China's Foreign Trade Enterprises Export Skills Recognition And Sorting

Export knowledge acquisition and export skills utilization in foreign trade firms is critical to their long-term success in international market. In particular, export skills acquisition by firms through training has been shown to have a positive impact on export performance. This research attempts to empirically identify a set of practical export skills important to the Chinese firms. A survey containing eighty-eight practical export skills, selected from the existing literature, was sent to 800 Chinese exporting companies in major eastern regions of China.This dissertation comprises ten chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the purpose of selecting this topic, area and originality of research.Chapter 2 reviews relative literatures on the importance of export skills, and gives a summary of the identification and ranking of skills. The findings of those researches show that export skills, as one of the sources of competitive advantages, have a significant effect with export performance. However, the process to identify the training needs of employees and rank the importance of export skills they require for achieving a higher standard of work is more critical for exporters to overcome the export inhibitors.Chapter 3 develops a conceptual model of Export Skills Identification and Ranking (SIR Model), and describes the analysis methodology of skills identification and ranking.Chapter 4 shows the survey process and the profiles of respondents and enterprises.Chapter 5 to 8 is the main body of empirical analyses of skills identification and ranking for Chinese exporters.With the factor analysis, eight skill areas were identified and fifty-six were found more important. The eight skill areas covered international finance, international marketing, international trade policy and regulations, international trade logistics, international payment terms, strategic management in international trade, international trade research and international trade practice. All the skills were ranked according to the mean value and standard deviations.The results of the study show that skills in international trade policy and regulations, international payments and international trade research were viewed as being the most important. In general, the Chinese exporters viewed the basic finance and strategic management skill as being more important than advanced skills. International marketing skills were considered to be of only moderate importance and some were ranked even lower. In contrast to earlier findings for other countries, international trade logistics skills and international trade practice skills were viewed as being less important. The result also indicates that larger exporters and managers tend to place significant emphasis on advanced finance, marketing and strategic contents, meanwhile smaller exporters more focus on international trade research, international trade policy and regulations and international trade practical skills. These importance rankings may be used by the Chinese universities and government trade agencies to design more effective skill training programs and guide their resource allocations.Chapter 9 gives suggestions on how to promote the effectives of export skills for Chinese exporters. Furthermore, according to export development stages, different duties and skills requirements,"Export Skills Can-Do Statements"are structured by four levels from the low to the upper, including general economic education and foreign language study, core export knowledge education, basic export practical skills application, proficient in different export skills utilization, upper export trade management skills and advanced strategic trade management skills.Chapter 10 concludes with an overall summary.