Internationalisation among SMEs of plastics industry: the importance of innovation on exportperformance

The study of internationalisation, especially in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has been raising generalized interests in several countries, linking the competitiveness of SMEs to the increasing of productivity, flexibility and response capacity and active presence in the global market. The agenda highlights the incentive systems for the qualification and internationalisation of SMEs, to support investments in dynamic factors of firm’s competitiveness in several areas of intervention and types of investment, especially the internationalisation. In this sense, this research has the central objective to identify and understand the factors influencing the export performance of manufacturing SMEs, specifically identifying the key innovation capabilities (firm-related factors) affecting the export performance that may influence SMEs development. This research also aims to develop the knowledge of SMEs’ internationalisation and its influence on performance, deepening an academically little explored area and reinforcing the gap on literature when combining performance with internationalisation of SMEs. This research integrates international entrepreneurship theory and international strategies. This research includes: (a) a schematic and integrative analysis of internationalisation theories; (b) a systematic review of the SME internationalisation research; (c) a conceptual model identifying the key factors affecting the export performance of SMEs; (d) a qualitative study that explores the importance of new product development in multi-stage marketing, involving supplier-customer relationships through seven case studies; (e) and two quantitative studies, one focusing on the impact of a set of internal innovation capabilities on SMEs export performance, with the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation with proactive and reactive external stimuli, and the other analysing the impact of four specific firms’ innovation capabilities on export performance and the mediating role of exploitative and exploratory innovation capabilities. The empirical study is based not only on a qualitative approach, through seven case studies, but also on a quantitative methodology supported by a cross sectional approach, from structured questionnaires sent to SMEs of the plastics industry, using PLS-SEM. It is possible to conclude that there is a clear evolution in the literature on internationalisation from a focus on the internationalisation process, from a previous phase, being in this phase more focused on born globals. This research further reveals that the plastics industry is highly characterized by vertical relationships between suppliers and customers. If the results show that entrepreneurship and innovation capabilities are key to internationalised SMEs, the major contribution of this research stems from two important facts: firstly, exploratory and exploitative innovations influence differently the export performance of SMEs and, secondly, SMEs that pro-actively entrepreneurial oriented have a much better export performance than passively internationalized SMEs.