As the American workforce is buffeted by industries that are downsizing, requesting pay concessions and relocating production to foreign countries with lower factor costs, politicians and union representatives wave the flag of protectionism and explain the state of affairs in terms of a lack of national competitiveness. Porter (1990) links national competitiveness to the competitiveness of the nation's companies, asserting that this competitiveness is achieved through acts of innovation. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), small business has become the dominant economic force in the United States again (U.S. SBA, 2000), producing 47 percent of all American sales, 51 percent of the private gross domestic product, and 55 percent of innovations. (U.S. SBA: The Facts, 1999) Women and minorities have taken the lead in expressing interest in small business ownership (U.S. Census Bureau: Statistics about Business Size; U.S. Department of Commerce WB92-1, 1996; U.S. SBA: Minorities, 2001; U.S. SBA: Women, 2001). However, the cultural values of women and minorities differ from the traditional values of nonminorities; those values, according to England and Lee (1974), influence both a person's behavior and success. This dissertation discusses the impact of those cultural differences on firm behavior with respect to firm commitment, risk propensity, and the internationalization rates of women (WBOs) and minority business owners (MBOs), key drivers to national competitiveness.
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