Female CEOs and the internationalization of Vietnamese SMEs: how important is CEO experience?

Globalization has rendered internationalization an indispensable strategy for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking to remain competitive beyond domestic markets (Kaur and Kumar, 2026). Internationalization is the expansion of revenue streams beyond national and regional borders (Autio, 2017). The Uppsala model frames this as a gradual experience-driven process, whereby firms first enter geographically and culturally proximate markets with low psychic distance, then progressively extend their reach into more distant markets as international experience accumulates (Vahlne and Johanson, 2019). Yet this process is far from mechanical. It requires navigating substantial complexity from adapting domestic products for foreign customers to managing cross-cultural differences, regulations, and competitive dynamics (Saragih, 2025). While successful internationalization allows SMEs to mitigate domestic-market risk and unlock greater profitability, the uneven record on SMEs' internationalization suggests that firm-level strategy alone cannot explain why some SMEs internationalize successfully while others do not (Mudalige et al., 2019).

A body of research locates part of the answer in leadership. Because SMEs typically lack the layered management structures, the CEO's own characteristics disproportionately shape strategic choices such as internationalization (Jaw and Lin, 2009; Hsu et al., 2013; Ramón-Llorens et al., 2017; Fang et al., 2026). Within this literature, CEO gender has attracted particular attention, but with inconsistent conclusions. One stream suggests that female-led firms are less inclined toward internationalization, reflecting either socialized risk aversion or the gendered expectation that internationalization demands traits stereotypically associated with men (Casprini et al., 2020; Ge and Zeng, 2021). A competing stream argues the opposite. Female CEOs' distinctive career paths, higher academic qualifications, and orientation toward flexible, information-intensive management roles equip them to navigate unfamiliar international conditions more effectively, thereby accelerating rather than hindering internationalization (Terjesen and Singh, 2008; Perryman et al., 2016; Pongelli et al., 2023; Machado et al., 2023; Amin et al., 2024). This unresolved tension is compounded by a further layer of ambiguity. Even studies reporting a positive effect of female CEOs rarely examine the conditions under which this effect strengthens or weakens, leaving unclear whether the CEO gender is consistent across firms or contingent on other executive characteristics.

Above all, the central gap remains in the literature concerning the relationship between CEO gender and SME internationalization, particularly when CEO gender is considered alongside CEO experience. Existing studies have largely tested CEO gender as an isolated effect, without examining how it interacts with other upper-echelon characteristics (Neely et al., 2020; Tonoyan and Olson-Buchanan, 2023). No study has empirically examined whether such an interaction operates uniformly or is conditional on a firm's existing degree of internationalization. Besides, the bulk of this literature has been developed using listed firms in developed markets, leaving the SME sector of emerging economies with entangled ownership and leadership comparatively underexplored. In this regard, Vietnam offers a particularly informative, and in some respects paradoxical, setting for addressing these gaps. As a fast-growing transition economy that has pursued export-led growth through deepening global integration (e.g. WTO accession in 2007, the CPTPP, and EVFTA), Vietnam depends largely on SME participation in global value chains, yet its SMEs continue to contribute a disproportionately modest share of total export value (Nguyen et al., 2020). At the same time, Vietnam exhibits a comparatively high share of women in top management positions (Nguyen, 2023). Additionally, its SME sector remains predominantly family-owned and governed through informal, relationship-based structures rather than formal corporate governance. This coexistence of export-oriented policy pressure, meaningful female leadership presence, and weak formal governance creates conditions under which the interplay between CEO gender, CEO experience, and owner-manager dynamics can be observed with clarity.

Motivated by aforementioned shortcomings, this paper addresses the following research questions: (1) Do female CEOs have a greater likelihood of pursuing internationalization of SMEs in Vietnam? (2) Is the internationalization effect of female CEOs contingent on specific levels of CEO experience? These questions carry broad socio-economic significance, as successful SME internationalization contributes to employment generation and the reduction of national trade deficits (Anand, 2015; Hashim, 2015). Within the Vietnam SMEs context, this paper makes potential academic contributions. While existing studies have largely tested CEO gender as an isolated effect, this study examines how CEO gender interacts with other upper-echelon characteristics (i.e. accumulated managerial experience). Strikingly, this study also investigates whether the interaction operates uniformly or is instead conditional on a firm's existing degree of internationalization.

The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 develops the theoretical background and hypotheses. Section 3 describes the data sources, variables, and research methodology. Section 4 presents and discusses the results, and Section 5 concludes with a discussion of limitations and directions for future research.

This study draws on three complementary theoretical perspectives, including the Agency theory, the Upper Echelons theory, and the Uppsala model of internationalization, to explain why and how female CEOs and their experience shape the degree of internationalization of SMEs.

The Agency theory. Jensen and Meckling (1976) address the consequences of the separation of ownership and control. When owners (principals) delegate decision-making authority to a CEO (agent), the CEO may pursue objectives that diverge from shareholders' interests, which is a problem intensified by information asymmetry and diverging risk preferences. This is especially salient in SMEs, where governance structures are often informal and family ownership is common, so that professional CEOs (or even family-member CEOs) may weigh personal goals, risk aversion, or preferences for staying within familiar domestic markets more heavily than the firm's long-term growth objectives. Because internationalization is a costly, uncertain, long-horizon strategy, it is precisely the kind of decision in which agency conflicts between owners and CEOs are most likely to surface (Jensen, 2000). The study leverages this theory to frame why the CEO (rather than the firm as an abstract entity) is the relevant decision unit, whose incentives and characteristics must be examined to understand the firm's internationalization choices.

The Upper Echelons theory. Hambrick and Mason (1984) explain how the identity of the CEO can translate into strategic outcomes. The theory argues that organizational outcomes partially reflect the values, cognitive base, and experiences of top executives, because executives interpret complex, ambiguous strategic situations through the lens of their own background rather than through objective information. Since executives' underlying values and cognition are difficult to observe directly, research typically relies on observable demographic and career proxies such as gender, age, education, and functional or industry experience (Wang et al., 2016; Neely et al., 2020). In this paper, CEO gender and CEO experience are treated as two upper-echelon characteristics. Gender is used as an indication of differences in risk tolerance, information-processing style, and strategic priorities between male and female CEOs. Experience is used as a proxy for the depth of managerial and market knowledge a CEO can draw on when evaluating foreign expansion opportunities.

The Uppsala model explains the process through which internationalization unfolds once a firm decides to expand abroad (Hult et al., 2020). The model conceptualizes internationalization as an incremental, path-dependent learning process. Because firms lack experiential knowledge of foreign markets, they first enter markets with low psychic distance (i.e. culturally and geographically proximate markets) using low-commitment modes, and only gradually increase their commitment to more distant and unfamiliar markets as they accumulate market-specific experience and reduce uncertainty. Experiential learning (i.e. knowledge that can only be acquired through direct involvement in foreign operations, not simply purchased or transferred) is the central engine of this process (Forsgren, 2002).

These theories are intersected in a conceptual framework. The Agency theory motivates the focus on the CEO (rather than the board or the firm) as the locus of the internationalization decision and highlights that a CEO's characteristics can create alignment or conflict with owners' internationalization goals. The Upper Echelons theory then supplies the mechanism linking a specific CEO characteristic (i.e. gender) to that decision, arguing that female and male CEOs differ systematically in the cognitive frames and risk orientations they bring to strategic choices. Finally, the Uppsala model explains why CEO experience matters and, critically, why it should moderate rather than add to the gender effect: because internationalization is an experiential-learning process, a CEO's accumulated experience functions as a firm-level substitute for the market knowledge that Uppsala theory identifies as the binding constraint on internationalization. In other words, CEO experience is modeled as the individual-level carrier of the experiential knowledge that the Uppsala model treats as the driver of expanding international commitment.

Research has shown significant interest in gender diversity among board members in business operations and strategies (Muhammad, 2025; Mardones and Ibañez, 2025). The question of whether female CEOs promote or hinder internationalization remains unsettled, with two competing schools of thought offering divergent explanations. One school believes that women-led businesses may be less inclined to pursue internationalization than those led by men (Grondin and Schaefer, 1995; Alayo et al., 2019; Casprini et al., 2020). This view rests on the premise that internationalization demands traits (i.e. risk tolerance and assertive market entry) that are typically associated with men (Haddoud et al., 2021). In a meta-analysis, Debicki et al. (2020) revealed that masculinity, along with individualism, low uncertainty avoidance, and short-term orientation, strengthens the positive relationship between internationalization and family firm performance. Firms led by male versus female CEOs tend to differ systematically in organizational characteristics that bear on international readiness such as risk appetite, network access, and strategic orientation (Amin et al., 2024; Shahzad et al., 2025).

Another school suggests that female CEOs are more likely to possess management skills and hold positions related to flexible management issues, such as human resources, corporate social responsibility, marketing, or advertising rather than operational and sales functions (Zhang et al., 2022; Veiga et al., 2025). Furthermore, they differ from men in terms of their previous professional experience, often coming from non-traditional backgrounds (Terjesen and Singh, 2008). Paradoxically, female CEOs are more likely to lack a business background and have higher academic qualifications (Perryman et al., 2016), equipping them to access international markets more easily by handling new information in diverse international environments. Their higher education levels allow them to operate effectively in these contexts, thus accelerating the internationalization process (Pongelli et al., 2023).

Reconciling these divergent findings requires looking beyond gender as a standalone trait and considering the governance context in which the CEO operates. Agency theory supplies this missing layer. Because SMEs are often family-owned, the internationalization strategies actually pursued reflect not only the CEO's individual disposition but also the alignment, or misalignment, between CEO and owner objectives (Chen et al., 2013). When ownership and control are separated, CEOs may act on their own priorities rather than those of shareholders (Jensen and Meckling, 1979), and a female CEO's distinct leadership style and strategic priorities may align differently with family owner expectations than a male CEO's would (Athanasopoulou et al., 2017). Through this lens, the mixed findings in prior research may reflect variation in how well female CEOs' objectives align with owners' internationalization goals across different institutional and firm governance settings, rather than a single, universal gender effect. This alignment perspective anchors the first hypothesis as follows.

Beyond gender, the CEO's capacity to translate strategic intent into effective execution depends on experience. CEOs are expected not merely to complete delegated tasks but to actively guide management teams through complex strategic planning (Gutschi and Klarner, 2021; Garg and Bingham, 2025). For SMEs pursuing internationalization specifically, this requires core knowledge of foreign markets that is typically acquired through prior professional experience elsewhere, rather than developed internally (Hollender et al., 2017; Stoian et al., 2018). The Upper Echelons theory frames this as a cognitive mechanism. A CEO's experience shapes the firm's capacity to interpret foreign market signals and to anticipate and respond to changes in the international environment (Wang et al., 2016; Neely et al., 2020). In effect, experience determines how faithfully the firm's international strategy reflects objective market conditions rather than the CEO's own limited frame of reference.

SMEs operating domestically often lack familiarity with foreign contexts or strong international networks (Freund et al., 2020), making the CEOs' international experience crucial. This experience can provide reliable connections that help businesses access new sales channels or engage in broader networks in foreign countries. CEOs with international experience are better equipped to select optimal locations for market expansion and offer insights into location advantages that family members may not be able to gather independently (Lahiri et al., 2020). In family-owned SMEs, location decisions may be influenced by family preferences, particularly because family members often directly carry out international expansion efforts (Del Bosco and Bettinelli, 2019). This can exclude optimal locations because family members may be reluctant to spend time in unfamiliar environments or unwilling to make the product adjustments needed (Kano and Verbeke, 2018).

This is where the experience mechanism intersects with the agency alignment logic developed in the preceding section. Separating ownership from control creates room for CEOs, regardless of gender, to pursue personal objectives that diverge from shareholders' interests (Jensen and Meckling, 1979). A CEO's experience does not eliminate this risk and may in fact sharpen it, since an experienced CEO has both the discretion and the credibility to steer expansion toward markets that suit her own expertise or interests rather than the firm's strategic priorities (Hadi et al., 2026). Whether experience ultimately strengthens or complicates the female CEO internationalization relationship therefore depends on how well CEO incentives are aligned with the firm's long-term internationalization goals, through mechanisms such as performance-based compensation and clear communication of strategic objectives. These theoretical layers imply that CEO experience does not operate independently of gender, instead it conditions the gender's internationalization effect. Therefore, the following hypothesis is suggested:

The article employed a quantitative design to capture the moderating mechanism of CEO experience in the Female CEO – internationalization nexus. The data were derived from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) ^[1], conducted in Vietnam between April and November 2023. The survey covered 1,028 enterprises across various regions, representing a diverse range of company sizes. SMEs are defined as businesses with fewer than 250 employees, including micro-businesses, small businesses, and medium-sized enterprises. After applying the fewer-than-250-employee criterion, the study excluded irrelevant observations. Additionally, businesses that provided “don't know” responses or had missing data for the key variables in the research model were also excluded. The final dataset included 856 SMEs, as detailed in Supplementary Table A.

The study selected specific questions that aligned with the research variables in the conceptual framework (Table 1). The dataset was then filtered based on these selected questions. The relevant questions in the survey data were determined as follows. Female CEOs was identified through question B.7a. “Is the Top Manager female?”. Similarly, CEO experience is proxied by question B.7. “How many years of experience working in this sector does the Top Manager have?”. Internationalization was measured through “exports” and “foreign sales” from question D.3. “Coming back to fiscal year, what percentage of this establishment's sales were?”. Control variables such as the Firm age, Foreign supplier, Effective tax rate, and Bank lending play significant roles in determining the degree of internationalization (Mardones and Ibañez, 2025).

To assess the effect of female CEOs on the degree of internationalization (DOI), with CEO experience acting as a moderating variable, the paper employs multiple linear regression using STATA 18.0 for Equations (1) and (2).

Where $β1$ and $β2$ are the regression coefficients of Female CEOs and CEO experience, while $β0$ is the intercept. $β3$ is the combined coefficient of Female CEOs×CEO experience, which is the moderating mechanism. Equation (3) shows the marginal effect of Female CEOs on internationalization, contingent upon CEO experience.

The conventional quantile regression estimates each quantile separately by minimizing the check function, which may lead to quantile crossing and high computational cost, particularly in models with many regressors or fixed effects (Koenker and Hallock, 2001). To relax these assumptions, Machado and Silva (2019) propose a quantiles-via-moments approach. The method models the conditional distribution of the outcome as a location-scale function of the covariates. It first estimates, by conventional method-of-moments regression with (1) a location equation (the effect of the covariates on the conditional mean of DOI) and (2) a scale equation (the effect of the covariates on the conditional dispersion of DOI, obtained by regressing the absolute residuals from the location equation on the same covariates). These location and scale parameters are then combined with the sample moments of the standardized residuals to generate the coefficient estimates at any quantile of interest $τ$⁠. This procedure preserves the monotonicity of estimated quantiles and addresses latent endogeneity, which is not straightforward under conventional quantile regression. Formally, the conditional quantile function is specified in Equations (4) and (5).

where $τ$ ∈ (0,1) denotes the quantile of interest (this study reports $τ$ = 0.25, 0.50, and 0.75, corresponding to SMEs with low, medium, and high degrees of internationalization, respectively). $ηi$ is the scale parameter estimated from the auxiliary regression of absolute residuals described above and $q(τ)$ is a scalar computed from the empirical moments of the standardized residuals of the location-scale model. The quantile-specific coefficients $β(τ)$ therefore capture how the effects of female CEOs, CEO experience, and their interaction on internationalization vary across the internationalization distribution.

Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics, based on data from the 2023 WBES. For the dependent variable, DOI is the degree of internationalization (i.e. the percentage of establishments' sales that were direct and indirect exports) among SMEs, with an average value of 3.05% and a high standard deviation of 14.6135, indicating substantial variability across firms. The binary variable Female CEOs indicates whether a female holds the top managerial position, with a mean value of 21.61%, underscoring the relatively low representation of female CEOs. CEO Experience measures the years of leadership experience, averaging approximately 16 years, reflecting a seasoned leadership background.

Table 3 presents the OLS results. Female CEOs have a positive and statistically significant impact on internationalization. The coefficients for Female CEOs' impact on the degree of internationalization are around 3% points across specifications. On average, SMEs managed by female CEOs derive approximately 3% more export sales revenue than firms led by male CEOs, underscoring a tangible link between female leadership and firm-level internationalization. Although this effect appears economically large relative to the sample mean (⁠$≈$ 3.1%), it should be interpreted in the context of Vietnamese SMEs with a relatively low level of internationalization. These findings align with previous research (Machado et al., 2023; Amin et al., 2024; Lima et al., 2026), which highlights that women in leadership roles can bring unique perspectives and strategies, thereby creating a competitive advantage for their organizations. Female CEOs are often associated with broader stakeholder engagement and greater openness to innovation and market opportunities, which may facilitate SMEs' international expansion. This mechanism suggests that the presence of female CEOs can foster internationalization, indicating that businesses led by women are more likely to expand into international markets (Ratten and Tajeddini, 2018; Ubfal, 2026).

Additionally, foreign suppliers demonstrate a positive and statistically significant impact on internationalization, with coefficients ranging from 0.06 to 0.07. This finding underscores the importance of partnerships with foreign suppliers in enabling firms to access advanced materials, innovative technologies, and specialized inputs (Mardones and Ibañez, 2025; Le et al., 2026). Such collaborations not only enhance the operational capabilities of businesses but also open doors to strategic alliances and the development of global business networks. These connections play a critical role in equipping firms to navigate and compete effectively in international markets, thereby facilitating their expansion beyond domestic boundaries.

Conversely, the effective tax rate negatively impacts internationalization, with a coefficient of −0.11 at 5% statistical significance. This outcome suggests that higher tax rates may serve as a barrier to SMEs seeking to expand internationally. The increased financial burden associated with higher taxes can raise the cost of international operations, thereby diminishing incentives for businesses to invest in foreign markets. Consequently, the higher tax rates may reduce firms' ability or willingness to pursue international growth, limiting their potential to explore global opportunities.

Table 4 depicts the indirect effect of Female CEOs on internationalization, depending on the level of CEO experience. The combined effect of Female CEOs and CEO experience is evident via the positive coefficients of Female CEOs × CEO experience, which are statistically significant at the 1% level, indicating a positive moderating role of CEO experience. Namely, CEO experience enhances the internationalization process of businesses led by women. This suggests that as female CEOs gain more experience, they are better equipped to overcome challenges and obstacles in the process of expanding into international markets.

The study decomposes the marginal effect of Female CEOs on internationalization by examining different levels of CEO experience. The analysis reveals that when the top manager's experience is less than one year, female CEOs have a negative and statistically significant impact on internationalization at the 10% level. In the early stages of a CEO's career, a female CEO may not significantly drive the internationalization process. During the initial phase of their leadership, Female CEOs may prioritize stabilizing and managing domestic operations to build a solid foundation for the business (Calabrò et al., 2023). The focus on internal processes and operational efficiency could limit their ability to pursue internationalization strategies effectively. Furthermore, early-career CEOs may face additional challenges such as establishing credibility, overcoming gender bias, and lacking the necessary networks and industry knowledge required to navigate international markets (Cho et al., 2019). These factors can hinder their ability to expand into foreign markets, especially when compared to more experienced leaders who have developed the skills and resources needed for international growth.

When analyzing the impact of CEO experience at different levels, the paper finds that as experience increases, the effect becomes positive and statistically significant, starting at the threshold of 15 years. Specifically, with 15 years of experience, female CEOs begin to demonstrate their ability to drive internationalization. At 20 years of experience, the coefficient reaches 2.58, and at 47 years, it increases to 19.03. This mechanism suggests that as experience increases, female CEOs are better equipped to navigate the complexities of international markets (Fitzsimmons et al., 2014). Over time, they develop a deeper understanding of global business dynamics, allowing them to identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and adapt strategies to diverse cultural and economic conditions. Additionally, experienced CEOs tend to have stronger networks, which can facilitate partnerships and collaborations essential for expanding into new international markets. Experience also enhances decision-making, enabling female CEOs to address challenges effectively and implement strategies that accelerate international growth. Thus, experience plays a role in empowering female CEOs to lead their firms through the complexities of internationalization. This finding highlights the exponential growth of developing skills and gaining experience.

The study further investigates whether the impact of female CEOs and CEO experience varies across SMEs with different levels of internationalization. Table 5 presents the results of the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MM-QR) estimation of Machado and Silva (2019) for the 25th percentile (low internationalization), 50th percentile (medium internationalization), and 75th percentile (high internationalization). It is evident that female CEOs have a positive impact on internationalization, but this effect increases progressively across the quantiles. This suggests that SMEs with a higher degree of internationalization are more likely to leverage the positive influence of female CEOs effectively.

SMEs with a higher degree of internationalization are often more complex, requiring strategic leadership that can navigate diverse markets, manage cross-cultural teams, and adapt to global dynamics (Chebbi et al., 2022). Female CEOs, with their distinct leadership styles and perspectives, are likely to bring innovative strategies and approaches that are especially valuable in international contexts. As SMEs expand globally, they faces challenges such as competition, regulatory hurdles, and the need for a broader network of relationships. Female CEOs, who often possess strong interpersonal and communication skills, may be better equipped to forge international partnerships, identify new market opportunities, and lead their organizations through the complexities of international markets. Hence, SMEs with higher internationalization levels are more likely to benefit from the positive impact of female CEOs, as their leadership can drive more effective decision-making and foster international growth.

Similarly, CEO experience has a positive effect on the degree of internationalization across different quantiles, with the impact more pronounced at the 75th percentile than at the 25th and 50th percentiles. This result suggests that as SMEs advance their internationalization efforts, CEO experience becomes increasingly valuable. More experienced CEOs are better equipped to navigate the complexities of global markets, such as managing cross-border operations, understanding international market dynamics, and forming strategic partnerships. At higher levels of internationalization, the accumulated experience of the CEO plays a crucial role in driving the firm's success in foreign markets, helping firms overcome challenges and seize opportunities more effectively. Thus, experienced CEOs are more likely to lead their companies to greater international success, particularly in SMEs with higher levels of internationalization. Figure 1 visualizes the impact of Female CEOs and CEO experience on internationalization across quantiles.

Table 6 confirms the positive moderating effect of CEO experience on the relationship between Female CEOs and internationalization. Specifically, the influence of Female CEOs is reversed if their experience is less than 5 years. Notably, SMEs across different levels of internationalization are able to leverage the positive impact of female CEOs when they have at least 15 years of industry experience. However, for SMEs with low (25th quantile) and medium (50th quantile) degrees of internationalization, CEO experience of just 5 years still results in a negative impact of Female CEOs on internationalization. In contrast, for SMEs with high levels of internationalization (75th quantile), five years of CEO experience no longer has a statistically significant effect. This finding suggests, in firms already well-established in international markets, the influence of female CEOs becomes less dependent on experience. This highlights the importance of experience in driving internationalization, especially in firms still in the early stages of global expansion, while in more internationally mature firms, other factors may play a more significant role. Figure 2 plots the increasing combined effect of Female CEOs and CEO experience on internationalization across quantiles.

The study uses secondary data from the 2023 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, including 856 SMEs in Vietnam, to highlight the role of female CEOs and CEO experience in driving the internationalization process. The study reveals that while female leadership can positively impact the degree of internationalization, the effectiveness of this influence depends on the CEO's level of experience. Female CEOs with less than five years of experience may face challenges in driving internationalization, particularly in SMEs with low or medium levels of internationalization. However, as CEO experience increases (i.e. beyond 15 years) the effect of female leadership on internationalization becomes more pronounced. This is particularly evident in SMEs with higher levels of internationalization, where experienced female CEOs are better equipped to navigate the complexities of global markets. The study underscores the importance of CEO experience in overcoming barriers to international expansion and suggests that for SMEs to fully leverage the potential of female CEOs, fostering experience and expertise is crucial.

In terms of theoretical contribution, the study extends the Agency theory by showing how CEO gender and experience jointly shape internationalization and mitigate owner-manager agency conflicts. It further advances the Upper Echelons theory by demonstrating that executive gender and experience jointly determine strategic outcomes such as international expansion, addressing prior calls for research on jointly-operating executive traits (Neely et al., 2020). It also contributes to the Uppsala model by linking experiential learning and resource accumulation to the gradual internationalization process. Empirically, the study provides fresh evidence that the modulating effect of CEO experience on the internationalization effect of female CEOs is not uniform but conditional on a firm's existing degree of internationalization.

These findings carry practical weight for SME owners and policymakers alike. Gender diversity in top management is not a sufficient lever for internationalization. Its payoff materializes only when paired with accumulated industry experience, particularly beyond the 15-year threshold. For firms still in an early or intermediate stage of internationalization, boards should prioritize mentorship structures and cross-border assignments that allow female CEOs to accumulate tacit and experience-based knowledge. For firms that have already established a substantial international footprint, the returns to tenure diminish and less-experienced female CEOs can still steer global strategy effectively. Policymakers seeking to leverage Vietnam's comparatively high share of female executives should therefore calibrate support programs to a firm's internationalization stage rather than applying uniform leadership-development schemes.

This study is mainly limited by its reliance on a single cross-sectional wave of WBES data (i.e. restricting causal inference) and by its focus on a single national context (i.e. limiting generalizability given cross-country variation). Additionally, CEO experience is proxied by working experience alone rather than specifically international experience. CEO gender is treated as binary, potentially masking heterogeneity and reverse causality. Additionally, the cross-sectional nature of the data prevents the inclusion of CEO fixed effects and limits our ability to account for unobserved, time-invariant CEO characteristics. Future research could address these limitations by using panel data or quasi-experimental designs to strengthen causal identification and conduct an event-study of women CEOs' appointment. Future research could further examine the mechanisms underlying the experience effect, particularly whether it operates through network building, risk assessment, or strategic flexibility. Alternative specifications of internationalization, including count-data models for its skewed distribution, could also provide additional robustness. Lastly, expanding the geographic coverage to other ASEAN member states or developing countries would help establish whether the 15-year experience threshold and its heterogeneous effects across internationalization levels generalize beyond the Vietnamese context.

The supplementary material for this article can be found online.