Programa del congreso

Objectives: The development of digital solutions in the last decade has drastically changed the way small and medium enterprises (SMEs) internationalize their products. Although multiple studies have focused on SMEs’ internationalization processes, published articles on the role of technology in the internationalization of SMEs remain scattered in the literature. To fill in this gap, the present literature review aims at identifying and analyzing articles that explore the impact of digital solutions on the internationalization process of SMEs.

Theoretical framework: Being a literature review, this study employes various concepts from the literatures on digitalization and international development.

Methodology: Systematic literature review approach was used in this study. Using a comprehensive search formula, over 1800 articles were identified. Inclusion and exclusion criteria allowed the research team to focus the analysis on 45 articles. Through inductive coding, various trends of the literature were identified, and several recurrent themes on the internationalization of SMEs were profoundly explored.

Results/implications: The conducted analysis sheds light on the benefits of digital solutions as an entry mode to foreign markets for SMEs. The findings also highlight the importance, for SMEs, to develop their technological capabilities and to have a clear international strategy to offset potential risks of internationalization.

Conceptual framework: Traditionally, reshoring refers to the return of activities previously outsourced to a firm’s country of origin to increase control. However, this considers a specific FDI-based strategy only, which may not be feasible for all companies. Reshoring can include other options too, as we are seeing with European firms relocating operations in territories close-by. Hence, we contend that this is a spectrum made up of various possibilities, indeed. Goals: We analyse how the reshoring strategy deploys as a process; how firms get started in it; and what are the consequences. Methods: We conduct a qualitative study on traditional manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Spain that have undertaken reshoring strategies. We consider SMEs because reshoring has been studied for larger companies often, and thus strategies different from FDI-based ones have remained overlooked. These SMEs performed what we label as “process reshoring”: they recovered specific activities in national territory without implying FDI disinvestments abroad. Results: We contribute to the literature by advancing the conceptualization of reshoring and its determinants, processes, and consequences. For practitioners, we illustrate strategies other than FDI-based reshoring that may also favour the control of value chain activities by SMEs and the reindustrialization of Western regions.

As organizations expand globally, the location of teams across various regions becomes increasingly prevalent. This study aims to review the diverse literature on the geographic dimension of teams, and more specifically the upper echelons within firms. Several studies have explored the composition and characteristics of top management teams (TMTs), the diversity of its members, and its influence in firms’ strategic choices. However, little research on the location of TMT members has been done. A systematic literature review of the top social science journals is conducted using an interdisciplinary lens that draws on spatial theory and upper echelons approach. The results allow the development of a conceptual framework that integrates theoretical and empirical research with teams’ geographic location as its focal unit of analysis. The purpose is to contribute to the understanding of the spatial dimensions of TMTs and their antecedents and influences on members, teams and companies. This paper discusses implications of the foreseen findings and identifies little contribution in the literature revealing a potential avenue for future research.

Discussion on how to effectively improve companies’ behaviour regarding human rights fill in debates at political, societal and academic levels, but the Business and Human Rights (BHR) research field has fallen short on giving proper answers to these calls through quantitative empirical analyses. Following a neo-institutional approach, our study explains that Corporate Human Rights Performance (CHRP) is compelled by a set of coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures that are brought about by different agents and contexts. Thus, we demonstrate how home states’ interventionism through their three government branches and mimicry among global industry peers shape CHRP levels worldwide under the current normative framework laid down by the United Nations. We tested our hypotheses with a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis on a cross-country and cross-sectoral panel data of 8,056 firms and 35,106 firm-year observations between 2016 and 2022. Our results contribute to the burgeoning BHR research by showing how neo-institutional lenses, which are still scarce in this field, could be valuable to develop holistic analytical models that evaluate various CHRP antecedents jointly. Moreover, we add relevant insights to BHR policy discussions by revealing how stronger government action and industry-specific policies could be key for limiting corporate misconduct globally.