Collaboration and Information Management in the Internationalisation of SMEs: A Case in Industrial Business Associations

摘要

The limited information management capability of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their difficulties to establish and maintain collaborative networks (CNs), hinder strategic activities such as the processes of internationalisation that require comprehensive knowledge sourced from official channels (accurate information) and from peer organisations (past experience and lessons learned). Due to their detailed knowledge of particular industrial sectors, and because of their experience in supporting internationalisation processes, industrial business associations (IBAs) can appear as a main supporting actor for SMEs to obtain a proper access to international contacts and to valued international trade information that can better meet their needs.;Nevertheless, IBAs are currently facing difficulties with problems related with low membership and high opting out, instability over time, and multiple association memberships by companies. All of these problems create additional challenges for associations to stand out in a competitive environment that exists among the different institutional entities and agencies that provide support to internationalisation. Therefore, in order to remain an important facilitator for the international business of both current and prospective members, the present services and support activities promoted by IBAs should reflect and be adapted to the digital transformation that is occurring in every market and business sector. In line with that, this doctoral project intended to study and design collaboration and information management solutions to improve the institutional network support that is provided by IBAs to the internationalisation of SMEs. Particular attention was given to digital platforms, as a means for the digitisation of the international business support activities of associations and for fostering CNs that could improve the international performance of companies.;The research was conducted on a qualitative basis, following the Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm, as a way to create innovative artifacts for addressing the identified unsolved problems in this organisational context. Five distinctive studies were performed by using two complementary approaches: (i) an exploratory-oriented approach; and (ii) a design-oriented approach. Regarding the exploratory approach, a systematic literature review was first accomplished to understand the role of information, knowledge and collaboration, in the effectiveness of the SMEs' internationalisation processes. After that, it was performed a study to realise the information and collaboration needs of Portuguese SMEs, in the context of internationalisation. The exploratory part ended with an investigation about the activities and the use of institutional network resources by Portuguese IBAs to support and facilitate SMEs' international endeavours. The design-oriented approach started with an understanding of the perspective of these types of organisations for the use of digital platforms in supporting international business activities. This study was based on the previous exploratory research, and involved, besides the Portuguese, IBAs from the UK and France in order to increase the validity of the findings. The results of these studies led to the last stage of the research, where design principles were proposed and evaluated for the context of IBAs seeking to improve internationalisation processes of SMEs with the support of digital platforms. An additional single case study with an IBA and some of its members was done to achieve this goal.;The main results obtained with this doctoral project were a better understanding about the information and collaboration needs of SMEs in internationalisation; the IBAs' needs and the institutional network support that can be provided for improving the international performance of SMEs; and a rich set of requirements, features and difficulties for the design and development of digital platforms. The central output of this research was thus a new artifact, in the form of design propositions, following the so-called CIMO-logic.