The Impact of Industry Forces on International SME Performance in Iran: The Mediating Effect of Competitive Advantage

International small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) encounter several problems, including how to manage the industry forces in order achieve their performance goals. Focusing mainly on international SMEs, we explored this issue by examining competitive advantage as a mediator relationship between SMEs’ performance. This study was conducted context of Iranian market. Iran offers substantial economic opportunities SMEs since it has population 85 million people, range natural resources, sophisticated manufacturing industry. In Iran, an SME is firm with less than 100 employees that originated outside but entity inside country. The partial least squares method employed analyzing survey data collected from 166 Iran. results indicate have significant effects performance, does not mediating impact. reaffirm should be aware consequences attain especially critical for some developing economies which are more characterized ambiguities.