Management experience and FDI performance of Dutch Small and medium -sized Enterprises

It has been argued that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face constraints in resources when pursuing foreign direct investments. However, unique or non-traditional resources like management skills and experience may give SMEs the ability to overcome internationalization obstacles and influence an SME’s achievement of its goals. Using a sample of 124 Dutch SMEs, we examine the role of management experience as such a mechanism in shaping FDI performance. The outcomes of our empirical analysis are in contrast to our expectations. Our results show that management’s prior general international experience affects FDI performance negatively. It is argued that a reason for this negative correlation could be found in internationally experienced managers becoming more critical towards the outcomes of firm’s FDI objectives: based on their experience-related critical view, it is not unlikely that a critical comparison of managers’ perceptions of actual FDI performance with their prior expectations of the firm’s FDI objectives denotes a negative evaluation of the firm’s FDI performance.