University at Albany, State University of New York
SMEs that consider internationalization face a challenging road to success due to the liabilities of foreignness and smallness. We consider the intersecting role of country institutions and individual cognition in the formation of two critical precursors to internationalization success: entrepreneurial self-efficacy and international entrepreneurial orientation. We employ a proprietary dataset covering six time periods collected over eight years from 121 owner-managers of internationalizing French SMEs. Furthermore, we theorize and observe individual perceptions regarding the availability of knowledge and financial institutional support play critical roles in the development of these precursors of internationalization success. We offer novel contributions to internationalization theory by demonstrating the unique role of perceptions of institutional support (as opposed to the objective tangible gains from institutional support) within the cognition of SME owners, with implications for theory, practice, and policy.
