An investigation into medium-sized multinational enterprises

The paper provides an investigation of medium-sized Italian industrial enterprises that have become multinational companies. It concetrates on the set of medium and medium-large enterprises who seem to grow more in foreign markets, either through exports or through foreign direct investment. The work also offers a descriptive empirical picture of the performance of medium-sized Italian multinationals, which is compared with the performance of large corporations. From this analysis, which is based on several data sources, it is possible to outline a profile regarding the medium-size italian multinational enterprises; the aim is to understand the complex strategy towards internationalization of these companies, where the dimension of production is important and, therefore, innovation has a key role. Also the commercial dimension is crucial, because it leads to point to the direct supervision of foreign markets and to look very carefully at the customers, offering them a wide range of services. Finally, the paper highlights some critical issues that the medium sized multinational enterprises have to face for competing: namely, the stagnant productivity, the high taxation, the insufficient institutional support for internationalization, the bureaucracy and its high costs, the lack of skilled human capital available in the labor market due to inadequate policy training.