Quality Certification and Export Participation among Moroccan SMEs: The Role of Firm Resources and Capabilities

Résumé

Abstract

This study examines whether internationally recognized quality certification is associated with export participation among Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while considering firm size and complementary resource and capability variables. The analysis uses the World Bank Enterprise Survey Morocco 2023 and a final analytical sample of 328 SMEs. Export participation is defined as direct or indirect exporting. Six progressively specified binary Logit models are estimated with robust standard errors, followed by average marginal effects and Probit robustness checks. The results show that quality certification is positively and consistently associated with export participation across all specifications. In the full model, certification is associated with an average increase of about 17.2 percentage points in the probability of exporting. Firm size is also positive and significant throughout the models, with an average marginal effect of about 7.7 percentage points for a one-unit increase in log employment. By contrast, perceived financial obstacles, formal credit, and product innovation do not show statistically precise independent associations with export participation once the other firm characteristics are taken into account. The results also indicate sectoral differences in export participation. The Probit estimates confirm the stability of the main findings. The study contributes to the literature by focusing on the binary threshold of export participation rather than post-entry export intensity or performance, and by examining internationally recognized quality certification as an observable indicator of organizational quality-management capability and export readiness within a Resource-Based View perspective. The findings provide recent firm-level evidence from Morocco, but they should be interpreted as statistical associations rather than causal effects because the data are cross-sectional.

Keywords: internationally recognized quality certification; export participation; SMEs; Morocco; Resource-Based View; World Bank Enterprise Survey