Strategy formation by business leaders: Exploring the influence of national values

The internationalization of small and medium‐sized businesses typically involves negotiation, agreement and exchange between business leaders from different national cultural values and traditions. Explores whether, and how, national values affect the strategic aims of business leaders, the content of their strategic deliberations, and the processes they follow to develop those ways of thinking into enacted strategies. The two business leaders studied were operating within the Standard Industrial Code 33.20/1, developing and combining electronic hardware and software technologies to address the needs of industrial customers world‐wide, but were from countries with different national values. The aims of the business leaders, and the processes they used to develop strategies differed, in ways which reflected their national backgrounds. The contents of the strategic issues they considered, however, were more similar, largely reflecting industry norms and demands, in these cases expressed on a global scale.