Book Review: SMEs in the Age of Globalization

This book presents a well-balanced collection of readings on SMEs’ internationalization and public policy. The unifying theme of the book is the challenges SMEs face in the context of globalization. As such, the book is of primary interest to international business and entrepreneurship scholars. Given the nature of globalization and the role of entrepreneurship in this process, there are, however, several issues, that need to be addressed as well. First, coverage of internationalization issues of SMEs, or positive growth, could be balanced by looking at de-internationalization issues of SMEs (Turcan, 2003), or negative growth as another effect of globalization. Second, definition of the domain of entrepreneurship research as a societal phenomenon and as a scholarly domain (Davidsson, 2003) might help demarcate entrepreneurship from SMEs, and thus add another trade-off between new value creation and business as usual to Audretsch and Thurik’s list of trade-offs.