Suchergebnisse

Often owner/decision-makers in closely-held small businesses are overloaded with work and can become isolated from novel information that could improve their decisions and ultimately firm performance. These decision-makers become reliant on heuristics to ease their cognitive burdens and develop a strong bias for the status-quo. Research suggests that external counsel and/or informal advisors may help to encourage more thoughtful consideration of situations, thus exposing or alleviating status-quo bias. This paper contributes to the understanding of decision making in small firms by examining relationships between industry association membership and the willingness of decision-makers in such firms to adopt new technologies. Evidence is found suggesting that small firm owners' access to decision-making information from business associations is related to a greater willingness to adopt new technologies. This is evidence of conscious decision-making that enables their small businesses to go beyond the status-quo.

This article presents a conceptual discussion and a theoretical framework explaining how the liabilities of newness, which are traditionally thought of as disadvantages that young companies face, contribute to early firm internationalization. Through a systematic analysis of the liabilities that international new ventures face, as well as the liabilities and the advantages that a young age provides, we are able to integrate findings from the existing body of diffuse research on newness and internationalization, and develop propositions for future empirical research. Based on previous liabilities of newness and foreignness research, our study provides a novel theoretical model that explains early internationalization over and beyond existing internationalization models.