Export Performance of Korean Technology-Intensive SMEs: The Role of the CEO and Organizational Characteristics

Abstract

Despite much literature on the internationalization of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), extant studies examined traditional SMEs, internationalization patterns, and typologies of SMEs entering foreign markets. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the characteristics of SMEs and to investigate empirically the relationships among the CEO’s characteristics, organizational attributes, technology orientation and export performance. We collected data from 168 technology-intensive SMEs. Then, structural equation modeling was employed to analyze a proposed relationship using PLS-SEM. The findings suggest that firms with technology orientation are more capable of achieving higher export performance, which implies that higher export performance relies on the fundamental factors of global experience, international orientation, innovative culture and learning orientation, while simple and vague global experience, international orientation and learning orientation hardly attain high export performance, per se. This study contributes to a theoretical extension of antecedents concerning technology orientation and export performance, moving forward with empirical results. To the best of our knowledge, our model is the first attempt to examine how Korean SMEs enhance export performance with a mediating role of technology orientation.