Internationalization of SMES as a Dynamic Adaptive System : Towards a Theoretical Model

This paper adopts a dynamic open complex adaptive system, comprised of three layers, reflecting the entrepreneur(s) (or entrepreneurial teams), the firm(s) and the market(s) to capture the true inter-relations and interactions of entities within a layer and across them. After a brief review of the theoretical underpinning of each layer, the interdependencies and interactions among layers are highlighted. This paper argues that extant theory has abstracted from such dependencies and therefore our understanding of firms’ internationalization is incomplete and at best partial. The proposed grounded framework lays the foundation for development of a unified theory of Internationalization.