Beyond path dependence: Explorative orientation, slack resources, and managerial intentionality to internationalize in SMEs

Managerial intentionality plays an important role in a firm's selection of its internationalization path. In relation to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), most studies focus on the individual traits that foster managerial intentionality without considering organizational-level antecedents. This study seeks to address this gap by focusing on two organizational antecedents: the firm's exploration and exploitation orientations, and its slack resources. The firm's orientations affect the application of different learning processes, including knowledge acquisition, information interpretation, and knowledge diffusion, and they shape the subjective norms prevalent in the organization, thereby influencing managers’ intentions. Slack resources can affect managers’ intentions not only by offering them leeway to explore new alternatives but also by encouraging complacency. We test our hypotheses on a data set of 132 SMEs. Our findings show that an explorative orientation plays an important role in management intentionality to internationalize, and that slack resources moderate this relationship.