Heterogeneity in Managerial Strategies and Internationalization of Firms: the Case of Italy

The recent empirical literature on firms' performance has highlighted on the multidimensional concept of firms' managerial strategies. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between managerial strategies and performances, accounting for entrepreneur's specific characteristics, firm's strategies, organizational capabilities and we emphasize the role of firms' internationalization mode. We investigate a possible non-linear impact of managerial strategies on firms' performance for Italy, using a dataset obtained by matching and merging, the Capitalia survey, ICE-Reprint and AIDA. The specific characteristics of the entrepreneur do not seem to significantly affect firms' performance, while the mode of internationalization plays a role. We find evidence of some important non linearities when we single out the role of skilled workers and managers in determining firm's success in highly competitive markets.