Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a definition for the contemporary risk management concept that has emerged after the accounting and corporate scandals of the early 2000s. The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) responded to these events and developed an ERM conceptual framework, the COSO ERM, which offers a practical tool to evaluate the holistic risk management systems of SMEs. Contingency theory is the leading theoretical background for this research, as the important preconditions behind the ERM implementation are being examined. The debt financing access of Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises has received national public attention, however remaining a sparsely researched topic. The main purpose of this study is to find relationships between the debt financing access qualities and the degree of ERM implementation.
The research data was gathered using the survey method. Survey questionnaire was sent to 1636 members of Finnish Foundation of Entrepreneurs. 61 firms were accepted to the final sample from the 135 participants. Cluster analysis were conducted to find ‘active’ and ‘passive’ firms of risk management activities. First part of the study provides insight into the risk management activities of Finnish SMEs, and how the characteristics of size, sector and ownership are associated with the degree of ERM implementation. Second part of the study examines the relationship between the degree of ERM implementation and its relationship with the debt financing access of the SMEs. The results of the study support the literature based hypotheses that the size and the sector of a firm is associated with the degree of ERM implementation. Sample data does not support the ownership hypotheses. Only the positive attitudes to alternative sources of debt were found to be statistically significant in the relationship between degree of ERM implementation and SME debt financing access.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format
