Digitalization and SMEs’ Export Management: Impacts on Resources and Capabilities

Abstract

Digitalization is becoming an increasingly central issue for companies. However, most companies, and in particular SMEs, are struggling to engage in a coherent global digital transformation process. Indeed, digitalization affects much of a company's organizational strategy, including the development of market opportunities. Digitalization has been identified as an element that fosters the internationalization of SMEs. However, the integration of digital technology requires investments and changes in a company's internal practices through the mobilization of new resources, as well as by implementing specific capabilities to manage them. The objective of this research work is therefore to examine the impact of SMEs’ digital transformation on their internationalization capability. Relying on an extensive exploratory literature review, digital facilitators were identified and classified into three categories: e-commerce, e-marketing, and e-business. Then, a cross-analysis between the identification of digital facilitators from the literature and a framework of SMEs’ export practices (the Potential Export Index, Enjolras et al., 2016) was conducted in order to highlight differentiated impacts that can be theoretically identified. The most impacted export practices are related to the strategic vision of the firm, the customization of its offerings, its network dynamic, and its internal organization. E-commerce facilitators concern the supply chain organization, e-marketing facilitators are related to communications and customer relations, and e-business facilitators impact the company as a whole.

Keywords

• digitalization
• export practices
• facilitators
• impacts
• sme