•Institutional voids and contrasting cultural norms encourage different SME networking behaviour.•In Egypt, SMEs tend to cope through seeking strong personal ties with institutions; in UK weak business-like ties are normal.•In order to understand the responses of small internationalizing firms to domestic institutional condirions, an analysis is required that (1) combines institutional and cultural referents, and (2) crosses macro (culture, level of development), meso (institution) and micro (firm) levels of analysis. This paper reports a comparative qualitative study of how decision-makers in internationalizing SMEs respond to relevant institutions in their domestic environment through networking activity. Twenty SMEs are compared respectively from a developing economy (Egypt) and a developed economy (UK). The two countries contrast both in the effectiveness of their institutional support for SMEs and in their cultural norms towards network relationships. Substantial differences are found between the two national samples in SME decision makers’ networking behaviour in response to specific institutional conditions. The links between institutional conditions, national cultural norms and SME networking responses are explicated in a new theoretical model.