Heterogeneity in Managerial Strategies and Internationalization of Firms: the case of Italy

The recent empirical literature on firms’ performance has focused on the multidimensional concept of firms’ managerial strategies. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between firms’ managerial strategies and firms’ performance, accounting for entrepreneur’s specific characteristics, firm’s strategies, organizational capabilities. We also emphasize the role of firms’ internationalization mode. We match and merge three different datasets for Italy, the Capitalia survey, ICE-Reprint and AIDA for the period 2001-2003 and investigate a possible non-linear impact of managerial strategies on firms’ erformance. The specific characteristics of the entrepreneur do not seem to significantly affect firms’ performance, while the mode of internationalization plays a role. We find evidence of some important non linearities when we single out the role of skilled workers and managers in determining firm’s success in highly competitive markets.