طرز فکر جهانی، زمینه های فرهنگی، و بین المللی سازی شرکتهای کوچک و متوسط  Global mindset, cultural context, and the internationalization of SMEs

1. Introduction The emergence of the Global Mindset (GM) results from the competition between companies in a global context, which is an important source of long-term competitive advantage. In a truly global company, managers must have a GM (Bowen & Inkpen, 2009; Crowne, 2008; Levy, Beechler, Taylor, & Boyacigiller, 2007). In general, GM studies focus on managers (Arora, Jaju, Kefalas, & Perenich, 2004; Gupta & Govindarajan, 2002) and address the international experience, professional training abroad, and foreign language skills for the development of a GM. In addition to the individual global mindset (IGM), understanding the corporate global mindset (CGM) factors is very important, because a company has routines, produces products and services, and develops multiple activities that interact with very different cultural realities that require adaptation and suitable decisions for success (Felício, Caldeirinha, & Rodrigues, 2012). Several authors (e.g., Ananthram, Pearson, & Chatterjee, 2010; Cohen, 2010) highlight the role of CGM in the organizations’ performance. Felício, Caldeirinha, Rodrigues, and Kyvik (2013) note the need to understand better the factors that integrate CGM, CGM’s relationship with IGM, and the companies’ internationalization approach. Other authors recognize the need to understand better the influence of the context (Felício, Caldeirinha, & Ribeiro-Navarrete, 2015). The literature lacks studies on the importance of the GM in small and medium-sized firms (Paul, 2000). This research builds on the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997), the mindset theory (Gollwitzer, 1990, 1999), the information-processing theory (Giaglis & Fouskas, 2011), and the internalization theory (Rugman, 2005). This study applies structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze a sample of 526 small and medium-sized Portuguese, Norwegian, and Lithuanian firms. The purpose of this research is to understand the concepts of individual and corporate global mindsets and their relationship with firms’ internationalization approaches in different contexts. The objectives are studying the concepts of IGM and CGM, evaluating autonomously the effects of IGM and CGM on firms’ internationalization, and evaluating the effect of the context on the relationship between individual and corporate GM and their influence on firms’ internationalization. The influence of the companies’ geographical context is relevant because the context differentiates the importance of IGM and CGM factors and the SMEs’ internationalization approach. The first relevant contribution to the literature consists of the factors that constitute the CGM and CGM’s strong relationship with the IGM.