Exporting culture: A strategic issue for international competitiveness

This paper proposes a concept of "culture for internationalization" or "exporting culture," a highly relevant concept for developing countries' firms that are likely to follow a gradual internationalization process based on the strong relationship that binds the proposed concept to strategy and systemic competitiveness. These two items are paramount for understanding the conditions that underlie internationalization, since it is characterized by particular traits that make it a key alternative for a firm's growth and successful perdurability based on competitiveness. "Culture for internationalization" and its variation, "exporting culture," overflow into the concepts of organizational or corporate culture, and involve a major interaction among the micro, meso and macro levels of a nation's economy in order to operationalize strategies that promote such culture and assure successful firm and economy internationalization. Discussion remains open as to the concept and its applicability, in the hope that it will contribute to the understanding and creation of appropriate conditions for firms to be able to access international markets with greater advantage and to generate as much benefit as possible for their countries, especially developing ones.