Digital metanational capacity and liability of outsidership: bounded complementarity in SME international performance

Purpose This study examines whether and when digital capability helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cope with the liability of outsidership (LoO). Drawing on Metanational Theory and the Information Processing View, it conceptualises LoO as generating a metanational capability gap that constrains firms' ability to sense, mobilise, and operationalise dispersed international knowledge, and introduces Digital Metanational Capacity (DMC) as a digitally enabled capability for performing these functions despite limited foreign-market presence. Design/methodology/approach Survey data from 257 middle managers of internationally active Vietnamese SMEs are analysed using PLS-SEM. Supplementary analyses include PLSpredict, CVPAT, Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), Gaussian-copula, nonlinearity, and heterogeneity tests. Findings LoO is negatively and DMC positively associated with international performance, and DMC negatively moderates the LoO–performance relationship. The performance return to DMC is greatest when outsidership is low and contracts by roughly two-thirds between low and high levels of outsidership, supporting bounded complementarity rather than substitution. A median-split NCA suggests that the minimum level of DMC required for high performance is higher under stronger outsidership. DMC thus appears to become more necessary but less sufficient as outsidership intensifies. Originality/value The study advances a bounded digital metanational view of SME internationalisation. It distinguishes DMC from adjacent digital and network capabilities and suggests that digital capacity can extend, but not replace, the relational gateways through which dispersed international knowledge is converted into international performance.