Variabili sociali e investimenti diretti esteri: spunti di riflessione dell’esperienza di tre piccole e medie imprese italiane in Brasile

During the first 1990s, the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows towards the developing countries have increased, despite a general decreasing trend. In this process, a non-marginal role have been played by the small and medium enterprises (SMEs), whose share in the world FDI is slowly growing. The aim of the paper is to evaluate, through the analysis of three case-studies, the influence of some social variables in the productive internationalisation process of SMEs. The underlying hypothesis to test is that the internationalisation processes of big multinationals (MNEs) follow patterns of development different from those usually adopted by the small ones and that these asymmetries are due to the different impact caused by the economic, political and social variables - the cultural and psychical distance (linguistic, ethnical, and life-style distance) the business culture similarities and others - played a more relevant role than usually stressed by the economic literature on FDI of big MNEs. This leads also to some interesting suggestions of economic policy. Of course, the paucity of the sample does not authorise any generalisation; notwithstanding, the hints drawn up by the case-studies seemed original enough to suggest a first attempt of systematisation.