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Motivation: Men farmers typically achieve higher productivity than women farmers, a gender gap that reflects women's disadvantages in farming. Sri Lanka seems an exception, because women farmers achieve higher land productivity (gross value of output per hectare) than men farmers. That said, despite women's productivity advantage, men earn higher agricultural incomes. Purpose: We investigate the factors contributing to the unconditional agricultural productivity advantage of women farmers and the gender gap in agricultural earnings in favour of men in Sri Lanka. Approach and methods: Using data from the nationally representative 2016 Sri Lanka Household Income and Expenditure Survey, we employ Oaxaca‐Blinder decomposition to analyse factors behind the gender disparities in agricultural productivity and earnings. Findings: The leading factor contributing to higher female land productivity is the smaller plot size cultivated by women, reflecting an inverse relation between cultivated area and yield. The next most important factor is the gendered pattern of crop mix: women tend to cultivate high‐value export crops such as tea, while men are more likely to grow paddy — a less productive crop. When plot size and crop mix are controlled, men farmers achieve a conditional productivity advantage over women farmers. For crop earnings, men have both unconditional and conditional advantages, mainly due to their greater access to land and other inputs. While women's small plots have high yields, their size limits women's farm incomes. Policy implications: Policies to improve women's lagging access to land, inputs and other agricultural resources — often due to inherent gender bias — are needed to close the gender gap in agricultural income. Government policies favouring import‐competing commodities such as paddy, mainly through fertilizer subsidies, tend to benefit disproportionately men who are more likely to engage in paddy farming. Reallocating public spending on agriculture could enhance both efficiency and gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cyclicality in aggregate productivity predicts the efficiency of resources reallocation. • Aggregate productivity growth originates from within-plants, allocative efficiency gain, and due to entry and exit. • We exploit the Great Recession to analyse the validity of the 'Cleansing' or 'Scarring' effect of recession and 'Schumpeterian Darwinian Selection' for Indian manufacturing. • The contributions to aggregate productivity growth from within-plant and net-entry effects are procyclical. • Plants in export-oriented industries are crucial in explaining the pro-cyclicality. • The exporting sectors during 2008-09 shifted resources from more productive to less productive plants. • The relatively productive exporters exited the markets following the global crisis, scarring the economy. • The positive contribution from the net-entry exit effect of plants during the economic downturn validates the 'Schumpeterian approach of Darwinian Selection'. Understanding the cyclicality in aggregate productivity helps answer whether the economy allocates resources efficiently or not. The paper analyses the sources of aggregate productivity growth, such as direct efficiency gain within-plants, allocative efficiency gain, and gains due to entry and exit during economic fluctuations. In particular, we exploit the economic shock of the Great Recession to analyse the validity of the 'Cleansing' or 'Scarring' effect of recession and 'Schumpeterian Darwinian Selection' for Indian manufacturing. The rise and fall of within-plant and net-entry effects during the economic fluctuations explains the pro-cyclicality of productivity growth. Plants in export-oriented industries are crucial in explaining the pro-cyclicality. Negative external shock to exporting sectors during 2008–09 shifted resources from more productive to less productive plants. The relatively productive exporters exited the markets following the global crisis, scarring the economy. Nonetheless, the positive effect from the net-entry exit of plants during the economic downturn makes the 'Schumpeterian approach of Darwinian Selection' valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial policies pursued in many developing countries in the 1950s–1970s largely failed while the industrial policies of the Asian Miracles succeeded. We argue that a key factor of success is industrial policy with export orientation in contrast to import substitution. Exporting encouraged competition, economies of scale, innovation, and local integration and provided market signals to policymakers. Even in a large market such as India, import substitution policies in the automotive industry failed because of micromanagement and misaligned incentives. We also analyze the risk tradeoffs involved in various industrial policy strategies and their implications on the twenty-first-century industrial policies. While state interventions may be needed to develop some new capabilities and industries, trade protectionism is neither a necessary nor a sufficient tool and will most likely be counterproductive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to present the structure of export orientation research and clusters over 10 years of research. The bibliometric analysis was made up of 434 articles from the Scopus database. To analyze the extracted data, three bibliometric techniques were applied: Citation Analysis, Keyword Analysis, and Bibliographic Coupling. The results show an exponential increase in research on export orientation research. The study also revealed eight clusters based on publications from the last ten years. The main themes that emerged related to export orientation research include; Marketing performance and export orientation, firm’s productivity and efficiency orientation, local to global upgradation and export orientation, industrial policy, manufacturing and export orientation, technology as a stimulant for change, competitive strategy for export orientation, and value chain coordination. It allows the researcher to better understand the most common issues of the last 5 years and relate these issues to current problems in the international marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Gerenciales is the property of Universidad ICESI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article considers the problem of population migration from Southeast Asia to Western European countries, on the one hand, and from China, India, and other Asian countries and territories to Southeast Asia, on the other. The formation of the model of metropolis−colony relations in Southeast Asia is shown; similarities and differences between the British and Dutch models of colonialism are revealed. The author analyzes the influence of Amsterdam's imperial policy on the formation of the "Dutchness" of a cross-border identity, which had a significant impact on the model of the migration behavior of the inhabitants of the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) and on the postcolonial interaction between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and independent Indonesia. The relationship between the economic development model of Indonesia and the migration activity of Indonesians, who increasingly prefer societies of vigorous economic growth of Northeast Asia and Australia to the former metropolis, is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orientation: In order to improve performance, South African manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to constantly look at expanding their markets by exploring export opportunities and innovating their products and services. Research purpose: The aim of this study was to model the antecedents for export orientation, innovation capacity and SME performance. Motivation for the study: Although the influence of export orientation and innovation capacity on firm performance is well established, this study has brought together these capabilities as well as SME absorptive capacity, knowledge management and entrepreneurial competence into one model. Research design, approach and method: The study adopted a quantitative research approach and employed a cross-sectional survey of 207 SMEs in South Africa. Structural equation modelling was employed for data analysis using AMOS 26.0. Main findings: Absorptive capacity and knowledge management capabilities are certainly significant capabilities that should be embedded in the SME business, in view of their role in positively influencing the development of export orientation and innovation capacity, and that the influence of entrepreneurial competence is not significant enough. The results of the study showed that the primary data collected and analysed fit the posited model. Practical/managerial implications: With SMEs seeking to enter the export market faced with a number of challenges as they begin to explore unchartered waters, the ability to learn and assimilate new knowledge will stand SMEs in good stead as they expand their markets beyond the present boundaries. Contribution/value-add: The study’s findings extend the principle of distributed focus of attention into a possible new theory called SME Export and Innovation Attention Theory.

The present paper attempts to investigate whether the Sub-Measure 6.1 "Start-Up Aid for Young Farmers" payments of the 2014–2020 Rural Development Programme have a role to play in explaining Greek farms' export orientation and export performance through a statistical analysis of farm-level data. The results demonstrate considerable differences in farm structures between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries and provide support for the contention that beneficiaries are more likely to operate more productive and economically efficient farms. However, the results also provide a sobering assessment of the role of the young-farmer-related subsidies in stimulating export orientation and export performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing trend of international trade reinforces the interdependence of countries, and consequently amplifies the effects of exchange rates movements on the countries’ real sectors. The main channel for this effect is domestic prices. According to the empirical evidences, effects of exchange rate growth on prices, i.e., Exchange Rate Pass-Through (ERPT), vary across the products and firms. This paper explores factors explaining the difference in ERPT among the products and firms. To do so, price data of 2369 products from 355 Iranian firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange is used during 2006: Q1 to 2019: Q1. The panel estimation results show that current and lagged effects of the exchange rate on the prices are positive and significant, on average, and the lagged effect is larger than the current one. Moreover, the findings indicate an increase in import intensity and the market share of the firms lead to increase in the firm’s ERPT. Also, an increase in price led by exchange rate shock is larger in the firms with a higher degree of export orientation and strict financial constraint. However, state shareholding in firms induces decrease in ERPT only in firms with high import intensity and market share.

This article reviews South Korea's economic experience, defining it as a successful case of economic convergence. It highlights a leading role of public intervention to promote export industrialization, with initial phases of protection and then with others of promotion of export of manufactures, adapting education to the economic strategy's challenges. The result shows relevant achievements in productivity, innovation, technological leadership, and a considerably better income distribution than that of Latin America. Finally, the article tries to detect the main axes of this strategy, by discussing the possibility of separating them from the authoritarian political regime that promoted them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed scientific article is concerned with the topical issue of identifying the possibilities of applying the instruments for promoting the national exports in the context of effect of a number of global institutional regulators. The article is aimed at researching the concept of «export promotion» in the context of global trade regulators. The development of the world economy over recent decades is characterized by a deepening of the internationalization of economic relations and is manifested in the strengthening of the interconnection and interdependence of national economies, qualitative change in character of the trade and economic relations of countries, the emergence of new forms of international trade and methods of its regulation (in particular, development of the practice of using non-tariff regulatory instruments as a means of protecting the national market from the foreign markets competition). The systematization of views on free trade allowed to identify some shifts in the part of erosion of the certainty of judgment about its usefulness. It is substantiated that the policy of free-trading may not be «technically optimal» but it remains «pragmatically optimal». In other words, in the face of the lack of information and problems inherent in any system of selective protectionism, free trade remains the policy that makes it most likely to reach the highest possible level of economic efficiency. Contrary to the tendency of the increasing openness of national economies, the free-trading policies have their own characteristics in different groups of countries and are likely to be subject to determinants based on the specifics of national and regional models of economic development, which in turn reflect priorities based both on the objective factors (in particular, availability of natural resources, size and geographical location of a country, etc.) and the subjectively set up guidelines.

Does the export orientation of a firm affect the likelihood that it adopts an environmental management certification? We use meta-regression methods to analyze systematically the corpus of published research on export-led adoption of the largest and most prominent certification, ISO 14001. We show that the explanatory variables authors choose to include in their models reflect the tenets of stakeholder and institutional theories. We also find that the literature suffers from substantial publication bias but that, once this is accounted for appropriately, a genuine effect remains. The evidence from 20 years of published studies taken as a whole is that export does incentivize the adoption of the standard as often hypothesized by proponents of voluntary approaches and self-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyze the export orientation of the manufacturing industry sector in Indonesia. In order to achieve this objective, Cobb-Douglas production function, consisting of foreign direct investment (FDI) and labor, was developed. The data from the Industrial Survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics (Badan Pusat Statistik/BPS) for the period 2005-2015 with 249 manufacturing companies as samples. Based on the Hausman test, the fixed-effect model is more appropriate to be used in this study. The results from the estimation indicate that FDI and labor have a positive and significant impact on the growth of the export manufacturing industry. Labor has a stronger effect on exports than on FDI, where the coefficient of labor is 3.696 and of FDI is 0.302. On the basis of this result, it could be concluded that FDI and labor lead the export orientation to the Indonesian manufacturing industry.

An assessment is made of the main characteristic features in the territorial economic-settlement structure of Siberia: latitudinal zonation, meridional west-east asymmetry, attraction to the main transport routes, localization of the industrial potential within territorial-production complexes, concentration of the population in major cities and in their immediate surroundings, and the different of "Russian" and "non-Russian" (ethnic) regions. Major trends in changes are identified, which have occurred during the post-Soviet stage in the structures of the macro-region's industry. In the sectoral structure, tendencies for the reorientation to the external market have been identified, with an increase of the proportion of exported products; for an increase in the proportion of extractive sectors, and an enhancement in the resource-raw materials specialization, and for a faster (than in the country as a whole) recovery of production after its decline during the 1990s. The main result of the transformation of the institutional structure of the industry has been the redistribution of property of Siberia's major enterprises among private All-Russian companies and State corporations of the country, which was accompanied by a reduction in budgetary-financial benefits for industrial regions. The main trends in change in the territorial structure of industrial production involve its abrupt shift toward the peripheral northern regions with the expansion of the sphere of influence of the existing territorial-production complexes and with the emergence of new ones. Two trends in the transformation of the settlement structure of Siberia are pointed out: an enhancement in the inter-municipal center-periphery polarization with a growth of regional centers and their immediate surroundings, accompanied by a loss of the population in extensive peripheral regions, and a considerable increase in the proportion of titular peoples in the total population of some of the republics of Siberia, with a respective reduction in the proportion of non-titular peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how supply network degree, closeness, and betweenness centralities affect firm performance, and the moderating effects of organizational reputation (measured by PageRank centrality) and export-orientation. The supply chain relationship empirical data are drawn from manufacturing and manufacturing service companies in Hong Kong, China. Social network analysis and moderated regression analysis were adopted to test the hypotheses for a sample of 814 focal firms with 3086 supply chain ties. The results indicate that in-degree and closeness centralities improve firm performance. Reputation is found to positively moderate the relationship between closeness and sales performance, but negatively moderates the relationship between betweenness and sales performance. Export-orientation has no effect on relationships. This study contributes to the literature by providing additional empirical evidence on the role of supply network position in firm performance. It also introduces PageRank centrality as a new measure of organizational reputation in a supply network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new form of populism, combining broad-based benefits for urban workers with export promotion, emerged in Argentina under Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007). This article argues that changes in agricultural production created the conditions for this “export-oriented populism.” Historically, Argentina’s main exports, beef and wheat, were also the primary consumption goods of urban workers. Scholars such as Guillermo O’Donnell have argued that this linkage increased rural-urban conflict, resulting in shifting coalitions and recurring crises. Today, soybeans have replaced beef and wheat as the country’s leading export. Because soybeans are not consumed by the working class, Kirchner could both promote and tax their export, generating fiscal revenue for populist programs while not harming the effective purchasing power of urban workers or provoking a balance-of-payments crisis. Export orientation thus provided the basis for a new variant of Argentine populism. This study offers a new argument within the classic research tradition on the interaction between politics and various types of export growth. It likewise provides an additional basis for arguing that populism, as a form of politics, can arise in diverse economic circumstances. Furthermore, this article contends that, rather than uniformly promoting political stability, the effect of export booms is conditioned by the nature of economic linkages between the export sector and the domestic economy.

A comparative analysis of the rate of growth in exports of goods and GDP is carried out, and goods exports to GDP ratio in the context of the developed countries, developing countries, and countries with the transition economy is calculated. This allows to make a conclusion about a decrease in importance of exports as a key engine of the world economic growth during the past years. The legal basis of the WTO’s activities in terms of state support for exports is described. The main reasons for the emergence of a conflict of interests between countries with different levels of economic development concerning the use of individual protectionist barriers are revealed. Potential long-term consequences of the growth of export orientation under conditions of openness of national economies are identified. The measures and tools of the country’s export promotion in foreign markets are studied. It is grounded that under conditions of destabilization of global trade regulators, effective export promotion is a mechanism for increasing the competitiveness of the national economy of Ukraine. Prospects for further research in this area are the determination of instruments to stimulate exports, which have the greatest impact on the export orientation of certain economic activities.

Abstract For a more diversified export structure and a better distribution of domestic income in Cambodia, agriculture and agro-industry have been specified as export potentials. While empirical impact studies within those sectors have been limited, this paper attempts to assess the impacts of the promising export sectors on domestic economy by applying a computable general equilibrium framework. Results show that the increase in export demand for the selected sectors—food–beverage–tobacco, rubber industry, and agriculture—generate favorably on growth, employment, and household welfare, with the contributions of the former two higher than that of the latter, suggesting that priority should be given to agro-processing exports to increase production chain. The findings indicate that in order for the trading sectors to expand the benefits, productivity growth of low-skilled and medium-skilled labor is crucial. The influence of the selected sectors would be greater when the demand disturbance is combined with supply-side efficiency measure to promote the export orientation.

The article is aimed at assessing the tendencies of development of Ukraine’s exports in the context of European Integration. A comparative analysis of the participation rate as to the international division of labor, the export efficiency coefficient of Ukraine and its main trading partners was carried out on the basis of both national and foreign statistics. Indicators for the development of exports of goods and services to the EU Member States were analyzed. On the basis of the statistics of national accounts, export orientation and import dependence of the selected economic activities were calculated. A comparison has been made between the amount of tariff quotas granted to Ukraine for the export of individual trade items under the terms of the Association Agreement with the physical volumes of similar goods exported to the EU. It has been substantiated that for Ukraine, in the face of destabilization of the global trade regulators, an effective export-promotion is a mechanism for enhancing international competitiveness and thus for modernizing the national development strategy. Prospects for further research in this direction are determining the factors that have the greatest impact on the level of export orientation of the types of economic activities.

The export orientation of small and medium enterprises epresents an important attribute of the enterprises’ competitive ability. In this context, the area of export financing becomes a very important field of company management. The aim of this study is to define and quantify relevant approaches of entrepreneurs to the export activities and export financing, with regard to the impact of the selected socio-economic factors (gender, level of education and age). The study is based on the research of Slovak business environment carried out in 2016, which was evaluated by the tools of descriptive statistics, including percentages and averages, pivot tables, the methods of comparison and deduction, Pearson´s chi-square statistics at 5% significance level. Our results suggest that Slovak entrepreneurs primarily supply their products and services on the domestic market, while their export potential is limited. The assessment of the state support of export activities is rather negative. An alarming finding is that Slovak entrepreneurs in the SME segment do not use even basic tools of financial risk reduction to a higher extent, and that the usage of services of the state export bank Eximbank is negligible.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted wider research interests over recent decades. While some studies have examined the impact of CSR activities on firm competitive advantage (CA), the findings so far remain contradictory. Moreover, the role of export orientation, firm strategy, and structure on the association between CSR and CA has not been explicitly examined. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of export orientation, firm strategy, structure, and firm size on the association between CSR and CA. Using a sample of 179 responses from management staff in organizations across five sectors in a developing country context of Ghana, the study found positive effects of CSR on CA. The study contributes to the resource‐based view (RBV) scholarship by confirming the important complementary effect of export orientation and organizational structure as important resources and capabilities on the CSR–competitiveness relationship. However, no evidence of a moderating effect of firm strategy, or firm size on the CSR–CA relationship was found. These findings are instructive, impactful, and enrich the existing literature on CSR and strategy. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of H-Industria: Revista de Historia de la Industria Argentina y Latinoamericana is the property of H-Industria, Revista de Historia de la Industria Argentina y Latinoamericana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Factors influencing the adoption of human resource management (HRM) policies and practices are nested within the multilevel contexts of firms and industries. Institutional theory focuses on environmental pressure and suggests that an organization’s choice of an HR system is partly attributable to mimetic isomorphism. This paper contributes to the strategic HRM literature by estimating the relative effects of industry-level isomorphism and firm-level contingencies on employers’ choice of labor contracts. Drawing on different theoretical perspectives, this study examines multilevel environmental and organizational factors as determinants of HR systems and tests their impacts on the use of short-term labor contracts and weighted average labor contract duration, using a survey of 313 manufacturing plants in China. Utilizing a hierarchical linear model, our analysis shows that while most of the variance in HR systems occurred at the firm level, approximately 7% of the total variance in the four HR programs we studied are explained by industry-level factors. Findings suggest that international competitive pressure, capital intensity, firm size, unionization and ownership type have significant effects on use of labor contracts in a manufacturing context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptual solution for the largest number of BH export enterprises is not possible to design, develop and implement without clearly established entrepreneur orientation towards creating such production enterprises which are, in competitive terms, the equivalent to what the competitor has already introduced in the market. If local BH enterprises are not able to have at least one advantage in their favour regarding the competitive strategy, then their enterprise should not be export-orientated. Regarding this, it is necessary to have an adequate preparation of entrepreneur strategies and compatibility of state infrastructure with the production enterprises whose business intent is to export its products to foreign markets in simpler, faster and more profitable manner. In the largest number of BH enterprises, the management at every level does not possess the adequate capacity to create entrepreneurial strategies for making business at local market, and even less number of enterprises decide to create export business strategy. In addition, the business of BH production enterprises is threatened at local market as well, then the question has to be asked which managers and their business capacities are prepared for the market game in the international business. Besides the readiness of the entrepreneurial infrastructure at the national level, all business activities at level of production enterprise need to be led to excellence - business excellence which shall increase their export capacity and competitiveness regarding the enterprises from the same branch. Therefore, it is necessary to explore, analyse and define the role, importance and influence of entrepreneurial activities as well as the willingness of management towards the export orientation of production enterprises, and to research and analyse all relevant determinants and factors which are determine participants in creating export capacity and strategy of appearing production enterprises at international market. The ultimate goal of influence research of entrepreneurial activities at export capacity of BH production enterprises is creating entrepreneurial strategies which, by its influence, contribute to creating the effective concept of building export orientation of local production enterprises at foreign markets. The research results show that Cost leading strategy is the most implemented one in export enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the following is the Focus strategy, while the Differentiation strategy is among a number of strategies least implemented. The results obtained in the research suggest that only those production enterprises that shall be implementing adequate export strategies supported by an efficient infrastructure at the state level have a serious chance of operating in selected target markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Problems of Economy is the property of Research Centre for Industrial Developmen Problems of Nas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A methodology for the analysis of competitive conditions in foreign trade business organizations is presented. The analysis includes the steps of measuring, evaluation and classification of enterprises considering 16 key factors in export potential. Also, the application of cluster analysis to identify and characterize profiles in the competitive potential is done, and artificial neural networks were employed to classify the export potential. The results show the ability of the cluster analysis and of the artificial neural networks to discriminate competitive levels in export potential. The application of this methodology in the chemical sector, allowed classifying companies in four competitive groups. Also, artificial neural network showed to be capable of classifying and discriminating the competitive profile of a company with a probability of 85.7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines antecedents of high-quality entrepreneurship in European countries before and after the financial crisis that burst in 2008. In a context of ambitious entrepreneurship, we consider three quality aspects of early-stage entrepreneurship referring to innovativeness, export orientation, and high-growth intentions of entrepreneurs. Using microlevel data retrieved from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) annual surveys, we investigate whether the role of gender, education, opportunity perception, and motives of early-stage entrepreneurs changes between crisis and noncrisis periods. Our results show that the perception of business opportunities has a particularly pronounced effect on high-quality entrepreneurship in adverse economic conditions. We also find that the beneficial effects of educational attainment on growth intentions strengthen in times of crisis. Finally, the gender effect on entrepreneurs' high-growth intentions and export orientation appears to be stronger in the crisis period, implying that ambitious female entrepreneurship suffers more in the midst of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The export orientation of small and medium enterprises represents an important attribute of the enterprises' competitive ability. In this context, the area of export financing becomes a very important field of company management. The aim of this study is to define and quantify relevant approaches of entrepreneurs to the export activities and export financing, with regard to the impact of the selected socio-economic factors (gender, level of education and age). The study is based on the research of Slovak business environment carried out in 2016, which was evaluated by the tools of descriptive statistics, including percentages and averages, pivot tables, the methods of comparison and deduction, Pearson's chi-square statistics at 5% significance level. Our results suggest that Slovak entrepreneurs primarily supply their products and services on the domestic market, while their export potential is limited. The assessment of the state support of export activities is rather negative. An alarming finding is that Slovak entrepreneurs in the SME segment do not use even basic tools of financial risk reduction to a higher extent, and that the usage of services of the state export bank Eximbank is negligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the key challenges of a changing global market context and their effects on manufacturers' marketing channel strategies in times of retail firm internationalisation and proliferation of retailer brands in international markets. Empirical research is based on surveying a random sample of Slovenian manufacturing firms and explores the underlying relationships between the manufacturer export market orientation, innovativeness, relationships with customers in foreign markets, proliferation of retailer brands and the manufacturers' distribution strategy. The study highlights the relationships between these dimensions of international marketing process and delineates some key strategic responses of firms to changing marketing channel context. Finally, some strategic suggestions for their international distribution channel strategy are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]