The literature has discussed numerous strategic orientations as determinants of export performance including export market orientation (MO), international innovativeness orientation (IO), learning orientation (LO), and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Notably, most of these cited papers have used an isolated perspective of a single orientation. Such approaches are problematic, as firms regularly use multiple strategic orientations, which are interrelated and have mutually dependent influences on firm performance. Additionally, the notion that firms can be too market-, entrepreneurial-, or innovative-oriented  underscores the importance of potential relationships among the four orientations (market, innovativeness, learning, and entrepreneurial orientations, hereunder MILE) and export performance.

While some scholars have examined the effects of combinations of strategic orientations on performance and export performance, they have relied on net effects’ analyses  leading to inconsistent findings. Our study follows the tradition of using multiple orientations and examines the complementary effects of the four strategic orientations comprising MILE on export performance.   

A set-theoretic approach was used to explore whether single or some configurations of the MILE orientations may be "necessary" or "sufficient" conditions to exceed average export performance. Set-theoretic methods are useful to analyze complementarity as they treat each firm as a holistic unit (a unique case) that consists of specific levels of each strategic orientation (conditions) and specific levels of export performance (outcome) that are interrelated. Thus, we advance knowledge about the complementarity of strategic orientations in export context by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).