Abstract
Organisations have changed in the last several years from responding to opportunities and uncertainties passively to responding in a proactive and dynamic business environment. Various cultures, societies, policies, and organisations will, nevertheless, experience transition in multiple ways, giving rise to a range of incentives and impediments to the implementation of change. SMEs are no exception to this, especially those dealing with internationalisation activities, which are affected by various cultures and policies. One of the six priorities for organisations to manage proactively is resilience. To date, the extant literature on entrepreneurial resilience theory lacks empirical evidence, particularly in the context of SMEs. This research has taken up these challenges, showing how SMEs adjust their internationalisation strategies to overcome institutional barriers. This study uses transformational resilience, which is more appropriate for these challenging times. Transformational resilience is the capacity to convert stress, upheaval, change, and shocks into opportunities, innovation, and fresh capacities. This study analyses the impact of procedural complications as part of the formal institutions on SMEs' internationalisation barriers and how informal institutions trigger transformational resilience. The main objective is to discover how SMEs' transformational resilience could effectively face institutional asymmetry during the internationalisation process, hence making another cutting-edge empirical research contribution to knowledge. In this case, SMEs are triggered to do transformational resilience to cope with institutional asymmetry caused by the formal and informal institutional arrangements that create barriers to internationalisation. This study uses qualitative investigation to understand better the complex relationship between SME internationalisation activities and institutional asymmetry. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 62 participants. The preliminary findings present novel and surprising evidence. First, some participants argue that not all government support is helpful to SMEs, as some agencies lack the required knowledge. In fact, some SMEs believe that this 'support' actually becomes a barrier to their international business. Second, institutional asymmetry can occur among government agencies and even between the same government agency at the national and sub-national levels. Third, institutional asymmetry can give unofficial benefits to SMEs. Informal institutions support SMEs by enabling them to seek alternative solutions that avoid convoluted government regulations. Based on the initial findings, this developmental paper is expected to show that SMEs are highly creative in transforming their resiliency to overcome institutional asymmetry. This study extends discussions on transformational resilience literature in the context of SMEs' internationalisation.