Addis Ababa University 

School of Commerce College of Business and Economics Department of Business

Leadership
International Business Leadership (MBL 641)
A critical Review of Yehualashet and Germinah (2015). Internationalization drivers of small
and medium sized manufacturing enterprises in Ethiopia: the case of leather and leather
products industry
Reviewed by
Sinshaw Damena………………..GSE/3588/10 2

Submitted to
Dr. Solomon Markos
October 2019
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

A critical Review of A critical Review of Yehualashet and

Germinah (2015).
Internationalization drivers of small and medium sized
manufacturing enterprises in Ethiopia: the case of leather and
leather products industry: International Research Journal of
Problems and Perspectives in Management, Volume 13, Issue
4, 2015
The article of “Internationalization drivers of small and medium sized manufacturing
enterprises in Ethiopia: the case of leather and leather products industry” was authored in
2015 by Yehualashet Demeke, Ph.D., Assistant Professor-College of Business and
Economics, Arsi University, Assela, Ethiopia and Germinah Evelyn Chiloane-Tsoka D.Com.
in Entrepreneurship, Department of Business Management, Preller Street, Muckleneuk
Ridge, Pretoria, South Africa. The article was originally published on International Research
Journal of Problems and Perspectives in Management in 2015.
The aim of the study is to show the most important factors driving internationalization
process of Ethiopian SMEs operating in leather and leather products industry located in
Addis Ababa. When we see the research methodology, the study is explanatory research type
and has used firm export propensity as dependent variable and export driving factors as
explanatory variables. Mixed research design approach through survey and semi-structured
interviews and about forty four secondary sources of data are used to obtain the required data
and stratified random sampling technique is used to recruit the required respondents. The
study has used adequate and reliable data and make use of factor analysis and binary logistic
regression analysis to test hypotheses.
Based on the research findings, the writers argue the internal and external factors influencing
internationalization of Ethiopian SMEs in manufacturing industry are managerial factors;
financial stimuli; research and development factor; marketing related factors, production
related factors, foreign market stimuli, intermediaries’ related stimuli, competition related,
domestic government stimuli, foreign government stimuli and domestic market stimuli. The
study shows that SMEs join international market due to external pull factors instead of
internal push factors. They have become involved in international business activities: external
pull factors from domestic and foreign governments, market factors, industrial factors and
internal push factors as entrepreneurial orientation of managers, availability of resources to
run export operations.
A country to be benefitted from SMEs through international governments, international
agencies and the private sector must collaboratively work together, government need to
encourage export policy which create enabling environment for export promotion in order to
mitigate barriers occurred due to, competition policy, legislative and regulatory frameworks,
telecommunications infrastructure and research. In addition to this, the quality of the export
items needs improvement and productivity needs to be maximized and to do that the
government needs to make arrangements and agreements for Ethiopian SMEs to share the
experience of the developed countries’ SMEs. The study also has indicated the need of
further research areas to understand the dynamics of SMEs internationalization drivers which
should consider comparative study which could benefit from cross country comparisons in
this respect and worth investigating to explore patterns of similarity and differences between
the internationalization process of Ethiopia SMEs and that of SMEs from other developing
economies.
From the above findings and discussions of the study we can understand that the study
focused on export as means for SMEs penetration in to the global market. Other global
market entry modes of joint venture, FDI, management contracting and the like were not
treated in this study. The study only focused on one aspect of firm internationalization
(outward internationalization through export). However, the study has great contribution for
Ethiopia since we are giving much emphasis for the development our economy starting from
SMEs for the future major industries. The government and SMEs firm owners can learn
much from the study and take their assignment for further improvements and the study is
highly related our course, International Business Leadership.