Résumé

This paper suggests a tentative conceptual framework to study the internationalization of foreign/OECD-based SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) attracted by fast growing emerging markets, such as China and other Asian economies, and the supportive role of global cities as market gate focal points providing a wide range of financial and non-financial services facilitating emerging market entry. In other words, the hypothesis is that a number of global cities (about 75 cities are classified and ranked as such worldwide) play an important business intermediation role, including vis-à-vis distant and difficult regional emerging markets. This proposed research is to bring up added value to the study of global cities, which has been envisaged so far exclusively in terms of their global growth as contributed by transnational corporations. The existing literature reveals that the business intermediation role of global cities has been studied in terms of services provided to transnational corporations and their affiliates, which tend to concentrate their regional offices and other business coordinating logistics and management in such cities. The first part of this contribution aims to proposea conceptual framework that combines studies in international business management with a strong focus on SME internationalization on the one hand, together with knowledge from economic geography and urban studies with a focus on global cities on the other hand. In the second part of this contribution, an empirical study of Swiss SME internationalization vis-a-vis distant Asian emerging markets and their relative direct and indirect presence in so-called alpha-type global cities provides some first-hand scientific evidence illustrating the proposed conceptual framework. The findingsderived from the empirical study tend to demonstrate the high importance of global cities for European internationalizing SMEs –as illustrated in the Swiss case- especially when it comes to far distant emerging market penetration and market development in countries with strong cultural differences from the SMEs home market.

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