Abstract
Organizational learning begins with experience. However, it remains an open question whether firms learn from a particular type of experience: exporting. This study aims to speak into this debate by examining when learning by exporting occurs. Our core thesis is that the timing of learning by exporting depends on a firm’s home market economic development. Drawing on classic theories of organizational learning, we posit that firms in more developed home markets will enjoy greater opportunities for learning before exporting whereas firms in less developed home markets will enjoy greater opportunities for learning after exporting. The former will be observed as a divergence in productivity among firms from different home markets, whereas the latter will be observed as convergence over time. The proposed hypotheses were tested and supported using longitudinal data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey. A range of theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Small Business Economics |
Early online date | 10 Feb 2024 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 10 Feb 2024 |
Bibliographical note
FundingEmanuel Gomes acknowledges financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UID/ECO/00124/2019, UIDB/00124/2020 and Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/22209/2016), POR Lisboa and POR Norte (Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/22209/2016), and David Lehman acknowledges research support from the University of Virginia.