Internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises from Central and Eastern Europe: Theoretical framework

The article summarizes major firm-level internationalization theories. Typically, the classical theories are based on internationalization patterns of firms from developed economies - the USA or Western Europe. In the search for potential differences, each major international theory is followed by its potential implications for CEE firms and relevant studies. The research objective of this paper is to study the major theories (current research) in order to test their applicability on the internationalization patterns of the Slovak SMEs (future research) given the nature of the origin of these companies coming from small, former transitional economy with low resources and negative made-in effect.