Diversity management and firms’ internationalization: Evidence from French SMEs

Abstract

Although internationalizing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are heterogenous as a population, they face similar resource constraints, such that resource management is central to their internationalization efforts. However, the management of diversity, as a specific resource, remains insufficiently studied. Building on resource-based theory, this article explores how SME managers assign value to diversity and implement diversity management across various types of internationalizing SMEs. The multiple-case qualitative study, involving 14 SMEs that represent traditional internationalizers, early internationalizing firms, and born-again globals, reveals that diversity is valued and managed differently by different categories of internationalizing SMEs. For early internationalizing firms, within-type heterogeneity is stronger than between-type heterogeneity. Furthermore, SMEs may value resource diversity as instrumental, terminal, or even destructive, which influences how they manage it. In presenting ideas for the effective strategic management of diversity, as displayed by some SMEs, this article contributes to research on SMEs’ internationalization and diversity management.