The Interplay between Market, Innovativeness, Learning, and Entrepreneurial (MILE) Strategic Orientations and Export Performance: A Configurational Perspective Using fsQCA: An Abstract

The literature has discussed numerous strategic orientations as determinants of export performance including export market orientation (MO) (Cadogan et al. 2006; Cadogan et al. 2009; Young 2005), international innovativeness orientation (IO) (Kropp et al. 2006; Lages et al. 2009; Monreal-Pérez et al. 2011), learning orientation (LO) (Kropp et al. 2006; Souchon et al. 2012), and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) (Boso et al. 2012; Knight 1997; Kropp et al. 2006; Lisboa et al. 2011; Sundqvist et al. 2012). Notably, most of these cited papers have used an isolated perspective of a single orientation. Such approaches are problematic, as firms regularly use multiple strategic orientations (Cadogan 2012), which are interrelated and have mutually dependent influences on firm performance (Deutscher et al. 2016). Additionally, the notion that firms can be too market- (Cadogan et al. 2009), entrepreneurial-, or innovative-oriented (Bhuian et al. 2005) underscores the importance of potential relationships among the four orientations (market, innovativeness, learning, and entrepreneurial orientations, hereunder MILE) and export performance. While some scholars have examined the effects of combinations of strategic orientations on performance and export performance, they have relied on net effects’ analyses (e.g., SEM, multiple regressions) leading to inconsistent findings (Ho et al. 2016). Our study follows the tradition of using multiple orientations and examines the complementary (Moorman and Slotegraaf 1999) effects of the four strategic orientations comprising MILE on export performance (Morgan et al. 2009). A set-theoretic approach was used to explore whether single or some configurations of the MILE orientations may be “necessary” or “sufficient” conditions to exceed average export performance. Set-theoretic methods are useful to analyze complementarity as they treat each firm as a holistic unit (a unique case) that consists of specific levels of each strategic orientation (conditions) and specific levels of export performance (outcome) that are interrelated. Thus, we advance knowledge about the complementarity of strategic orientations in export context by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).