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figures in the firm and also by the company as a whole. The process of internationalisation itself may not prompt this change and it may be that external ‘triggers’, perhaps through the appointment of a significant figure with experience from outside the business, as with Company B, or through a change of ownersh,ip of the company as a whole, as with Company A, may lead to a reappraisal of current business processes. CONCLUSIONS The evidence from this study suggests three main areas of challenge faced by managers in internationalising SMEs. The first occurs in the initial preinternationalisation phase when managers must decide ‘whether’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ to internationalise. This study suggests that decision makers are not fully aware of the different methods of internationalisation that they might consider, or of the potential longer-term implications of their decision to undertake international activity. The second challenge, which follows from this, is the requirement to develop planning and management systems to enable the organisation to sustain, and possibly expand, its initial international activity on a longer-term basis. The third area of challenge, which is common to all internationalising SMEs, is the requirement to cope with technical and procedural issues specific to the financial and legal regulation of trade between countries. The evidence of this study suggests that learning to meet this ‘procedural’ challenge is not difficult for most managers. The study also indicates two areas of learning need that are important for the sustained development of international business but are not necessarily recognised as such by those involved in the process. The first is the need for adaptive learning to enable those involved in small firms to consolidate market position and customer relationships through the development of cultural appreciation and empathy. The second learning need, which may be required if the organisation is to establish itself as an international organisation rather than a ‘domestic firm that also exports’, is for generative learning whereby the underlying ‘dominant logic’ or ‘paradigm’, through which the firm operates, is reconceptualised through a process of management and organisational learning. This level of learning, which is developed in theoretical approaches to learning and is evident in only one of the case study organisations, is unlikely to be undertaken, or to be perceived as relevant, by managers whose motivations for their business relate more to survival than to sustained international growth and development.
IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY The study confirms the importance of a variety of stakeholders in the learning process. Business friends, suppliers and customers, business associations, together with specialist professionals such as accountants, solicitors and financiers (North et al., 1996; Bennett and Robson, 1999) are key sources of support and information for the small firm. There are a range of implications for this networking for the operation of official support services for SMEs.
Support in the UK is available at local and national levels. At a local level, such services are Internationalising SMEs
226 Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development primarily provided through the DTI and the support system is currently being radically overhauled in the wake of the introduction of the Small Business Service (SBS). It is envisaged that a national network of Learning and Skill C