Small Businesses and Exporting: a Literature Review
Abstract
Small Businesses and Exporting: a Literature Review SAGE Publications, Inc.1988DOI: 10.1177/026624268800600205 Kurt J. Miesenbock The present literature on international business can be categorised in two main groups (Dichtl et al,1984): The dominating one covers the multinational corporations, their development (e.g. Buckley,1976), their organisational and marketing problems (e.g. Mason and Miller, 1975; Cateora and Hess, 1975), their strategies (e.g. Brooke and Remmers, 1979), etc. The other one comprises the internationalisation of small- and medium-sized business firms. The first publications on this issue appeared in the early 1960s (Perkett,1963; Snavely et al, 1964; Tookey, 1964) and since that time it has gained more and more importance. The reason for the growing interest is seen in the fact that most countries experience actual or anticipated balance-of-payments deficits and attempt to increase exports,(e.g. Kaynak, 1982; Joynt, 1982; O'Rourke, 1985). As many small- and medium-sized firms produce highly competitive products but do not export, they are main targets of government export stimulation programmes (e.g. Malekzadeh and Nahavandi, 1985). Sufficient knowledge about the internationalisation of small business firms would be necessary to create successful programmes of that kind. Today such sufficient knowledge does not exist. The (extensive) literature based on empirical studies is full