engleski

Operational Capabilities and Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Emerging Market Firms: Explaining Exporting SME Growth

Purpose: The academic inquiry of operational capabilities has claimed focal interest in mainstream strategy research. Recent theoretical advances suggest these capabilities are a fundamental trigger to the identification and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the extant literature has been, at best, partial with regard to empirical insights that integrate operational capabilities with entrepreneurial opportunities. Addressing this theoretical lacuna from the standpoint of organisational learning theory, we investigate the interplay between operational capabilities and entrepreneurial opportunities and their overall impact on exporting SME’s growth. Design/Methodology/Approach: To realize our empirical aims a descriptive research design employing a survey methodology was used. We generated data from a sample of 117 exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Croatia. Ordinary least squares regression was employed to test our conceptual model and five derived hypotheses. Findings: Our findings demonstrate that market- sensing capabilities are vital in enhancing exporting SME’s opportunity recognition capacity and the rate of international opportunity exploitation that leads to increased firm growth. Also, study findings show that the link between the increased rate of international opportunity exploitation contributes more to the growth when exporting SMEs have highly developed adaptive and innovation capabilities. Research implications/limitations: This study brings to surface some novel insights about how exporting SMEs can better design their export marketing strategy. Our results suggest, operational capabilities occupy key role in the exporting SMEs international venturing efforts by delivering higher growth. Originality/Value: Our study contributes to the export marketing strategy field by offering empirical evidence that both capability and opportunity-based views should be assessed simultaneously in explaining exporting SME’s competitiveness. Finally, we offer valuable theoretical and practical implications as well as avenues for further research that should extend our knowledge in the field.

operational capabilities ; opportunity recognition ; opportunity exploitation ; SME ; exporters ; growth ; organisational learning

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