From the deliberate managerial strategy towards international business performance: A psychic distance vs. global mindset approach

The current paper aims to address, within a comprehensive framework, two different facets of the internationalization strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises, that is, the roles of psychic distance and global mindset within managerial dyadic collaborations. By considering cross-border ventures as outcomes of deliberate managerial strategies in the quest for achieving international business performance, the study lays emphasis on several dimensions apposite to each of the two constructs, namely, geographic distance and intercultural compatibility for the psychic distance and trust-based relationships and network-based connectivity for the global mindset. A questionnaire-based survey with top managers from 112 European industrial small and medium-sized enterprises was conducted, the data being processed by means of a structural equation modelling technique. The findings showed that the structural model accounts for 63.9% of the variance in international business performance, whereas the dimensions of psychic distance exert significant positive influences on the endogenous variable.