Export strategy, export intensity and learning: Integrating the resource perspective and institutional perspective

Exportintensity (EI) has been widely examined as a performance outcome of exportingfirms. To date, studies on the determinants of EI have generated mixed and even contradictory results. To reconcile such inconsistencies, this study dichotomizes exportstrategy in emerging economies into two distinctive types, expansion-oriented vs. escape-oriented, with the former inspired by exploiting firm-specific competencies as portrayed by the RBV and the latter motivated by avoiding the domestic institutional deficiencies as informed by the institutional perspective. Different from prior findings in the International Business literature, this research finds that a firm’s extremely high EI might not result from their superior competencies. Instead, high EI firms might focus on exportmainly for the purpose of escaping from their home country’s deficient institutional environment that places extra burdens in terms of costs of doing business. Such escape-oriented exportersare more sensitive and responsive to changes in the environment while they do not enhance their learning as much as those expansion-oriented exporters. Furthermore, institutional environment has heterogeneous impacts on firms with different ownership types. Our study helps integrate the insights from both the RBV and the institutional perspective, and our dichotomization of exportstrategy adds precision and sophistication to the understanding of EI and export performance. Our hypotheses are supported by an empirical study based on a sample of exportingfirms in China between 1998 and 2007.