SMEs’ Internationalization: Mapping the Field through Finance, ITC, and Social Ties

Abstract

Over the last several decades, the internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has become an interesting research topic in business and entrepreneurship literature. The massive literature in the field has increased demand for systematic reviews, bibliometric studies and meta-analyses. However, up to date, there has been no systematic literature review, particularly on the role of finance, information technology (IT) and network ties in SMEs’ internationalization. Our research fills the gap and reveals the idiosyncrasies in the literature by conducting a systematic literature review to understand evaluation, scholarly debate, past and current research streams and white spaces for future researchers. We employed 262 documents (1997–2022) and utilized performance analysis and co-occurrence analysis for each area separately and then combined them. The database indicates that research in the particular areas started in 1997, but scholarly interest has been noted since 2006 and onward. We further identified the most influential documents, countries and journals in the fields of finance, IT and network ties and SMEs’ internationalization. Moreover, we conducted a co-occurrence analysis and identified past and current research streams in the fields. Finally, we created an integrated framework to identify white spaces and future research directions. Our insights show that SMEs should use finance, IT and network ties as complementary, rather than exclusive, to boost their internationalization process.