International Business Environment and Constraints of Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria

The extent to which environmental factors affect small and medium and enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets has been controversial in recent time. Also, the internationalization of businesses appear to achieve advance reckoning as a result of the influence of globalization on most national economies giving rise to decrease in environmental barriers and government-imposed barriers due to continuous improvement in technology. The population of the study consisted of randomly selected employees of selected manufacturing and services SMEs, in Nigeria. A total sample of 334 respondents was considered through the administration of a structured questionnaire. The statistical tools included multiple regression and correlation analysis through the SPSS computer packages. The results showed that foreign legal systems (FLS), has significant relationship on the businesses’ survival rate (at P =0.00). It was also found out that cultural differences (CD) has significant relationship with business sales (at P=0.00). Hence, the study recommends that Businesses must ensure they carry-out proper environmental analysis before entering the international market as this will help in identifying critical issues that needs to be solved before eventually entering the international market that is even more competitive than the local market