Perception of Nigerian SMEs on electronic data interchange adoption

The wide adoption of electronic data interchange (EDI) by the SMEs is important for the success of the technology. A review of past EDI adoption literature indicates that past studies have focused mainly on large businesses. With the advance of technology, SMEs businesses are now able to enjoy the benefits of EDI. SMEs businesses are the backbone of the economy in Nigeria, despite these facts, there are relatively no identified studies on perception of EDI adoption among the Nigerian SMEs. A conceptual model is then proposed to address the above issues. The model may help Nigerians SMEs to achieve higher impacts on their businesses from the adoption of EDI and may also provide strategic roadmap for SMEs in other African countries. Using a technology, organization, and environment framework, this study tested a perception base model against the data collected from 204 SMEs firms in Nigeria. Four factors that were found to be significant in the SMEs EDI adoption were direct benefits, indirect benefits, financial resources, and external pressure to adopt EDI. The results of this study could provide insight into unique factors that drive EDI adoption by SMEs in Nigeria and serve as a guide to policy initiatives to the SMEs owner managers. Key words: Technology adoption, EDI technology, Nigerian SMEs

BUILDING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH MARKETING, MANUFACTURING AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT STRATEGY: A CASE STUDY OF METAL PRODUCT SMEs IN TEGAL

This research investigates how the marketing strategy, manufacturing strategy and environment management create SMEs competitive advantage that will improve SMEs business performance. It gives both theoretical and managerial implications about steps must be taken by SMEs to improve their business performance through the competitive advantage gained from the marketing strategy, manufacturing strategy, and the ability to manage the environment. This research includes a data set from 121 SMEs. Results show that the manufacturing and environment management strategy positively affects SMEs competitive advantage, and the competitive advantage also positively affects SMEs business performance. Marketing strategy implemented didn’t affect the competitive advantage. This research proved that for now, the competitive advantage of metal product SMEs in Tegal lay on their ability to create product in accordance with consumers want. Metal SMEs always maintain their flexibility and product quality with competitive prices. To gain the competitive advantage, SMEs must have the ability to adjust with political and economics transformation such as general election or city major and governor transformation. Because of its flexibility, metal SMEs in Tegal can easily adjust with the transformation of political and economical climate. The last thing that must be noted from this research is that metal SMEs in Tegal didn’t implement the marketing strategy well because of the job-order system. The competitive advantage will be more perfect if the company also have superb marketing strategy

Virtual R&D teams in small and medium enterprises: a literature review

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the driving engine behind economic growth. While SMEs play a critical role in generating employment and supporting trade, they face numerous challenges, the prominent among them are the need to respond to fasting time-to-market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Towards that end, research and development (R & D) aspect deserves particular attention to promote and facilitate the operations of SMEs. Virtual R & D team could be a viable option. However, literature shows that virtual R & D teaming in SMEs is still at its infancy. This article provides a comprehensive literature review on different aspects of virtual R & D teams collected from the reputed publications. The purpose of the state-of-the-art literature review is to provide an overview on the structure and dynamics of R & D collaboration in SMEs. Specifying the foundation and importance of virtual teams, the relationship between virtual R & D team and SMEs has been examined. It concludes with the identification of the gaps in the existing literature's and calls for future research. It is argued that setting-up an infrastructure for virtual R & D team in SMEs still requires a large amount of engineering efforts and deserves consideration at top level management

Risk management implementation in small and medium enterprises in the UK construction industry

Purpose – The competition and challenges facing construction firms during the recent recession have brought risk management (RM) to the fore in people’s minds. Examination of the difficulties of implementing RM in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK construction industry has been relatively untouched. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – As part of on-going research to facilitate RM processing aimed at improving the competitiveness of SMEs, the difficulties in RM implementation were identified through a literature review of RM implementation in SMEs. Postal questionnaire were sent to SMEs who have experience of construction management. Findings – Of the 153 of SMEs responding, most highlighted that the main difficulty experienced is how to scale RM process to meet their requirements. None of the available standards explain the fundamental principle of applying RM to the situations that SMEs find themselves in. This difficulty is further exacerbated by a lack of management skills and knowledge in the adoption of RM tools or techniques to identify and analyse the business’ risks. Originality/value – The identified difficulties can be considered to develop a process to facilitate RM process within SMEs. </jats:sec

IT governance in SMEs: trust or control?

It is believed by many scholars that a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) cannot be seen through the lens of a large firm. Theories which explain IT governance in large organizations and methodologies used by practitioners can therefore not be extrapolated to SMEs, which have a completely different economic, cultural and managerial environment. SMEs suffer from resource poverty, have less IS experience and need more external support. SMEs largely contribute to the failure of many IS projects. We define an out-sourced information system failure (OISF) as a failure of IT governance in an SME environment and propose a structure for stating propositions derived from both agency theory and theory of trust. The theoretical question addressed in this paper is: how and why do OISFs occur in SMEs? We have chosen a qualitative and positivistic IS case study research strategy based on multiple cases. Eight cases of IS projects were selected. We found that trust is more important than control issues like output-based contracts and structured controls for eliminating opportunistic behaviour in SMEs. We conclude that the world of SMEs is significantly different from that of large companies. This necessitates extra care to be taken on the part of researchers and practitioners when designing artefacts for SMEs

Exploring the IT usage in SMEs from New Zealand, Columbia and Chile using action-research methodology

The theory on the adoption and use of information technology (IT) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is abundant. However, methodologically speaking, action-research (AR) has been little explored as a method of construction of this theory, despite the use of this methodology could improve understanding of how SMEs use IT. Therefore, we researched the use of IT in SMEs using a methodology adapted from AR. The methodology was tested in companies from New Zealand, Colombia and Chile. The use of this methodology was well evaluated by the top management of SMEs, in fact, the recommendations coming from the analysis were well received by the management of participants. These results are auspicious regarding the use of AR in SMEs and could help encourage other researchers to use this methodology, which remains little used in information systems research

Understanding the adaptive capacity of Australian small-to-medium enterprises to climate change and variability

Abstract Small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) comprise 96 per cent of all private businesses in Australia. The SME sector is the economy’s largest employer and the largest contributor to GDP. Moreover, SMEs play a significant role within socio-economic systems: they provide employment, goods and services and tax revenue for communities. Climate change may result in adverse business outcomes including business interruptions, increased investment and insurance costs, and declines in financial indicators such as measures of value, return and growth. After natural disasters, SMEs face greater short-term losses than larger enterprises, and may have lower adaptive capacity for various reasons. This study examines the underlying factors and processes shaping adaptive capacity of Australian SMEs’ to climate change and associated sea level rise. Specifically, the research asks the following questions: 1) How have SMEs considered and integrated adaptation into business planning? 2) What are the key underlying processes that constrain and influence the adaptive capacities of SMEs? and 3) What types of support are required to promote SME business continuity under a changing climate? The study adopts theories from Political Ecology and draws on literature on vulnerability and hazards to understand the processes that mediate the adaptive capacity of SMEs. The empirical research involved an online survey targeting SMEs, attending business engagement events hosted by chambers of commerce, 30 semi-structured interviews with secondary stakeholders, five case studies involving SMEs and secondary stakeholders, and finally a stakeholder workshop which brought together participants from both groups. The central conclusion of this study is that underlying contextual processes are critical to enhancing the adaptive capacity of SMEs. These processes include: the social relationships between SMEs and support organisations; the relationships within support organisations themselves; the agency of SMEs to direct resources toward building resilience into business continuity; SMEs’ perceptions of climate risks; and power struggles between support organisations. Unfavourable combinations of these processes have the potential to limit the adaptive choices that SMEs can adopt in order to overcome climate change and other related stresses on business continuity. These processes generate vulnerability and often occur at scales external to the SMEs;including relationships between different tiers of government as well as between various support organisations working with SMEs. These contextual processes have been largely overlooked in formal programmes that aim to build business resilience. The programmes have tended to be reactive and have tended to focus on business recovery during and after disasters rather than on altering the vulnerability context of SMEs through anticipatory prevention and preparedness or adaptation planning. This study suggests that the success of efforts to build the adaptive capacity of SMEs to future climate and related stresses will depend on how they address these underlying processes to facilitate the ability of SMEs to exercise their agency in pursuing adaptive choices that they value