This study investigates whether the Indonesian regulators control Indonesian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with matching or mismatching empowerment strategies, in light of their strengths and current standing. Indonesian SMEs contributed approximately 60.34% to Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018. In addition, Indonesian regulators have focused on financial support through credit policies and tax incentives. Indonesian SMEs have been standing on organizational readiness and readiness for change, based on their social networks and social cognition. It collected thirteen informants with different expertise and experiences. This study’s results suggest Indonesia’s regulatory body and financial institutions should consider the SMEs’ social cognition and organizational readiness for change. According to the current situation, to empower Indonesian SMEs, we recommend strategies such as achieving knowledge supremacy, creating an economic development board, as in Singapore, formulating comprehensive industry-wide policies, adopting omnibus laws, and implementing a shifting balance strategy. In other words, the Indonesian regulators should implement major reforms, which are similar to glasnost and perestroika in the former Soviet Union. This is to enhance Indonesian SMEs and achieve the goal of the Government of Indonesia (GoI) with respect to the optimal distinctiveness of Indonesia’s future economy. This optimal distinctiveness refers to the GoI’s policies, which focused on knowledge supremacy, an industry-wide regime, and research for empowerment.

Purpose This study aims to acknowledge that most Indonesian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) experience slow growth. It highlighted that this sluggishness is because of some falsification of Indonesia’s ecological psychology. It focuses on investigating the situated cognition that probably supports this falsification, such as affordance, a community of practice, embodiment and the legitimacy of peripheral participation situated cognition and social intelligence theories. Design/methodology/approach This study obtained data from published newspapers between October 2016 and February 2019. The authors used the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis and the J48 C.45 algorithm. The authors analyzed the data using the emergence of news probability for both the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and Indonesian society and the situated cognition concerning the improvement of the SMEs. The authors inferred ecological psychology from these published newspapers in Indonesia that the engaged actions were still suppressed, in comparison with being and doing. Findings This study contributes to the innovation and leadership policies of the SMEs’ managerial systems and the GoI. After this study identified the backward-looking practices, which the GoI and the people of Indonesia held, this study recommended some policies to help create a forward-looking orientation. The second one is also a policy for the GoI, which needs to reduce the discrepancy between the signified and the signifier, as recommended by the structuralist theory. The last one is suggested by the social learning theory; policies are needed that relate to developing the SMEs’ beliefs, attitudes and behavior. It means that the GoI should prepare the required social contexts, which are in motoric production and reinforcement. Explicitly, the authors argue that the GoI facilitates SMEs by emphasizing the internal learning process. Research limitations/implications The authors present some possibilities for the limitations of this research. The authors took into account that this study assumes the SMEs are all the same, without industrial clustering. It considers that the need for social learning and social cognition by the unclustered industries is equal. Second, the authors acknowledge that Indonesia is an emerging country, and its economic structure has three levels of contributors; the companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange, then the SMEs and the lowest level is the underground economy. Third, the authors did not distinguish the levels of success for the empowerment programs that are conducted by either the GoI or the local governments. This study recognizes that the authors did not measure success levels. It means that the authors only focused on the knowledge content. Practical implications From these pieces of evidence, this study constructed its strategies. The authors offer three kinds of policies. The first is the submission of special allocation funds from which the GoI and local governments develop their budgets for the SMEs’ social learning and social cognition. The second is the development of social learning and social cognition’s curricula for both the SMEs’ owners and executive officers. The third is the need for a national knowledge repository for all the Indonesian SMEs. This repository is used for the dissemination of knowledge. Originality/value This study raises argumental novelties with some of the critical reasoning. First, the authors argue that the sluggishness of the Indonesian SMEs is because of some fallacies in their social cognition. This social cognition is derived from the cultural knowledge that the GoI and people of Indonesia disclosed in the newspapers. This study shows the falsifications from the three main perspectives of the structuration, structuralist and social learning theories. Second, this study can elaborate on the causal factor for the sluggishness of Indonesia’s SMEs, which can be explained by philosophical science, especially its fallacies (Hundleby, 2010; Magnus and Callender, 2004). The authors expand the causal factors for each gap in every theory, which determined the SMEs’ sluggishness through the identification of inconsistencies in each dimension of their structuration, structuralism and social learning. This study focused on the fallacy of philosophical science that explains the misconceptions about the SMEs’ improvement because of faulty reasoning, which causes the wrong moves to be made in the future (Dorr, 2017; Pielke, 1999).

As per newspapers and national news reports, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia, currently 26,574 in number, are spreading widely. The transformation of SMEs to large, mature business entities is slow. This study investigates the sluggish transformation of SMEs in Indonesia and offers new explanations for the sluggishness, focusing on knowledge empowerment instead of financial aspects. A new development model was constructed with an aim to enhance SMEs. This study serves as research with a paradigm of constructivism, prioritizing knowledge empowerment. Executive officers of SMEs should aim for the construction of conceptual knowledge of social networks and social cognition in a sequential-ordered logic to achieve organizational readiness and readiness for change. They, moreover, internalize these concepts to transform SMEs into large, mature business entities with high levels of competitiveness, leadership engagement, dynamic capabilities, and profound sustainabilities.

This study investigates: (1) How do the Indonesian SMEs posit sociodynamic factors and disruptive innovation to gain resilience and sustainability? (2) How do they behave when employing sociodynamic factors and disruptive innovation? (3) Why do they formulate strategic policies for the sociodynamic factors and then innovate disruptively? This research infers that those SMEs posit sociodynamic factors to increase their businesses’ capacity by expanding their social networks and building synergy and business alliances with others. These SMEs intensively catch information about future probable economic benefits to their internal businesses. Moreover, they encourage themselves to carry out disruptive innovations that create distinctive products and new market segments. The authors designed this research method with a qualitative approach. There are three methods of data collection: in-depth interviews, observations, and document studies. Furthermore, this research selects informants from Indonesian SMEs using purposive criteria, such as their total assets or having a net income above USD 1 million (IDR 14 billion), with no restrictions on their field of business. Thus, this study firstly raises reasons why Indonesian SMEs have overcome economic downturns using sociodynamic factors and disruptive innovation. Second, the researcher shows that the Indonesian Ministry of SMEs issued policies with a fallacy, focusing on the digital economy only. Otherwise, this ministry should encourage SMEs to have a bundled knowledge of sociodynamics and disruptive innovation. Third, this study contradicts the evidence from the barriers to the Indonesian SMEs’ capability enhancements in digital transformation. Otherwise, this study evidenced that most Indonesian SMEs adopt low-single-platform information.