SMEs and International Entrepreneurship

This track mainly focuses upon entrepreneurial activities conducted by new, young ventures and established SMEs across borders. It also allows for systematic comparisons of Entrepreneurship across national institutional settings. In increasingly diverse, complex and fast-moving global markets, International New Ventures (INV), Born Global Firms (BGFs), and early/rapidly versus late internationalizing SMEs have significantly contributed to the growth of the global economy and ignited much academic debate in contemporary IB circles. The aim is bring together state-of-the art research covering topics that examine and bring to light the frontier issues related to these fields of SME internationalisation and International entrepreneurship (IE). Track topics can include but are not limited to: IE strategies of new ventures and SMEs, international growth and market expansion strategies from foreign market selection, timing and entry mode of initial and following foreign market entries to scaling operations, business models, managerial capabilities and venture capital. International performance-oriented studies that seek to increase our understanding of which factors affect the success and/or failure of these firms in international markets (such as development of knowledge, dynamic capabilities, networks, etc.), as well as papers focused on SME internationalisation and IE in increasingly diverse contexts such as: international family-run firms, international digital entrepreneurship, international sustainable (green and social) entrepreneurship, international corporate entrepreneurship and sustainability issues, are also welcome. We thus encourage both empirical and conceptual research contributions from a variety of theoretical lenses to explore such topics primarily when adopting an IE process perspective (foreign opportunity exploration, enactment, and exploitation). Comparative studies analysing diverse types of international entrepreneurial SMEs and the potential socio-economic impact of (international) entrepreneurship examined across different industries, countries/regions, and cultural contexts are further encouraged. This track especially welcomes and encourages empirical papers employing all types of methodological approaches and data, although longitudinal (either quantitative or qualitative) studies.

Keywords:
SMEs; international entrepreneurship; internationalisation process; born globals; international new ventures; international opportunity; international family SMEs; international digital; sustainable/social, and/or corporate entrepreneurship.