Abstract
SMEs are considered as the important factor for economic development of countries and thus, internationalization of SMEs plays a significant role in this phenomenon. The internationalization theories are still expanding and being developed by the scholars. While a number of studies explained internationalization, investigations of international behavior of SMEs demonstrates mixed results. The paper aims to overview the theories of internationalization and reveal the interpretations of internationalization concept. The research is based on analysis and synthesis of the scientific literature. In addition, the bibliometric data of accomplished studies in the field of SMEs internationalization were analyzed. The data were collected from Clarivate analytics database. The yearly number of articles in 1990-2019, top authors, journals and locations were considered. Visualization graphics with VOSviewer software were developed based on the same bibliometric data. The graphics reflected co-citations of keywords, authors, sources, and referencies among the selected articles. The research contributes to the prevailing studies by revealing the trends and possible research streams.
Highlights
More and more small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) start to internationalize their activities at the early stages of the firm development
The tendency of increasing interest of the scholars in the internationalization of SMEs can be indicated from the graphics
The analysis indicated that the number of research papers in this field was close or up to 200 per year since 2015, while it was close or up to 100 publications per year five years ago
Summary
More and more small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) start to internationalize their activities at the early stages of the firm development. The most recent studies, based on internationalization of SMEs, could be divided into separate research streams: based on born global theory and international entrepreneurship (IE) approach (Schweizer, 2012). Born global and IE approach are the most recent theories, aiming to explain international behavior of the firms. The theories suggest the assumption that new venture is able to start international expansion since its establishment and focus on the capabilities of the owners/managers, whose skills, experience and personals qualities such as proactivity, previous export experience, and risk tolerance can create huge contribution and value for the firm (Etemad & Motaghi, 2018; Martin & Javalgi, 2018; Bolzani & Foo, 2017). IE literature stresses the significance of decision making, identification of opportunities and interrelate these aspects to internationalization success (Schweizer, 2012)
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