Model for assessing the success of SMEs in the internationalization process

Model hodnocení úspěšnosti malých a středních podniků v procesu internacionalizace

Lea Kubíčková, Aleš Peprný and Šárka Nováková
Additional contact information
Aleš Peprný: Ústav marketingu a obchodu, Mendelova univerzita v Brně, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Česká republika
Šárka Nováková: Ústav marketingu a obchodu, Mendelova univerzita v Brně, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Česká republika

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 2010, vol. 58, issue 6, 245-252

Abstract: The paper deals with evaluating the success of small and medium-sized companies in internationalization process. The process of internationalization is defined in the literature in a many ways; there is a countless variety of different approaches and models of internationalization process of firms. Like all processes in the firm also the internationalization process is accompanied by risks. For risk management it is important to know what the key factors of success are in the international arena. In this article is presented a simple evaluation model that could be used by SMEs to determine not only how strong are they compared to competitors, but also at what level are their key success factors in the process of internationalization. The aim was to find a simple method to help small and medium enterprises to assess their situation in the field of internationalization and to help them identify their strengths and weaknesses in this area. Proposed simple evaluation model has the graphic output from which it can be seen in which areas the company is doing well in internationalization process and in what areas is doing badly - then there is room for further improvement. Creating the model it was essential to divide the various factors into several groups and further evaluation to determine the range by which SMEs can quantify the level of success in internationalization process. Before the model was constructed it was necessary to collect data among small and mid-sized firms, and to process the outputs of the survey. After confirmation or to rejection of the certain hypotheses key success factors of SMEs in the internationalization process were selected and these factors were then aggregated into 4 groups. The model was then applied to data obtained from a survey of 40 SMEs and in the paper there are presented specific examples of graphical output of the model for the best and worst rated company. Authors are aware that the model is simple and has its limits, there is the need of much more work and the authors foresee further modifications of this model.

Keywords: internationalization process; key factors of success; evaluating model; SMEs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://acta.mendelu.cz/doi/10.11118/actaun201058060245.html (text/html)
http://acta.mendelu.cz/doi/10.11118/actaun201058060245.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mup:actaun:actaun_2010058060245

DOI: 10.11118/actaun201058060245

Access Statistics for this article

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis is currently edited by Markéta Havlásková

More articles in Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis from Mendel University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().