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Research Proposal
Course
Coursework
Tutor
Course School/Level
Assessment Weight
Submission Deadline
B/PG
100.00%
17/12/2014
Coursework is receipted on the understanding that it is the student's own work and that it has not,
in whole or part, been presented elsewhere for assessment. Where material has been used from
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regarding Cheating and Plagiarism.
000859106
Tutor's comments
Final Grade_________
Date _______________
Table of contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Research Aim
1.2. Objectives
1.3. Research Questions
2. Literature Review
2.1. Different approaches to the Internationalisation process
2.1.1. Internationalisation as a gradual process
2.1.2. New approaches to the Internationalisation process
2.1.3. The distinguishing features of International SMEs
2.2 Determinants of export performance for SMEs
2.2.1. The resources of the firm
2.2.2. The characteristics of the company
2.2.3. The Internal and External Environments
2.2.4. Through a consensus ?
2.3. Interest of the Food-Processing Industry
2.3.1. Specific features of the sector
2.3.2. Innovation as a key factor for success
2.3.3. Determinants of innovation capabilities
2.4. Conclusion
3. Research Design
3.1. Methodological Approach
3.2. Data Set
3.2.1. Data Collection
3.2.2. Sample
3.3. Data Analysis Plan
3.4. Time Scale for the Research
3.5. Difficulties
4. Conclusions
5. References
6. Resources
1. Introduction
1.2. Objectives
This project starts with a literature review to underline the different approaches that
can be found regarding the international development of firms, and acquire general
knowledge about the topic. The next step is to point out the gaps in the existing literature, in
order to define a focus for our research, and adress several questions that should be answered.
Then, the formulation of various hypotheses will lead us to the investigation part of the
project, which aims to measure the impact of several factors on the performance of Global
SMEs from the Agrifood sector. Different methods for collecting and analysing data will be
used, in order to confirm or reject the hypotheses, and explore new research avenues.
These research questions will constitute the starting point of our project. By defining a
focus, they prevent from a massive collection of useless data (Bryman and Bell, 2011).
Regarding the international development of Small and Medium Enterprises, several issues
emerged from the literature, and made us adress a few questions we would like to answer :
Is the success of Small and Medium Enterprises into foreign markets solely dependent on
their resources ?
Do the characteristics of the industry influence the international development of firms ?
What are the motives and obstacles to going global in the Food Processing Sector ?
To what extent is Strategic Management the core determinant of a firms performance in
foreign markets ?
From that perspective, the main question of this research project is :
What are the determinants of Export Performance for French SMEs of the Food Processing
Industry ?
2. Literature Review
Many studies have been written over internationalisation of SMEs and, interestingly,
they often came to very different conclusions. The aim of this literature review is to critically
analyse the different approaches found in the literature, in order to highlight the existing gaps
and lay the foundations for further research, as suggested by my research questions.
The experience of the firm, which depends on its age and its export experience, is also
assumed to positively influence its performance in foreign markets, due to its association with
maturity in terms of management and business partnerships (Ursic and Czinkota, 1984, pp.
159168). However, an older firm might be less likely to implement innovative strategies,
which are considered as a key success of factor in the Food Processing Industry (Maurel,
2009, pp. 118142). Moreover, these determinants, because of their static nature, have a
limited scope.
From that perspective, several authors focused on dynamic characteristics. For example, an
export-oriented management is believed to enhance the performance of SMEs abroad
(Maurel, 2009, pp. 118142 ; Remaud and Couderc 2006). Stevenson, Roberts and Grousbeck
(1985) go further, by linking performance not only to the export orientation, but also to the
entrepreneurial behaviour of the firm and the characteristics of its decision-maker, in terms of
innovation, proactivity and risk-taking. This approach has been reiterated by Beamish and
Dhanaraj (2003), and later by Favre-Bonte and Giannelloni (2007, cited in Maurel, 2009,
pp. 118142).
Nevertheless, even if the literature largely recognises the impact of the intrinsic qualities of
the firm, many other factors have to be considered to explain the performance of a business
aborad.
companies and industries, which means that findings might not be the same for SMEs of the
Food Sector.
innovation is due to the fact that managers only react to perceived business opportunities
(2006, cited in Becheikh, Landry, Amara 2006, pp. 275300).
2.4. Conclusion
Based on the existing literature, different approaches are found regarding the factors of
success for exporting SMEs, which help in understanding the multi-dimensional influences
that should be considered when entering foreign markets. However, despite attempts to
combine all the models into ones, there are still some gaps between the research and the
reality of the business. Moreover, the different methods of performance measurement used
makes the comparison of the approaches difficult.
Little has been written about SMEs of the Food Processing industry, which present some
specific features that make the sudy of their internationalisation even more interesting. And it
appears that, except partially in the approach through resources, financial determinants of the
export performance have not been studied. The same applies to cultural factors, that should be
paid more attention as possible environment-related determinants.
3. Research Design
This research relies on the hypothesis that the performance of international SMEs is
influenced by financial, but also non-financial factors (e.g. characteristics of the
Management), which cannot be easily translated into numeric data. On one hand, a
quantitative approach is needed to set up a basis for what we consider as good and bad
performance, which will be used later to analyse the data collected. The same approach is also
needed to assess the impact of various financial factors (e.g. invested capital, promotion
budget) over the performance of the firm. However, the lack of theories and models about
this specific concern implies that we use an inductive approach.
On the other hand, a qualitative approach is needed to study non-financial factors, whose
correlation with the firms performance cannot be scientifically measured, and relies more on
the researchers interpretation. Qualitative research is often associated with an inductive
approach (i.e. establish theories based on the results of specific cases) (Bryman and Bell,
2011). However, given the large amount of study that has already been done regarding the
performance of SMEs in foreign markets, and the fact that this research aims to test this
theories on the under-studied Food Processing sector, a deductive approach will be used. The
null hypothesis will be as follows: In the Food Processing industry, the determinants of
International SMEs performance are the same as in other industries.
Using mixed methods seems the most suitable approach for our project. The quantification of
findings from qualitative research might be useful to uncover the generality of the
phenomena being described (Silverman 1984, 1985, cited in Bryman and Bell, 2011). These
approaches have long been considered not compatible (Hughes 1990, cited in Bryman and
Bell, 2011). However, today, their complementarity is largely recognised, and is even
considered as a strength to overcome the possible issues going with data collection and
analysis (Bryman and Bell, 2011, p. 630). Moreover, a qualitative approach might facilitate
the quantitative research, by providing hypotheses that could be tested, while the quantitative
method will be useful in selecting people to be interviewed or companies to be studied
(Bryman and Bell, 2011).
3.2.2. Sample
Small and Medium Enterprises are defined as companies with less than 250
employees, and/or with annual turnover lower than 250M, and/or with annual balance sheet
lower than 43M (The new SME definition - User guide and model declaration [no date]).
This research will be conducted among SMEs involved in the development of any
international operation or activity even without going beyond national borders
(Tarpczynski, Wrona 2013 cited in Toulova, Votoupalova and Kubickova 2014). Thus, both
exporting and globally integrated companies will be studied.
While, for the quantitative approach, the use of online resources will allow to investigate
across a quite large sample, for the qualitative research, the sample will be smaller (around 30
companies), due to time restrictions, the cost of collecting data, but also to the homogeneity of
French Agrifood SMEs. To offer a good overview, focus will be on SMEs from different
markets within the Food Processing industry.
To ensure the validity and reliability of the findings, companies with different levels of
performance will be investigated.
Most of the interviews will be adressed to the owner of the business, who is expected to give
insights of what he/she sees as relevant and important, about fairly specific topics mentioned
in the Interview Guide. Most of the questions will be open-ended, and deal with topics such as
the motives for going global, the general strategy of the business, the owners view over the
firms performance, the strategic plans for the future, etc
For this research, the first step is to determine what to consider as good or poor
performance. According to Shoham (1998, cited in Maurel, 2009, pp. 118142), export
performance is a composite outcome of a firms international sales, which includes three
dimensions : export sales, export profitability and export growth . This definition will be
used as a frame of reference. To assess the performance of a firm, two different methods will
be used. First, the STEP Scale Model (Lages and Lages, 2004, pp. 3656), which focuses on
short-term performance and short-term exporting intensity. Then, the EXPERF Scale Model,
which also consider strategic performance and perceived export success (Maurel, 2009,
pp. 118142). Export Intensity (the percentage of export sales over the total sales) is
considered as the main performance indicator, as it allows the comparison between firms of
different sizes. However, these approaches are mainly short-term-oriented. Thus, long-term
indicators (e.g. long-term growth, health, etc...) will also be considered.
To analyse the secondary data obtained from databases or through questionnaires, statistics
softwares such as SPSS and Excel Stat will be used.
For the analysis of qualitative data, we will use, amongst others, a language-base approach,
relying on discourse and conversations analysis. This will be particularly useful to measure
the impact of the owners characteristics over the firms performance.
However, it might be difficult to find relationships between variables. Thus, for every
possible determinant, we will look for an intervening variable, influenced by the independent
variable, and in turn having an effect on the dependent variable (Bryman and Bell, 2011, p.
639).
This provisional calendar reduces the risks of lacking time to complete the research. It can
evolve over time, depending on how our study has progressed. Given that the final
dissertation has to be submitted on the 7th of May 2015, we will have 16 weeks to complete
the project. (based on the return date for the proposal, 21st of January).
3.6. Difficulties
For this project, it might be difficult to find out enough managers/owners to interview,
due to the limited number of French SMEs from the Food Processing industry that followed
the path of internationalisation. Then, given the semi-structured format chosen for interviews,
a clearly defined interview guide need to be realised, to avoid missing important information.
Also, it is essential not to analyze the data only in relation to the existing theories. New
research avenues should at the same time be considered.
Last, while conducting this research, particular attention should be paid to the compliance
with ethics. Data collected might be sensitive, and it is our responsibility to ensure that its
integrity is preserved. The same applies to the interviewees, whose identity should not be
disclosed in the dissertation.
4. Conclusions
The performance achieved by a firm depends on several factors, which are not always
financial. Indeed, the manager makes decisions, which, combined with other variables,
influences the firms strategy, itself impacting the firms performance. The latter is assumed
to result from a multitude of interdependent forces, whose impact is even greater when it
comes to international development. Given their smaller size and their less complex
organizational structure, SMEs are believed to be more strongly impacted by those variables.
Based on this assumption, a lot of research has been done over the topic and, interestingly, the
authors often came to conclusions that were different but, to some extent, complementary.
The influence of the firms resources, its intrinsic characteristics and its environment has been
highlighted. However, the financial determinants of the post-internationalisation performance
have been paid little attention. Moreover, despite its leading position in France, the Food
Processing Industry case has been underused. As far as I am concerned, the interest of this
sector lies in its very specific features, which might lead to different findings regarding the
determinants of performance abroad. From that perspective, I would like to contribute,
through this project, to the development of new research avenues regarding Global SMEs.
5. References
Empirical
Literature
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6. Resources
Example of resources
Analytical Tools
Access to online-databases