, this paper only focuses on the first two dimensions, not export diversity.…”

Corporate tax avoidance under economic policy uncertainty. Does the quality of institutional governance matter?

“…Gourinchas et al (2017) note that although Greece is part of the Euro area, its economic size is relatively small compared to its peers. Additionally, the country has experienced prolonged debt and banking crises, resulting in severe austerity measures and liquidity constraints for businesses (Giannoulakis and Sakellaris, 2023;Pastelakos et al, 2023). In general, Greece's economy is characterized by revenue collection inefficiencies, weak international competitiveness, and persistent structural problems (Al-Karablieh et al, 2021;Arghyrou and Tsoukalas, 2011).…”