企业在开展国际化业务的过程中呈现出明显的阶段性特征。现有研究基本认同国际化程度和企业绩效满足S型或倒S型的曲线关系,即"三段论"理论。基于对"三段论"理论的探讨和整合,利用140家国内汽车产业中小企业2005—2009年的特征面板数据,实证证明现有理论无法完整描述中小企业在国际化扩张的同时企业绩效的变化趋势。结论显示,企业的国际化过程有4个明显阶段,国际化程度和企业绩效的相关关系在这4个阶段不尽相同,二者呈现M型曲线关系。"四段论"在预测中小企业国际化过程中企业绩效的变化情况比"三段论"更为有效。
Enterprises show some significant phases in the course of conducting international business. Existing studies basically agree that the relationship between the degree of internationalization and firm performance meets S curve or inverted S curve. It means that the relationship between two conforms to the theory of 'three-stages'.This study integrated and explored the former theory. Through analyzing the panel data of 140 domestic auto industry SMEs from 2005 to 2009, it found that the existing theory fails to descript the variation tendency of firm performance completely when SMEs expand international business. Study conclusion shows that there are four, actually, stages in the process of SMEs internationalization, the correlation between the degree of internationalization and firm performance changes in those stages, but the relationship between two presents an M- curve. When it comes to predict the performance of international SMEs, the theory of 'four-stages' is more effective than the theory of 'three-stages'.