The Internationalization of Vietnamese Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Since 1986, when Vietnam started to implement its open-door policies, the barriers that traditionally segmented local business opportunities and local firms from their international counterparts have been being dismantled. Thus, the degree of internationalization of the Vietnamese economy has been steadily increasing, especially after the official normalization of relations with the United States in 1994, membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1995, membership in the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum in 1998, and membership in the World Trade Organization in 2007. Swept into this international economic integration process, Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been increasingly active in the international market. However, how and why these firms internationalize is not known. This phenomenon cannot be explained by the existing internationalization theories, most of which have been developed from studies on firms from developed economies, because their underlying assumptions about national economic and institutional development do not hold in this newly-opened developing country. Driven by this gap in current research, the study at hand was designed to contribute to internationalization research by providing an understanding of the nature of the internationalization process of Vietnamese SMEs as a business strategy in both theoretical and empirical aspects. A practical contribution of this study is the insightful information provided, which can assist the Vietnamese government and international organizations in making more informed decisions when designing their SME-support programs. At the same time, this study serves SME managers in their quest to learn how other SMEs internationalize