Export entrepreneurial-oriented behaviour and export performance

Predicting export performance remains an important issue at the heart of export research and management. This is because of the primary role of exporting to ensuring the profitability, growth and survival of firms. Given these and other benefits that firms stand to gain (and the challenges that firms face) for their active engagement in exporting, scholars have exerted efforts into explaining the causes of export success. Export marketing strategy, firm characteristics, capabilities and firms’ orientations towards export markets are some the variables studied. Firms’ entrepreneurial orientation towards export markets has been one important variable that has captured the attention of researchers. This study is an attempt to introduce an export context-specific entrepreneurial-oriented behaviour (or export EOB) to the study of antecedents of export performance. A theoretical model involving the relationship between export EOB (and its dimensions) and export performance is, therefore, developed and empirically tested using data from 212 exporting organisations. Findings suggest that firms’ overall level of export EOB is a major driver of export success. The study further establishes that a high level of market-oriented behaviour in exporting organisations can help firms to derive stronger benefits from their entrepreneurial activities. At the specific level of the export EOB components, results suggest that development of novel product innovations, high export risk-taking, and strong proactive and competitively aggressive behaviours can help exporting organisations to improve their performance. However, product innovation intensity and autonomy are negatively related to export performance, suggesting that high levels of these two behaviours might lead to poor export performance. Nevertheless, further analysis shows that the negative association between product innovation intensity and export performance becomes positive when moderated by product innovation novelty. In addition, the study shows that autonomy has indirect positive association with export performance through interaction with proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness. In other words, autonomy facilitates the effectiveness of proactive and competitive aggressive behaviours. Further analyses of moderating effect relationships reveal mixed results. Specifically, the study finds that export market orientation positively moderates the link between production innovation intensity and export performance. In addition, export customer dynamism positively moderates the association of product innovation novelty and risk-taking with export performance. On the contrary, export customer dynamism negatively moderates the link between product innovation intensity and export performance. Theoretical, export managerial and policy implications of these findings are discussed and useful areas for future research are proposed.