Exploring The Determinants Of Export Performance Of Pakistani Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises(SMEs)

The emphasis of this study was to examine the impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation,Entrepreneurial Network,Internal Barriers,External Barriers,Home-Country Institutes,and Host Country Institutes on the export performance of Pakistani.The study was greatly motivated by the inconsistent findings and the gaps indicated in the contemporary literature regarding the topic.Data were collected from exporting SMEs operating in the Punjab and Sindh provinces,Pakistan by using questionnaire survey,and a random sampling and Stratified random sampling techniques were used for sample selection.A unit of analysis was the internationalized firm(exporting firms)studied through the viewpoint of owners/managers of internationalized SMEs.600 questionnaires were distributed to exporting SME owner/managers,but only 330 of them were returned,giving a response rate of 55%.However,only 309 useable questionnaires were used for further analysis.The proposed hypotheses were analyzed using the structural equation modeling(AMOS v.21).Meanwhile mixed results were found upon investigating the impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation,Entrepreneurial Network,Internal Barriers,External Barriers,Home-Country Institutes,and Host Country Institutes on the export performance of Pakistani.The findings of this study provided significant insights for both managers and researchers to further understand the effects of implemented strategies on performance.Finally,limitations of the study and important recommendations for future research were discussed.Entrepreneurial Orientation,Host Country Institutes,External and Internal Barriers were found having significant impact on the performance of exporting SMEs and while the rest of determinants(Entrepreneurial Network and Home Institute)were found having a negative and insignificant impact on the export performance of Pakistani SMEs.