Abstract
Previous studies investigating the “why” of entrepreneurial internationalization have focused on firm-level motivations, overlooking the relationships between firm-level and individual-level motivations and why entrepreneurs differ in the goals they intend to achieve. We investigate the role of personal values as desirable end states that motivate international entrepreneurship by functioning as superordinate cognitive structures that underlie the practical internationalization goals set by entrepreneurs. By adopting an idiographic approach based on a laddering methodology in a sample of 140 new domestic technology-based firms located in Northern Italy, we uncover and map the hierarchies of goals that motivate entrepreneurs’ internationalization intentions, which are anchored in five personal values: achievement, power, self-direction, benevolence, and security. We discuss our theoretical and methodological contributions and the policy implications of our findings.
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Notes
For a slightly different approach to laddering interview methods, see Bourne and Jenkins (2005).
Although paper-and-pencil versions of the laddering technique exist, personally meeting and interviewing the entrepreneurs is beneficial to research because doing so allows entrepreneurs to better comprehend the questions and enables interviewers to obtain rich insights into the research question (Grunert and Grunert 1995).
The definition of NTBFs is linked to the OECD definition of “technology intensive” goods, which classifies technology-intensive industries, according to their average R&D intensity, into “High-Tech Industries” (R&D intensity above 8.5%), “Medium-Tech industries” (R&D intensity between 3.5 and 8.5%), and “Low-Tech industries” (R&D intensity below 3.5%). NTBFs belong to the “High-Tech” and “Medium-Tech” categories (Almus and Nerlinger 1999).
We also acknowledge that entrepreneurs’ gender might have an impact. Unfortunately, given that only about 26% of the population of NTBFs entrepreneurs in the region were female, we excluded this criterion from our matched-pair strategy.
This criterion did not imply that the respondent companies had no internationalization experience. As explained in the next paragraphs, some companies had occasionally operated in international markets in the past. We thus consider firm-level previous international experience as a relevant characteristic to account for in our analyses.
None of the companies were owned by institutional investors, such as venture capitalists or business angels, and only one company was founded with the support of an incubator.
Analyses of the matched-pair groups revealed no significant differences between foreign-born and native entrepreneurs, with the exception that foreign-born entrepreneurs have shorter work experiences in Italy and that they have more knowledge of foreign languages.
As an example, content related to “curiosity/learning” and “independence” was coded under “self-direction” because this value is related to “independent thought and action-choosing, creating, exploring (creativity, freedom, independent, curious, choosing own goals)” (Bardi and Schwartz 2003, p. 1208). Content related to “economic wellbeing” and “prestige” was coded under “power” because this value is related to “social status and prestige, control, or dominance over people and resources (social power, authority, wealth)” (Bardi and Schwartz 2003, p. 1208).
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Acknowledgements
We are highly indebted to all the entrepreneurs who participated to this research, which was carried out as part of Daniela Bolzani’s Ph.D. dissertation. We acknowledge the qualified coding work by Gian Luca Marzocchi and Elisa Villani. We thank two anonymous reviewers, Cristina Boari, Riccardo Fini, Gian Luca Marzocchi, Antonio Majocchi, Mujtaba Ahsan, Gabriele Morandin, Giovanna Magnani, the participants to the EGOS 2015 Colloquium, BCERC 2015, and DREAMT-CYFE Doctoral and Young Scholars Development Workshop 2015 for suggesting several improvements to previous versions of the manuscript.
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Plot of the number of active linkages between goals at different cut-off levels
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Bolzani, D., Foo, M.D. The “why” of international entrepreneurship: uncovering entrepreneurs’ personal values. Small Bus Econ 51, 639–666 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9945-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9945-8
Keywords
- Entrepreneurial internationalization
- Entrepreneurial motivation
- Entrepreneurial intentions
- Goals
- Personal values
- Laddering method