Are industrial clusters going international? The case of Italian SMEs in Romania

The paper analyses the process of internationalisation realized by Italian SMEs coming from industrial districts and locating in the northwestern part of Romania. The case studies show how small firms tend to replicate, on an international scale, the relationships developed in the source districts, thus developing international networks that overcome the classifical hurdles to growth mainly affect small firms.

Internationalization and Performance: findings from a set of Italian SMEs

The relationship between Internationalization and performance is a challenging topic for the agenda of researchers across the world, due to the complexity of the variables involved, to the difficulties in construct building and, last but not least, to the controversial results arising from the different studies that have been conducted on the matter in recent decades. This is particularly true in the case of SMEs, which represent a field still to be explored from this point view. The fundamental hypothesis that has driven the present work is that the growing level of market integration has generated a framework of international competition for economic actors which has to be considered as the actual natural environment both for international and for domestic firms. As a consequence, being international is no more than a natural status for the enterprise, in the sense that firms which have not engaged yet in international markets are also part of a competitive international environment that influences strategic decisions and contributes to shaping business models and performances accordingly. This concept applies immediately to those regions where the integration process has gone further and deeper, for example the European Union area, where the domestic market for economic actors has gradually evolved from the former national base to a European one. The empirical study, based on 220 Italian firms, performance - measured by profitability ratios - is not determined by the degree of internationalization in terms of classical export intensity and number of international agreements, but depends mainly on the ability of firms to gain access to specific markets such as the American one. Moreover, SMEs which have grown in foreign markets through FDI show a lower profitability, showing the existence of a "liability of foreignness" effect at the beginning of their international growth. Howeverthis negative effect can be reduced when SMEs have already developed international competences and knowledge through an intense export activity.SMEs, internationalization, exporting, foreign direct investment

International franchising in Italy: trends and perspectives

In Italy, the recent gradual liberalization of the retail market has led to an increase in competition and innovation. In this context, new and more flexible forms of organization have emerged, and franchising in particular has undergone a strong expansion. The main purpose of this work is to present a complete framework of the Italian franchising and to analyse its role, structural characteristics, trend and development in the context of the European market.

Italian direct investment in the Czech Republic: the results of a fields analysis

The present paper presents the first results of a filed survey on Italian investments in the Central and Eastern European countries. More specifically, this paper is focused on the Italian Investments in the Czech and Slovak Republic. The survey has a qualitative approach put it allows to develop some hypothesis that will be tested in a more comprehensive quantitative analysis. The filed analysis shows that the most important reasons behind Italian investments in the region are: seeking a new market, lowering labour cost and the better law environment in the host country. By the survey, the Italian companies are often export oriented. The respondents have evaluated the degree of autonomy of the subsidiaries which are functioning on the Czech market as medium or low almost unanimously. The Czech and Slovak subsidiaries of Italian firms serve mainly for two markets – the local and Italian one, thus confirming that Italian firms have not used the foreign subsidiaries as a base for entering in the wider regional market. The performance of subsidiaries is evaluated by respondents as good or even very good during last three years. The subsidiaries are conclusively integrated to the Czech economy.

External managers, family ownership and the scope of SME internationalization

SMEs are important to world business and the majority of SMEs are family firms. Yet some family SMEs are inert, local firms while others are dynamic and international. Do certain governance structures encourage the scale and scope of their internationalization? We jointly apply social capital and corporate governance theories to explain the scope of family SMEs internationalization, and find that professional managers externally recruited from outside the family are important, but only for lower levels of family ownership, suggesting synergistic combinations of ownership and management. It is the combination of external capital with external managers that really works

Subsidiaries within a High-Tech MNC. A reappraisal of the Role of Functions

The recent management literature on multinational corporations (MNCs) has mainly focused on the new role played by subsidiaries within the international firms. Many scholars have underlined that MNCs tend to organise themselves along a differentiated network approach, where subsidiaries play a very different role according to their internal resources and the significance of the local environment. This strategic and organisational model dates back to the pioneering work of Bartlett and Goshal, who called this new international strategy “Transnational” so as to differentiate it from the classical Multidomestic and Global strategies. Along with the different roles played by the subsidiaries, this model is characterised by the simultaneous existence of cooperation and competition within the multinational corporations. The present work focuses on the role of the Italian subsidiary of AgilentTechnologies, a multinational firm with around 36,000 employees that is active in more than 40 countries in high-tech sectors such as electronics, telecommunications and life science. The case study brought new light to the usual distinction that is commonly made with regard to the role of a subsidiary. When we try to apply the Transnational model to Agilent we realise that neither this model nor the traditional typologies (Multidomestic, Global) apply to the case we have studied. The role of the subsidiary changes significantly according to the function being considered. Therefore, we conclude that the role of function should be re-evaluated when the strategy and the structure of an MNC is defined. Not only does the classification of subsidiaries change according to the function in question, but the strategic posture and the organisational structure of MNCs should also be re-evaluated in light of the function under consideration. Our study shows how activities such as R&D, where coopetition represents a strategic source of advantage, seem to follow the Transnational scheme, while others such as sales are mainly globally managed

Corporate ownership and internationalization: the effects of family, bank and institutional investor ownership in the UK and in Continental Europe

While the role of corporate governance has been increasingly analysed during recent years, it is only very recently that the effects of corporate governance features on firm international strategies have been also considered. Using the Osiris database by Bureau van Djik we consider the potential role played by different kind of shareholders among the determinants of firm international level, distinguishing between the firms quoted in the UK from those listed in countries of Continental Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain). Overall our results confirm that different kind of ownerships affect with different degree of intensity the overall level of firm'sinternationalization. First, we find that ownership matter. Second, our results show that theeffects of ownership over firm's international strategies depend also on the context of analysis

Distance to customers, absorptive capacity, and innovation in high-tech firms: the dark face of geographical proximity

This paper investigates the impact of both geographical and relational proximity on the innovative performance of the firm. We address the role of one firm characteristic—its absorptive capacity—as a specific contingency affecting the relationship between different proximities and innovation. Using data from 158 high-tech firms located in the Tiburtina Valley in Italy, we studied the relationship between these firms and their key customers. Our findings support the need to downplay the role of geographical proximity in promoting innovation. Our results also show that relational proximity to key customers has a complementary relationship with absorptive capacity, which positively moderates its influence on innovative performance

Bifurcation bias and exporting: Can foreign work experience be an answer? Insight from European family SMEs

We develop hypotheses from a “bifurcation bias” approach involving the asymmetric treatment of family and nonfamily assets, and we test them on a sample of 6893 European family SMEs. Our findings reveal two asymmetries relating to actions designed to reduce bifurcation bias. First, exporting is indeed positively associated with the presence of outside owners and managers, and from the interaction between them. However, this interaction replaces any separate positive impact from outside ownership. Second, the international work experience of managers has a positive impact on exporting, but this experience seems relevant only in the case of firms with family-managers only