Resilience and Internationalization Performance of SMEs under Uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Moderating Effect of Interfunctional Coordination

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused global uncertainty about demand, supply, and productivity, and has led to unprecedented trade disruption. This study empirically examines the relationship between resilience and internationalization performance of Korean SMEs and the moderating effect of interfunctional coordination. Based on the survey responses of 173 exporting SMEs, resilience was found to have a positive effect on internationalization performance. However, when all variables including control variables were entered simultaneously, it was not statistically significant. It can be seen that further empirical research on the resilience of SMEs is needed. In addition, interdepartmental coordination was observed to negatively moderate the relationship between resilience(response capacity) and internationalization performance under uncertainty. This provides new academic implications for the traditional thinking on interdepartmental coordination variables.