The Impact of Exploitation and Exploration on Export Sales Growth: The Moderating Role of Domestic and International Collaborations

Abstract

This study examines the short- and long-term implications of the impact of exploitation and exploration on export sales growth. It also explores the moderating role of external collaborations by differentiating between domestic collaborations and international collaborations. The authors tested their conceptual model with data from the U.K. Community Innovation Survey (2010–2016). Using different time lags for exploitation and exploration, the findings indicate that the impact varies over time. Specifically, they reveal that the effect of exploitation is negative in the long term but positive in the short term, while exploration has no significant effect in the short term but a positive influence on export sales growth in the long term. Similarly, the moderating effect of domestic and international collaborations has been found to vary over time. The authors conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications.

Export activity, R&D investment, and foreign ownership: does it matter for productivity?

“…A firm without appropriate R&D investment not only limits its capability to develop new processes and products but also restricts its capability to absorb new knowledge (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990;Oh & Barker III, 2018). This is also consistent with the organizational learning perspective, which acknowledges the firm's need for possessing a high level of absorptive capacity to exploit externally generated knowledge and to be able to enhance learning (Kotabe, Jiang, & Murray, 2011;Sousa, Li, & He, 2020).…”

“…A key assumption is that acquiring knowledge is fundamental to a firm's internationalization, and that the accumulation of knowledge derived from activity in the foreign market is crucial to the learning process (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). As such, exports are likely to result in increased knowledge and the development of new capabilities through the accumulation of experience gained from exporting (Forsgren, 2002;Hessels & van Stel, 2011;Sousa et al, 2020;Sousa, Martinez-Lopez, & Coelho, 2008).…”

“…Export activity. In line with earlier studies (Assadinia, Boso, Hultman, & Robson, 2019;Madsen & Moen, 2018;Sousa et al, 2020), we measured firm's involvement in export operations as the export sales growth, which is measured by (annual export sales at time tannual export sales at time t-1)/ (annual export sales at time t). The scale of the annual value of exported products is 1,000 RMB.…”

The Influence of Geographical Conditions, Area and Information System on Economic Development: Mediating Impacts of International Relations

“…Studies used a variety of factors prevailing in international relations that strengthen the geographical aspects to overcome disaster conditions. Various implications prevail whether short term or long term but the impacts are clear with exploration and exploitation that dominates on the growth of economies and geographies (Sousa, Li, & He, 2020). The allocation of geographical areas significantly influences the economies of the world, whether endorsing positives or negative, but the eminent mean tends to be developing economy.…”

Unbundling the Effects of Internationalization on Firm Performance in Emerging Economies: The Moderating Effects of Strategic Resource Decisions

“…Despite the importance of finding an optimum balance in strategic marketing ambidexterity, previous studies demonstrate that it is neither common nor desirable to stabilize their strategic emphasis from the perspective of business enterprises (e.g., Raisch et al 2009), since they may choose to give more priority to one than the other (i.e., exploitation-dominant or exploration-dominant) (e.g., He and Wong 2004). Also, the effects of exploitation and exploration actions in internationalization activities change over time (Sousa, Li, and He 2020); equally, their capabilities play influential roles on the internationalization activities of emerging market firms (Vahlne and Jonsson 2017).…”