The dual effects of digitalization on SMEs: export gains and learning losses
Lopullinen julkaistu versio - 1.6 MB
Gomes, E., Lehman, D.W., & Vendrell-Herrero, F. (2026). The dual effects of digitalization on SMEs: export gains and learning losses. Journal of International Business Studies. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-026-00879-2
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Pysyvä osoite
Kuvaus
Longstanding debates persist about the impact of new technologies on firms, particularly as it relates to internationalization. Some scholars suggest that digitalization will enhance the benefits of export activity by facilitating connections with partners and customers. Others, however, suggest that digitalization will simply fail to live up to the hype—or perhaps even worse. This debate is especially relevant for SMEs given that export activity is the primary route to global markets for such firms. We propose that digitalization will exert dual effects on SMEs: on the “bright” side, larger investments in digital technologies will lead to greater export activity (i.e., higher export sales); on the “dark” side, however, digitalization-induced export activity will generate fewer learning opportunities from export partners (i.e., smaller productivity gains). The proposed hypotheses were tested and supported using detailed firm-level panel data from 20,133 Portuguese firms from 2010 to 2019. Additional analyses and case studies corroborate the proposed mechanisms and point to hybrid approaches as one possible way to balance these dual effects of digitalization. Taken together, the findings shed new light on the debate about the role of digitalization in internationalization efforts.
Emojulkaisu
ISBN
ISSN
1478-6990
0047-2506
0047-2506
Aihealue
Kausijulkaisu
Journal of international business studies
OKM-julkaisutyyppi
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä (vertaisarvioitu)