With the rapid development of international business activities and internationalization, export plays an important role in the existence and growth of businesses. Handicrafts, despite not being an essential product, have always been rated as a potential product for sustainable development and export. In Vietnam, a country with a lot of long-existing traditional handicraft villages, the export of handicrafts has always been considered as an advantageous activity that largely contributes to the economy as well as the society. According to statistics from the Vietnam Handicraft Exporter Association, every 1 million USD worth of handicraft export creates profit 5 to 10 times higher than that of the exploitation industry; as well as provides work for three to five thousand employees. Despite this fact, in the last few years the handicraft export in Vietnam has been modest and not fulfilled fully to its potential. In comparison with other export products, the export turnover of handicrafts still accounts for a low proportion. Recognizing this issue, the present study developed a model to analyze the effects of some certain factors to the handicraft export activity in Vietnam. The results of this paper will contribute to current literature as well as propose some solutions to promote the handicraft export in Vietnam.

This study investigates the impact of internationalization barriers on the export performance of Jordanian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The aim of this study is to investigate how the export performance of SMEs in the furniture industry is influenced by external and internal barriers and what significance these have for international performance. Based on a quantitative research design, data was collected from 318 small and medium-sized Jordanian companies through a survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) examined the impact of external barriers, including political, economic, legal and socio-cultural challenges, as well as internal barriers, such as financial, management and market-related barriers, on export performance. However, most barriers - whether internal or external - are domestic and have a greater impact on export performance than barriers from abroad. This study enriches RBV theory in relation to the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises by providing evidence that firm-specific resources and capabilities are key factors for SMEs both when they face export barriers and when they achieve better performance in foreign activities. The findings provide practical implications for managers, policy makers and practitioners interested in the internationalization of Jordanian SMEs. An important limitation is the cross-sectional design, one-country context, and self-report in survey research. Future studies are recommended to use a longitudinal design, mediating and moderating mechanisms. This study is innovative as it involves a combined investigation of firm-external and firm-internal export barriers and their effects on the internationalization success of Jordanian SMEs.

This study aims at investigating the relationship between the degree of internationalization and firm performance in Cameroon. Based on a panel dataset of 114 firms surveyed by the World Bank from 2009 to 2019, the regression results find evidence that there exists a relationship between internationalization and performance with respect to the W-shape while the model controls the characteristics of the business environment and firm characteristics. This result has confirmed the impact of internationalization on the firm performance going through 4 stages (W-shaped). We draw a number of implications for the study of internationalization in both theory and practice.

This study aims to investigate the effects of experience and gender of the managers on the relationship between internationalization and business performance of manufacturing firms in Turkey. Based on data collected by the World Bank for 263 manufacturing enterprises in Turkey and by regression estimation, the results show that the relationship between internationalization and firm performance was enhanced when the manager had more years of experience. In contrast, this relationship will be reduced when the business has a female executive manager. The result adds to the empirical evidence and reinforces the theory of internationalization, especially in transition economies. The implications of the research are to help policymakers to promulgate appropriate policies to support and accelerate the internationalization of businesses.

This paper investigates the relationship between business barriers and the degree of internationalization of manufacturing enterprises in Peru. Using a panel data survey of 869 companies over the year 2006, 2010 and 2017, with Tobit regression model, the empirical results show that competition and transportation have negative impacts on internationalization process, whilst factors like international certification, tax administration, custom clearance and bribery cost have positive impacts. In addition, the factors that belong to individual managers affecting the internationalization of firms are not statistically significant. The study will give policy makers more information to support Vietnamese businesses in the process of internationalization.

Industry 4.0 is a modern approach that aims at enhancing the connectivity between the different stages of the production process and the requirements of consumers. This paper addresses a relevant problem for both Industry 4.0 and flow shop literature: the missing operations flow shop scheduling problem. In general, in order to reduce the computational effort required to solve flow shop scheduling problems only permutation schedules (PFS) are considered, i.e., the same job sequence is used for all the machines involved. However, considering only PFS is not a constraint that is based on the real-world conditions of the industrial environments, and it is only a simplification strategy used frequently in the literature. Moreover, non-permutation (NPFS) orderings may be used for most of the real flow shop systems, i.e., different job schedules can be used for different machines in the production line, since NPFS solutions usually outperform the PFS ones. In this work, a novel mathematical formulation to minimize total tardiness and a resolution method, which considers both PFS and (the more computationally expensive) NPFS solutions, are presented to solve the flow shop scheduling problem with missing operations. The solution approach has two stages. First, a Genetic Algorithm, which only considers PFS solutions, is applied to solve the scheduling problem. The resulting solution is then improved in the second stage by means of a Simulated Annealing algorithm that expands the search space by considering NPFS solutions. The experimental tests were performed on a set of instances considering varying proportions of missing operations, as it is usual in the Industry 4.0 production environment. The results show that NPFS solutions clearly outperform PFS solutions for this problem.

The increasingly tight competition has caused problems for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in increasing their marketing performance. During the last few years, the marketing performance of SMEs operating in the Project woodcraft industry sector in the Badung Bali has moved downwards. The goal of this research is to develop knowledge in the fields of Strategic Management, specifically regarding product innovation to achieve a competitive advantage in an attempt to improve internationalization and marketing performance. The population in this research is all of the SMEs operating in the woodcraft industry sector and is based in Badung Bali. The sample size in this research is determined based on Slovin's formula and the total includes 100 units of SME operating in the woodcraft industry. The method used is the quantitative approach, which examines the role of competitive advantage in mediating the influence of product innovation on internationalization and marketing performance. Based on the research results, product innovation has a positive and significant influence on both, competitive advantage and internationalization. Product innovation and competitive advantage have positive and significant influences on marketing performance. Competitive advantage has a positive and significant influence on internationalization. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that competitive advantage can mediate the influence of product innovation on marketing performance and competitive advantage can mediate the influence of product innovation on the internationalization of SME operating in the Project woodcraft industry sector in Badung Bali. Based on these findings, the project woodcraft industry SME in Badung Bali is advised to be more innovative in producing their products, so that there would be an increase in marketing performance in the international market. It is also recommended for subsequent researchers to add in other variables, such as product quality and market orientation, to enrich the information attained.