Evaluation of the antecedents and consequences of the evaluation of export readiness for small and medium companies in Iran

In recent years, the importance of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) as the backbone of countries' economies has become clear to everyone. Export has been suggested as one of the strategies of such companies to develop the market, more possibility for survival and internationalization. But SMEs are less likely to succeed because of their limitations than large-size enterprises. Therefore, frameworks and models have been developed to assess the readiness of such enterprises to do so. But Iranian SMEs are experiencing completely different conditions that require other frameworks and models to do so. The present research creates a framework for assessing the export readiness of SMEs using a mixed method (Grounded theory method for theorizing and theory-testing using parametric statistical methods). In the theorizing phase, 25 interviews were conducted with qualified individuals and the framework was constructed based on 6 main-categories and 25 sub-categories. Then, different statistical tests were performed on 198 samples to confirm the framework from different dimensions. The results showed the importance of all main-categories, sub-categories as well as their constituent indicators. Other tests performed on quantitative samples also revealed other interesting results.