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date: 26 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

International expansion by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has long been a subject of research. The fact that internationalization begins earlier in a firm's life cycle has attracted attention to international new ventures as ‘a business organization that, from inception, seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries’, ‘early internationalizers’, and ‘born global firms’. This article analyzes the internationalization of SMEs and examines the role of entrepreneurship in the literature. McDougall and Oviatt define international entrepreneurship as ‘a combination of innovative proactive and risk-seeking behaviour that crosses national borders and is intended to create value in organizations’. This definition provides a wide scope for research but also poses problems in terms of the level of the analysis and difficulties with respect to outcomes that are so far unresolved.

Keywords: international expansion, foreign direct investment, small-size enterprises, medium-size enterprises, internationalization, value creation

Peter Buckley

Peter Buckley is Professor of International Business and Director of the Centre of International Business at the University of Leeds. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Reading and Honorary Professor of the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing. He has published nineteen books, many of which have been translated into other languages, and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of International Business in 1985 for ‘outstanding achievements in international business’. He is also a fellow of the British Academy of Management and the Royal Society of Arts, and was awarded an Honorary Professorship to the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China.

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