The smooth running of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) presents a significant challenge irrespective of the technological and human resources they may have at their disposal. SMEs continuously encounter daily internal and external undesirable events and unwanted setbacks to their operations that detract from their business performance. These are referred to as ‘disturbanc...

Cloud service providers praise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as very attractive for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Yet, little research has been done on the SMEs’ perspectives on this matter. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted among German enterprises that clarifies their views of SaaS. Starting with the actual IT situation, we show the prerequisites as well as the reaso...

In this study the association between social capital and entrepreneurial locus of control among small and medium-sized enterprises’ managers is evaluated. The innovation of this study is theorizing and clarifying the role of social capital and its dimensions in fostering managers' internal locus of control. Internal locus of control is one of the most frequently mentioned personal characteristi...

Article history: Received 20 October 2011 Received in revised form 11 July 2012 Accepted 12 July 2012 Available online 20 July 2012 In this paper we analyze the relationship between survival, employment growth and firm size in Chile, an economy that has reduced largely its trade barriers in the last three decades. We are particularly interested in analyzing whether the small and medium sized en...

How and when do smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) benefit most from idea generation activities? The answer is perhaps not as straightforward as one might assume. SMEs are subject to size-related liabilities, which often obstruct their efforts in successfully undertaking front-end activities. The front-end period begins when an idea is recognized collectively in the firm as representing a...

Conventional supply chain management (SCM) considered only three stages: pre-manufacture, manufacture and use, while the present enterprises and specially the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) need to consider the sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) for competitive and stability in the market. It means this chain have to consider from birth to death of the products or services. S...

the current dynamic and turbulent business environment has forced companies that are competing in global markets to change their traditional methods of conducting business. recent developments in applying information technology (it) offer the most exciting business opportunities in the marketplace. organizations must re-evaluate every aspect of their strategies and quickly move to a working mod...

More than 98 per cent of all European companies are small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Even though their structural characteristics are well known, neither academia nor politics have paid much attention to SMEs’ experiences in using RFID technology. Consequently, SMEs that deal with an implementation have so far only few guidelines regarding specific opportunities and risks. We try to fi...

The existing works point out that smaller organisations have been shown to have different technology adoption patterns than large ones. However, it is unclear whether Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and large organisations take decisions for the adoption of integration technologies by focusing on different factors. Moreover, the literature also shows that there is an absence of theoret...

This paper assesses the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on the economic performance of smalland medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) of three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Findings of the paper suggest that the diffusion of ICT among East African SMEs is both industry and country specific. The empirical findings suggest that investment ...