Drivers of Indigenous Ghanaian Firms' Degree of internationalization

doi:10.7176/ejbm/14-3-05

Abstract

The study aims to investigate home country institutional environment factors influencing indigenous firms' internationalization in Ghana. Precisely, the study examines the relationship between pull factors, push factors and internationalization. The paper leads to a comprehensive understanding of factors driving firms’ internationalization, which could facilitate government support for such indigenous firms. The first research objective is to explore how favourable domestic factors pull/induce internationalization in line with the institutional-based view. The second proposed research objective aimed to examine the relationship between unfavourable factors and the internationalization of indigenous Ghanaian firms. The study is based on an institutional-based view and employed an online survey questionnaire to sample 109 key informants actively involved in the export and management of the export business. The data obtained were analyzed using multiple regression. The data were analyzed using STATA version 13 software. Also, Pearson correlation, linear regression and multiple regress were used to determine the association. The findings from the study indicate a negative relationship between pull factors and internationalization, with push factors recording no significant effect on the internationalization of firms. Keywords : Favorable factors, Pull factors, Unfavourable factors, Push factors, Indigenous firm, Institutions, Internationalization DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-3-05 Publication date: February 28 th 2022

Highlights

The country-level institutional factors are central elements in the internationalization of firms (Bowen, 2019; Marinova & Marinov, 2017); researching the institutional context is vital for a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of foreign market operations
Despite the significant role played by the institution in firm internationalization, studies on drivers of internationalization are non-existent in the literature (Boso, Adeleye, Ibeh, & Chizema, 2019)
This study examined the relationship between pull and push factors and indigenous firms’ internationalization based on the institutional theory

Summary

Introduction

The country-level institutional factors are central elements in the internationalization of firms (Bowen, 2019; Marinova & Marinov, 2017); researching the institutional context is vital for a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of foreign market operations. Literature shows firms' nascent internationalization (Boso, Adeleye, Ibeh, & Chizema, 2019; Omokaro‐Romanus, Anchor, & Konara, 2018). "Institutions are the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction. Despite the significant role played by the institution in firm internationalization, studies on drivers of internationalization are non-existent in the literature (Boso, Adeleye, Ibeh, & Chizema, 2019). Given the seminal role of country-level institutions' factors on firms' foreign market operations, this paper examines how favourable and unfavourable institutional factors, proxy as pull and push factors, induce indigenous exporters' internationalization and argue that empirical

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