Effects of the psychological characteristics of CEOS at the levels of business internationalization: the case of the born global in Latin America

Abstract

The aim of this document is to analyze not only the relationship among orientation towards innovation, proactiveness, and risk tolerance, chosen by the literature as three of the most important psychological characteristics of CEOs, but also the export intensity in a special type of firms: the Born Global, characterized by being small firms that, before completing their first three years up and running, have already started international operations with more than 25% of their sales directed to international markets. The theoretical framework of the paper uses the Upper Echelons approach, which considers that the demographic and psychological characteristics of the management team end up being determinant in the results of the companies. A Binary Logistic Regression based on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in twelve Latin American countries in 2016 was used as the statistical analysis methodology. As a result, it is found that the orientation towards innovation, studied from product and process innovation, is determinant to achieve successful internationalization processes. In contrast, proactiveness and risk tolerance were found to be non-determinant. This implies that companies should take measures to decisively promote innovation and intra-entrepreneurship mechanisms within themselves, and thus facilitate their integration into international markets.

Keywords

• born global (company)
• international business enterprises
• commerce foreign trade
• technological innovations