Internationalization challenges of the SMEs: : a case study of Three Bangladesh Ready-madegarment companies

Sammanfattning: Ready-made garment (RMG) industry is the biggest and most importantindustry of Bangladesh with the highest overall export earnings and foreigncurrency earnings in the country. And international market is the biggestexporting destination for Bangladesh RMG industry. However, the overallcondition of this sector does not look well recently. Research suggests thathundreds of garment factories have been shut down during the past few yearsdue to not coping up with the different challenges of internationalization,although the overall export earnings remain relatively unchanged. Therefore,the authors conducted this research to identify and present in-depthknowledge about the major challenges that Bangladesh RMG industry arefacing while internationalizing and operating in foreign markets in recentyears, as the author believes these challenges could be the possible reasonsthat forcing RMG SMEs to shut down their operations.This research aims to identify the internationalization challenges forBangladesh RMG companies in international markets. Suchinternationalization challenges focusing on international markets have notbeen studied much previously and thus have created a knowledge gap.Therefore, this study addresses such a knowledge gap by answering thefollowing research question: What is the process of Internationalization of Bangladesh RMGcompanies? What are the internationalization challenges faced by the BangladeshRMG companies? How do the RMG companies manage the challenges they face?Empirical data was gathered by interviewing respondents from three RMGcompanies in Bangladesh and through secondary data sources. The findingsof this study show that Bangladesh RMG companies internationalize rapidlywithin a couple of years from inception. The study also identified somemajor internationalization challenges such as competition, major industrialaccidents, Infrastruture, etc. Moreover, network relastionships are found tobe essential in Bangladesh RMG companies‘ internationalization. Theauthors then analyzed the findings by applying previous literature and theirown created conceptual framework. Furthermore, this research providestheoretical and managerial implications on this essential topic. Key words: Competition, Exporting, Internationalization, Internationalization challenges,Infrastructures, Networking, Readymade Garment (RMG) Industry.