When small businesses go international: alliances as a key to entry

摘要

International strategic alliances are cooperative arrangements with cross-border flows of resources and capabilities of the organisations involved. Such alliances offer both potential synergies and opportunities to enter foreign markets and to better exploit those markets and are considered to be important for firms' internationalisation. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can particularly benefit from international strategic alliances, but their specific characteristics make international expansion more difficult than it is for their larger counterparts. This is because SMEs face severe constraints in gaining access to critical resources and capacities. Moreover, the administrative challenges that arise from cross-border expansion can be acute for small firms.