A meta-analytic synthesis of how market and entrepreneurial orientation contribute to export performance: do home country institutions matter?

Although the related streams of research have witnessed a burgeoning interest in recent decades, empirical evidence on how strategic orientations are relevant to export performance remains inconclusive. Therefore, this research aims to review and quantitatively synthesize the existing literature on the relationship between strategic orientations and export performance by investigating the moderating effects of home country institutions and measurement factors. Meta-analyzing 42 empirical articles containing 11,518 firms with 185 effect sizes, this study provides strong support for the favorable effects of both market and entrepreneurial orientation on the multiple facets of export performance. Besides, the meta-analysis has uncovered that the magnitude of the correlation between market orientation and export performance is contingent upon the uncertainty avoidance dimension of national culture; but not upon the formal institutions in the home country. Further, the association between entrepreneurial orientation and export performance has been found to be moderated by formal as well as informal institutions of the home country. Significant variations in the influences of market and entrepreneurial orientation on export performance have also been spotted depending on measurement factors, particularly upon objective and subjective measures for assessing export performance and the dimensional nature of the strategic orientation scales.