Institutional Support in SME Internationalization: Road to Rise or Demise?

This paper contributes to firm internationalization and international entrepreneurship research by explaining why governmentally sponsored institutional support helps SMEs to expand to foreign markets in some cases but not in others. Based on a qualitative analysis of 51 key informants representing internationalizing SMEs, we found that the specific implications of institutional support are driven by conditions emerging from complex interplay between two spectrums related to the relationship between the supporting institutions and the SMEs: (1) the closeness of their relationship and (2) the specificity of resources that could help SMEs in their internationalization.