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This study aims to find out whether firm failure processes are age- and size-dependent.

The sample consists of 333 bankrupted Estonian firms. Failure processes are detected with consecutive factor and cluster analyses of six financial variables calculated for three pre-failure years. Multinomial logistic regression is applied to study the interconnections between failure processes (dependent variable) and firm size and age (independent variables). In addition, the contingency between detected failure processes and failure causes obtained from court judgements are studied.

Three failure processes are detected, of which the predominant one accounting for 55 per cent of cases is a gradual failure process, indicating a step-by-step decline in the values of financial variables. The two minority processes are mixed, meaning that some financial variables are poor for many years before the bankruptcy and others decrease only shortly before bankruptcy declaration. With an increase in firm size, the gradual failure process becomes more common, but in turn, the presence of the gradual failure process is not age-dependent. Failure causes detected by trustees are not associated with failure processes.

This paper is the first one to specifically outline the age and size dependencies of firm failure processes. In addition, the interconnection of failure causes and firm failure processes detected with financial variables are rarely studied topics.

This paper aims to detect failure processes of French exporting firms and study their contingency with export processes.

The sample consisted of 131 bankrupted exporting firms from Bureau van Dijk’s Amadeus database. Factor and cluster analyses of six financial variables from Laitinen’s (1991) model were used to detect failure processes. Export processes were detected with cluster analysis of export share in total turnover. Contingency between failure and export processes was studied with a statistical test.

Three different failure processes existed for exporting firms. Two of these processes, which accounted for 79 per cent of firms, were classified as gradual failure: a step-by-step worsening of financial performance before the bankruptcy was declared. One was a symbiotic process reflecting varying pre-bankruptcy behaviours of different financial variables. Two different types of exporters existed. Most firms (77 per cent) were occasional exporters, while 23 per cent were constantly and more strongly involved in international markets before their bankruptcy was declared. There was no contingency between failure and export processes.

This study is the first one to detect failure processes specifically for exporting firms based on financial variables. In line with previous literature about non-exporting firms, gradual failure processes were most characteristic to exporting firms. The study shows that different types of exporters were not characterized by any unique behaviour of financial variables before their bankruptcy was declared.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether the financial predictors of failure differ for exporting and non-exporting firms.

The study is based on two samples of French manufacturing micro firms from Amadeus database. Samples of 468 exporting and 1,148 non-exporting firms were divided equally to survived and bankrupted firms. Logistic regression method was used with five financial ratios portraying liquidity, solidity, cash flow sufficiency, profitability and productivity.

The findings suggest that cash flow sufficiency and solidity were important predictors in both firm groups, although the latter was more important in case of exporters. Liquidity was important in case of non-exporters, while profitability in case of exporters. Productivity was not a significant predictor. With these variables, failure of exporters was predicted with a higher accuracy.

This paper contributes to an under-researched area in the failure prediction and international business literature, namely, it outlines whether failure predictors are the same for similar exporting and non-exporting firms. The results indicate that some predictors differ and similar ones can have different importance for exporters and non-exporters.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which different failure processes exist among the young manufacturing micro firms, and whether the representation of those processes differs first, in European countries, and second, among exporting and non-exporting firms.

The study is based on financial data of 1,216 manufacturing micro firms from European countries. Failure processes have been detected with a two stage-method: by extracting latent dimensions from financial variables with factor analysis, and then, by clustering the established factor scores.

With firms’ age, the number of different failure processes reduces from four to two. Strong evidence was found about the dominance of different failure processes in different countries for most firm age groups. Failure processes are not strongly associated with (non-)exporting.

This paper is the first one determining young manufacturing micro firms’ failure processes and comparing the representation of those processes in different firm subsets, either based on their country of origin or (non-)exporting behavior. Moreover, previous studies have not encompassed specific sectors, young or very small firms.

This paper aims to find out what kind of export and failure risk patterns exist among young Estonian manufacturing exporters and explore their interlinkages.

The sample consisted of 208 young Estonian manufacturing exporters. Based on internationalization literature, export patterns were detected with a consecutive three-stage clustering of export sales share from total sales, outside-Europe sales share from export sales and number of target markets, while failure risk patterns were detected by clustering failure probabilities obtained from a universal prediction model. The interconnection of export patterns with financial ratios and failure risk patterns was studied with statistical tests.

Six main internationalization patterns existed. In all, 49 per cent of firms exported to a single European market and their export share was constantly very low, while even most of the firms with high export shares (39 per cent of the sample) were also active on one European market. In terms of failure risk patterns, 49 per cent of firms had constantly very low failure risk, while 51 per cent of firms had medium risk. Higher export engagement did not lead to better financial performance or lower failure risk.

This study is the first to find out if firms following different export patterns are also characterized by specific financial performance and failure risk. In addition, studies encompassing young exporters’ specific target markets and failure risk development are rare. While exporters’ and non-exporters’ financial performance differences have been frequently documented in favor of the former, this study found no such differences for different types of young exporters.

The purpose of this study is to find out how corporate governance is interconnected with failure risk in case of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The study is based on Estonian whole population of SMEs, in total 67,058 observations, and data are obtained from Estonian Business Register. Failure risk (FR) is portrayed with a well-known Altman et al. (2017) model, while seven variables reflecting corporate governance (CG) based on previous studies have been selected. As the method, logistic regression (LR) is applied with FR in the binary form as a dependent variable and seven CG variables as independent. The effect of firm size and age is studied with two separate LR models.

The results indicate that with the growth in manager’s age and the presence of managerial ownership, failure risk reduces. In turn, the presence of larger boards and managers having directorships in other firms leads to higher failure risk. Gender heterogeneity in the board, board tenure length and ownership concentration by means of having a majority owner are not associated with failure risk. The obtained results vary with firm size and age.

Unlike this study, research published on this topic earlier has used a much narrower definition of failure, mostly focused on large and listed companies, been sample based and information about corporate governance variables has often been obtained through questionnaires. All these limitations are relaxed in this population level study.

This paper aims to find out if different exporter types dominate among matched mature Spanish and Estonian firms and whether these types are associated with specific export growth/decline patterns.

This study is based on firm-level data from the Estonian Business Register’s database of annual financial reports and SEPI Foundation’s survey on Spanish firms’ business strategies. From both countries, 242 firms were included and the period 2009-2013 was chosen.

Committed exporters (with 75 per cent or higher export shares) dominated in Estonia and experimental exporters (with export shares mostly below 10 per cent) in Spain. While in Estonia, the most frequent export growth/decline pattern encompassed four consecutive growth years, in Spain, it had two consecutive growth years and then two decline years. Spanish firms’ export growth/decline patterns were more random: 12 patterns of 16 fell within the range of a random walk assumption, while in Estonia, only 5 patterns were within the range. Contingency existed between exporter types and export growth/decline patterns only for the whole sample.

This paper studies if committed/aggressive/active exporters experience more export fluctuations than passive/experimental exporters, and how random export growth/decline patterns are.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between the appointment of a new management board member and the following strategic change (SC) in the product-market scope of the firm.

The study is based on the whole population of Estonian firms, in total 16,941 observations and the data are retrieved from Estonian Business Register. First, the authors focus on the association between the appointment of a new board member and the likelihood of different types of SC. Second, the authors focus on the association between the new board member’s previous export experience and export-related SC. Logistic regressions are applied for all models.

The results indicate that there is a significant association between the appointment of a new board member and the subsequent start of exports and also continuing it, entrance into a new industry and making an SC in more broad terms, though the significance levels vary across the composed models. No significant relationship was found with the entrance into the additional geographic market(s) for already exporting firms. There was also a significant association between the previous export experience of a new board member and the subsequent start of exporting.

The authors look at SC in the product-market domain holistically by applying the same data on both geographic and product portfolio expansion options. The authors also introduce the scale and stability contexts of SCs. These aspects are usually neglected from similar studies.

This paper aims to study how firms’ export behavior is associated with their corporate governance.

This study uses whole population data of Estonian small and medium-sized enterprises: 9,530 exporters and 73,619 non-exporters. Several theory-driven corporate governance variables and exporting variables (based on previous studies) are used. Binary logistic regression is applied to study how exporters’ corporate governance differs from that of non-exporters. Eight additional continuous dependent variables are used to portray exporters’ internationalization with ordinary least squares regression. The robustness of the obtained base results is checked for younger/older and smaller/larger firms.

Having female board members did not lead to a higher likelihood of export activities. Experience – tenure’s length, board members’ age and other board memberships – provided mixed results. Having a larger board was associated with a higher export propensity and larger exports but a lower export share. A larger share of a chief executive officer’s shareholding was associated with lower export propensity, exporting less overall and activities on a smaller number of markets. The presence of a majority owner was associated with larger export share and export turnover, but more focus on the main export market. Firm age and size affected the results.

Previous studies about the interconnection of corporate governance and exporting have relied on varied theoretical explanations and limited sets of variables. This paper provides an extensive insight by using corporate governance variables emergent from various theoretical explanations accompanied by a large set of dependent exporting variables. The latter enables obtaining a more holistic view of the interconnection between the two phenomena.

Purpose — The main aim of the paper is to study the occurrence and connections of different pre-insolvency violations of law on the example of Estonian firms.Design/methodology/approach — The study is based on the whole population financial data of Estonian bankrupt firms and all publicly available court judgments about firm insolvencies from the period 2002–2009. Three types of violations have been considered: non-submission of annual reports, violations of net asset requirement and elements of criminal offence.Findings — The paper shows that non-submission of annual reports is common for insolvent firms but its occurrence varies through insolvency years and types. A similar finding can be attributed to net asset requirement violations. Elements of criminal offence are also frequent, but their occurrence is not different through insolvency years, industries and firm size groups. Elements of criminal offence and net asset requirement violations are not likely to exist together. Although medians of several pre-insolvency financial variables are significantly different in case of firms where criminal offence elements were found, they are not useful for offence prediction.Research limitations/implications — Statistical analysis limitations of the current study are mainly associated with the content of the data, because the dataset itself covers the whole population of publicly available information. The application of some results in different countries might be limited because of differences in legislation and its implementation. The study outlines novel information about and connections of different pre-insolvency violations which could be applied for relevant theory-building or more elaborate empirical research in the future.Practical implications — The study can be used by managers, owners, creditors and other stakeholders of firms to improve detection of possible pre-insolvency violations.Social implications — Regulators and regulation implementers can make use of the study when considering a change in legal framework or in its practice.Originality/value — The paper shows the presence of selected pre-insolvency violations on an extensive dataset. Previous studies have mainly been theoretical, qualitative or using small datasets.