Internationalization of Italian companies. A cross-cultural perspective

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 70, , language: English, abstract: This research aims to analyse the influence of cultural dimensions on the internationalization of Italian firms.

While there has been much research on international business and cultural aspects, few researchers have taken into consideration the peculiarities of the Italian culture and their influence on internationalization.

To test the hypothesis that Italian firms are influenced by the cultural dimensions identified by the GLOBE study, by the cultural distance indexes, and, eventually, by specific economic indexes, we have selected two dependent variables that express the most relevant modes through which firms enter a foreign country, namely foreign direct investments and trades.

Through an in-depth assessment of secondary data mainly available online, we have ranked the countries according to the foreign direct investment and trade performances. Results have been compared with cultural scores inferred from GLOBE and with competitiveness indexes devised by Schwab (2019), UNDP (2020), and IMD (2019). A cultural distance comparison based on differences between Italy and other countries has been made.

The outcomes show the Italian industry¿s systemic weakness derived from the current competitiveness reports and record significant cultural gaps in relation to the top performer countries. Italy¿s low score in GLOBE¿s dimensions like performance orientation, future orientation, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance together with relatively high power distance put the country quite far from the cultural scores exhibited by the top performers. The results prove undoubtedly that the weakness of Italian internationalization strategy requires a new set of reforms aiming to increase the competitiveness of the country, resolve the eternal dilemma between North and South, and educate the future managers propelling a new international mentality in place of the ¿parochial¿ one typically affecting Italian Small and Medium Enterprises.