Marcela Contreras Cruz, Poursuite collective d’opportunités à l’international des éco-PME et performance internationale

Defended on 19-06-2023

Supervised by Karim Messeghem and Alexis Catanzaro.

SMEs face many challenges in identifying and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities in foreign markets (Leonidou, 2004; Paul, Parthasarathy, & Gupta, 2017). A collective approach could enable them to overcome their lack of resources by sharing costs and risks (Costa, Soares, & De Sousa, 2016; Ghauri & Elg, 2018). However, the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities and its impact on international performance have only been studied from an individual perspective (Mainela, Puhakka, & Sipola, 2018). Green SMEs provide an interesting research context for two reasons: (1) they set out to solve environmental problems (e.g. biodiversity loss, pollution) that affect societies worldwide (Kuckertz, Berger, & Gaudig, 2019); (2) they offer highly innovative products and services (Mrkajic, Murtinu, & Scalera, 2019), which means that they are often faced with creating entrepreneurial opportunities. Yet empirical research on the collective action of green firms remains scarce (Pinkse & Groot, 2015; Wigger & Shepherd, 2019). In this thesis, we examine how green SMEs can collectively pursue international entrepreneurial opportunities. To answer this question, we draw on a mixed-methods design comprising a bibliometric review, a qualitative study and a quantitative study. Together, the three studies in this thesis provide a better understanding of how green SMEs use collective action to seize opportunities to enter international markets, and of its influence on their performance. This doctoral work thus contributes to three streams of research: environmental, international and collective entrepreneurship. We provide recommendations for SME managers, actors in the internationalisation support ecosystem and policymakers.