Abstract
Drawing on organizational learning theory, this study examines the strategic role of organizational innovation in learning to innovate by exporting, commonly known as ‘learning-by-exporting’ (LBE). We explain that mere knowledge access is distinct from the enactment of knowledge, and this matters for LBE. Despite growing interest in how firms enhance product innovation performance through exporting and thus, LBE, previous literature has remained silent on the role played by strategically induced changes to organizational routines when learning. We hypothesize that some exporters will introduce organizational innovations – aimed at changing internal practices and routines – which then allows them to enact new knowledge and enhance innovation performance following engagement in export markets. We study our hypotheses, using panel data of 1489 medium-sized manufacturing firms taken from the Mannheim Innovation Panel, the German contribution to the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). We find LBE effects solely amongst firms which adopted organizational innovations during the studied period. Further, our findings revealed that the extent and type of organizational innovation markedly influences LBE. Our study uses a novel context to explain that it is the presence and extent of organizational innovations which influence firms’ abilities to enhance product innovation performance following international engagement through exports.
•This study examines the strategic role of organizational innovation in learning by exporting, (LBE).•The data are drawn from the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP), which provides information on the innovation behavior of German firms since 1993. Conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (in German: Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, ZEW) with the Institute for Applied Social Science Research and the Fraunhofer Institute of System and Innovation Research, the MIP is designed as a panel survey.•We find no significant support for a LBE effect amongst our sample of German, mid-sized manufacturing firms.•Instead, we uncovered an important mechanism which allows some German exporters to learn by exporting: we show that (1) firms are heterogenous in how they learn from their experiences abroad and (2) organizations are not static but may change and evolve internally by adopting organizational innovation(s).•Our findings suggest that LBE is not automatic.