Foreign Direct Investment by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises: The Theoretical Background

This chapter is an attempt to give a theoretical background to research on foreign direct investment by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Section 2 examines alternatives theoretical approaches to SMEs investing abroad. Section 3 outlines the special issues which arise from SME foreign ventures and ends with an attempted synthesis of the theoretical approaches. In Section 4, a brief discussion of the nature of foreign direct investment by SMEs takes place. The chapter ends with a short conclusion.