Citation: Andres, B.; Poler, R.;
Guzman, E. The Influence of
Collaboration on Enterprises
Internationalization Process.
Sustainability 2022, 14, 2843. https://
doi.org/10.3390/su14052843
Academic Editor: Sooksan Kantabutra
Received: 24 January 2022
Accepted: 21 February 2022
Published: 28 February 2022
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Article
The Influence of Collaboration on Enterprises
Internationalization Process
Beatriz Andres * , Raul Poler and Eduardo Guzman
Research Centre on Production Management and Engineering (CIGIP), Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV),
Calle Alarcón 1, 03801 Alcoy, Spain; rpoler@cigip.upv.es (R.P.); eguzman@cigip.upv.es (E.G.)
* Correspondence: bandres@cigip.upv.es
Abstract:
At present, competitive globalized environments force enterprises to make more effort
to both set up collaborative processes among networked partners and open their borders to the
internationalization process. With this participation in internationalization processes, a set of barriers
emerges that enterprises must overcome, particularly SMEs. The internationalization barriers are
classified in four main dimensions, namely, strategy, technology, partners and product, which are
considered to establish relationships between the internationalization and the collaborative processes.
Accordingly, the research objective is to analyse the extent to which collaboration with international
partners facilitates the internationalization process. A research survey was held with Spanish manu-
facturing SMEs to assess the internationalization of operations by establishing collaborative processes
in global networks. Two surveys were conducted to analyse collaboration and internationalization
concepts, and the influences among them: (i) a first survey, designed to validate the posed hypothesis
about the relation between internationalization and setting up collaborative processes; (ii) a second
survey, devised to perform a descriptive analysis that identifies less-applied collaborative processes
in SMEs by establishing internationalization activities. The study results reveal that collaboration
positively influences the internationalization process, and identifies the collaborative processes that
are less performed among the partners that internationalize their operations.
Keywords: SMEs; internationalization; collaborative processes; collaborative networks
1. Introduction
The way by which small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operate is by chang-
ing partnerships with other companies that belong to complex-value, globally extended
networks. Companies’ competitiveness has undergone several changes in recent years
by stimulating their participation in collaborative networks [
1
]. According to Camarinha-
Matos and Afsarmanesh [
2
], a collaborative network (CN) comprises a set of heterogeneous
and autonomous geographically dispersed enterprises that collaborate to achieve goals
that would never be reached, or would have higher costs, if enterprises worked separately.
Participation in CNs requires greater information exchange and the commitment of all
companies, without them losing their decision-making authority [
3
]. Collaboration es-
tablishment can positively impact enterprises and network performance by increasing
competitiveness and cutting costs.
However, SMEs face challenges in setting up collaborative processes, given their nature
and their reluctance in making the necessary cultural change for competition towards
collaboration. To deal with this, specific solutions (guidelines, tools and models) are needed
to support SMEs to participate in collaborative networks [4].
Today’s global competitive environments have also brought about a change in how
SMEs operate in networks through the internationalization of operations [
5
]. Globalization
forces network operations to expand over widespread regions, and forces them to cope with
greater complexity [
6
]. The internationalization of operations involves the development of
Sustainability 2022, 14, 2843. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052843 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
