Organizational Determinants of Exporting: Conceptual, Methodological, and Empirical Insights

Introduction Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in exporting, on the part of both governments and corporations, attributable to the substantial benefits gained from this activity. At the government level, exporting offers an excellent vehicle for economic development and social welfare; generates sufficient foreign exchange to finance other economic activities; provides a viable means of coping with balance-of-trade deficit problems; creates backward and forward linkages in the economy; and enriches employment opportunities (Onkvisit/Shaw 1993, Czinkota/Ronkainen 1995). At the corporate level, exporting contributes to organisational growth; speeds up technological and marketing innovations; leads to more efficient production; diversifies business risks accruing from domestic market activity; and enhances the company's financial position (Terpstra/Sarathy 1994, Bradley 1995). In light of these benefits, exporting has attracted significant research attention, as indicated by a substantial volume of publications devoted to the subject (Ford/Leonidou 1991). One stream of this research, perhaps the most sizeable, has focused on elements pertaining to the structure and behaviour of the organisation per se, and how these affect exporting. Organisational factors have often been cited as forces facilitating or inhibiting various facets of pre- and post-export behaviour:(l) for instance, some researchers have seen company characteristics as important in making operative various stimuli and barriers affecting propensity to export (e.g., Olson/Wiedersheim-Paul 1978, Garnier 1982); others have considered organisational factors as critical for the firm's progression along the export development path (e.g., Bilkey/Tesar 1977, Cavusgil 1980); while still others have argued that the nature of the firm affects strategy in overseas markets and this in turn influences export performance (e.g., Holzmuller/Kasper 1991, Axinn 1994). The rationale behind this type of investigation is, first, to identify those organisational factors with a possible effect on export behaviour, and, subsequently, through appropriate actions, to create a company profile that would be conducive for the initiation, development or sustainment of sound international operations (Cavusgil 1984b). The particular significance of this research within the context of exporting lies in the fact that it deals with parameters that can be controlled by both public and corporate policy-makers. However, whereas the former have an indirect influence on these parameters through the adoption of various macroeconomic measures, such as incentive schemes, financial assistance, and infrastructural support, the role of the latter in shaping organisational parameters is more direct, through the planning, organising, staffing, leading and controlling of enterprise activities. Although useful in many respects, this line of inquiry can only be described as fragmentary, unsystematic, and, sometimes, conflicting in nature, thus obstructing theory-building on the subject (Axinn 1994). To some extent this can be ascribed to the scant (e.g., Cannon 1980, Cavusgil/Nevin 1981 a, Boddewyn 1981, Douglas/Craig 1992) or marginal (e.g., Bilkey 1978, Miesenbock 1988, Ford/Leonidou 1991, Gemunden 1991) attention given to organisational factors by previous reviewers of the exporting literature, thus preventing the formulation of an adequate framework upon which to build further research. Notably, two other ad hoc reviews of organisational determinants of export behaviour (i.e., Aaby/Slater 1989, Chetty/Hamilton 1993), despite their pioneering character, neither offered detailed insights nor captured recent developments. This article proposes to address these problems, and thus will systematically review, assimilate and evaluate extant knowledge on organisational determinants of exporting. Specifically, there are four objectives: to provide a theoretical background of the organisational factors associated with export activity; to assess the research methodologies employed to test this association; to synthesise the empirical results derived from this type of research; and, to develop guidelines that would stimulate future research. …