Business scholars have studied so far what it takes for multinational enterprises to succeed in their strategies while facing turbulent times; resilience and agility have been analysed from well-established companies’ perspectives. However, nowadays, globalisation forces all businesses, independently from their sizes, to continuously adapt their business models and strategies, as to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. Indeed, SMEs play a huge role in the economic growth as they represent the majority of players in the market. In the Italian and German markets, which are the ones analysed in this dissertation, SMEs correspond to the 99,9% and 99,6% respectively of the total number of enterprises. The main objectives of this dissertation are divided into two hypotheses, studying elements which represent features of agility: the first one is that a highly digitalised firm internationalises faster, thanks to innovative tech solutions, offerings and digitalised marketing strategies which contribute to develop agility within the firms and help enterprises to reach foreign customers quicker. The second hypothesis assumes that if founders have solid international and work backgrounds, their firms will be more agile and expand faster to foreign countries, as they better understand market signals and identify unexplored customers’ needs. The speed of internationalisation has been measured through the number of months necessary to go abroad since the company was founded. This study can tentatively conclude that high level of technology intensity, high communication with clients via direct e-mail, a strong international network, solid founders’ work and international experience and greater number of foreign languages spoken by founders, positively influence faster speed of internationalisation. On the contrary, it has been demonstrated that among the variables measuring founders’ work background, the number of years in the same industry slows down the process of expansion abroad in a statistically significant way.
Gli accademici hanno studiato finora gli elementi necessari alle imprese multinazionali per avere successo nelle loro strategie durante periodi turbolenti; la resilienza e l’agilità strategica sono state analizzate dal punto di vista di aziende già affermate nel mercato. Tuttavia, al giorno d’oggi la globalizzazione costringe tutte le aziende, indipendentemente dalle loro dimensioni, ad adattare continuamente i loro modelli e strategie di business, per stare al passo con le ultime tendenze e tecnologie. Le PMI svolgono un ruolo fondamentale nella crescita economica in quanto rappresentano la maggior parte degli attori nel mercato. Nel mercato italiano e tedesco, analizzati in questo lavoro di tesi, le PMI corrispondono rispettivamente al 99,9% e 99,6% del numero totale di imprese. Gli obiettivi principali della tesi sono suddivisi in due ipotesi, studiando elementi che rappresentano le caratteristiche dell’agilità: la prima è che un’azienda caratterizzata da un alto livello di digitalizzazione internazionalizzerà più velocemente grazie alle soluzioni/offerte tecnologiche innovative e alle strategie digitali di marketing, che permettono di sviluppare agilità nelle aziende e aiutano a raggiungere rapidamente la clientela estera. La seconda è che se i fondatori possiedono una solida esperienza internazionale e lavorativa, le loro aziende saranno più agili e riusciranno ad espandersi all’estero più velocemente, poiché riescono a captare più facilmente le tendenze del mercato e identificano le esigenze non ancora esplorate dei clienti. La velocità di espansione è misurata attraverso il numero di mesi necessari ad internazionalizzare calcolati dalla nascita dell’azienda. Dall’analisi dei risultati si potrebbe indicativamente concludere che un alto livello di intensità tecnologica, un alto livello di comunicazione con i clienti tramite e-mail, una forte presenza di rete internazionale, un’alta esperienza lavorativa e internazionale ed un maggior numero di lingue straniere parlate dai fondatori, influiscono positivamente su una più rapida velocità d’espansione. Al contrario, è stato dimostrato che, tra le variabili che misurano l’esperienza dei fondatori, il numero degli anni in uno stesso settore rallenta il processo di internazionalizzazione, in modo statisticamente significativo.
Resilience, Strategic Agility and Internationalisation in SMEs: An Analysis of Italian and German Enterprises
ANTONINO, ANTONELLA
2020/2021
Abstract
Business scholars have studied so far what it takes for multinational enterprises to succeed in their strategies while facing turbulent times; resilience and agility have been analysed from well-established companies’ perspectives. However, nowadays, globalisation forces all businesses, independently from their sizes, to continuously adapt their business models and strategies, as to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. Indeed, SMEs play a huge role in the economic growth as they represent the majority of players in the market. In the Italian and German markets, which are the ones analysed in this dissertation, SMEs correspond to the 99,9% and 99,6% respectively of the total number of enterprises. The main objectives of this dissertation are divided into two hypotheses, studying elements which represent features of agility: the first one is that a highly digitalised firm internationalises faster, thanks to innovative tech solutions, offerings and digitalised marketing strategies which contribute to develop agility within the firms and help enterprises to reach foreign customers quicker. The second hypothesis assumes that if founders have solid international and work backgrounds, their firms will be more agile and expand faster to foreign countries, as they better understand market signals and identify unexplored customers’ needs. The speed of internationalisation has been measured through the number of months necessary to go abroad since the company was founded. This study can tentatively conclude that high level of technology intensity, high communication with clients via direct e-mail, a strong international network, solid founders’ work and international experience and greater number of foreign languages spoken by founders, positively influence faster speed of internationalisation. On the contrary, it has been demonstrated that among the variables measuring founders’ work background, the number of years in the same industry slows down the process of expansion abroad in a statistically significant way.È consentito all'utente scaricare e condividere i documenti disponibili a testo pieno in UNITESI UNIPV nel rispetto della licenza Creative Commons del tipo CC BY NC ND.
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14239/1459