چكيده به لاتين
Objective: Despite the significant role of exports in the development of the country's economy and the increasing penetration of digital technologies in businesses, there are still many obstacles and challenges to the use of digital technologies, such as management challenges, lack of sufficient capacity to use new technologies, infrastructural barriers and sanctions especially for Iranian firms and for SMEs, etc. Also, the smaller the scale of these companies, the higher the risk they will face. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct some local research in this field due to the relative lack of existing research. Therefore, the question arises whether the digitalization of companies, despite those limitations and challenges, has been able to affect export performance and if the answer is yes, how this effect has been. Thus, our main goal is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of digitization on export performance and evaluate the mediating role of export readiness.
Method: This research is an applied research. To design the questionnaire, after library studies and review of available documents, we interviewed several university academics and export experts. After applying their opinion, a questionnaire was designed as a data collection tool. Then the validity and reliability of this questionnaire was checked and approved. Due to the lack of a specific database of export companies, 70 companies were specified as the statistical sample size according to the opinion of university professors. The sampling method in this research was non-random and the questionnaire was distributed among 70 export companies that were available. After collecting the data, the structural equation method was used to explain the theoretical model and analyze the research assumptions.
Findings: The results of collecting the responses of 70 export firms showed that the most of the firms were small and medium scale. The results of descriptive statistics also showed that the average digitization was equal to 2.94, export readiness was equal to 3.16, and export performance was equal to 2.68. Additionally, the digitalization components were correlated with export readiness and export performance. Furthermore, all factor loadings were 95% significant. Then we finded out that digitization has directly and indirectly effects on the export performance. However, the amount of indirect effect through the mediation of the role of export readiness has been higher. It was also confirmed that digitization strengthens export readiness and strengthening export readiness leads to increased export performance.
Conclusion: Despite existing challenges specially for SMEs, digitalization increases export performance. But if digitalization is done to strengthen each of the export readiness components, it can be more effective. what has a positive relationship with export performance is paying attention to the organization's capacities in the field of digitalization. Finally, we offered some practical suggestions for managers and researchers.
