in stage one had no specialized employees for exporting in the sales department. This
is perhaps due to the fact that at the beginning of internationalization, firms have
limited exporting scope and small exporting orders. Therefore, it seems not to be
necessary to have a formal exporting structure. With deeper export involvements,
some firms (34 percent) in stage two began to use other department’s staff to handle
export business. Comparatively, most firms (54.8 percent) in stage three used full-time
specialized employees for exporting by virtue of larger exporting activities. It is
obviously observed that firms in stage four and stage five showed the maturity of
formalization of exporting operations. The percentage of the form that the whole firm
dedicated to export business was much higher than the other forms. In general, the
profile of formalizations of exporting operations presented the significant difference
among different export stages during the internationalization process (p < 0.001).