Smes Internationalization: Between Strategic Collaborators and Intermediaries

Abstract

The internationalization process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been discussed in many recent studies and has triggered the attention of various professionals, international and even global organizations and authorities. Emphasis was laid on the vast array of strategies, models, forms of internationalization and their impacts on SMEs’ competitive (sustainable) advantage, profitability, development and performance on foreign markets. Giving credit to the topical research in this field, the present exploratory study seeks to examine the correlations between four main factors, namely SMEs’ strategic collaborators (from international business networks), intermediaries (as organizational links to the target stakeholders), the profitability resulted from international operations and the development on different foreign markets. To this end, a questionnaire-based survey was carried out with over 100 European SMEs from an industrial field. Evidence was brought that there are significant positive correlations between strategic collaborators and SMEs international profitability and development on foreign markets, whereas the use of intermediaries only correlates with the profits derived from international operations.

Social Reporting Impact on Non-Profit Stakeholder Satisfaction and Trust during the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Emerging Market

“…Stakeholders with less power often rely on trust in their relationship with an organization, compared with stakeholders holding an advantageous position towards the organization [90]. The trust of these entities in the governance of non-profit organizations for the activities carried out and the set of objectives is based on a greater commitment from the stakeholders [26,29,[91][92][93].…”