Financial Infrastructure and Access to Finance for European SMEs

Andrieş, Alin Marius; Marcu, Nicu; Oprea, Florin; Tofan, Mihaela

doi:10.3390/su10103400

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…However, SMEs face serious difficulties in accessing sustainable finance, both via banks and financial markets. It is worthy of note that smaller businesses have reduced access to financial markets [3], and they suffer more restrictions regarding credit [4]. These limitations are exacerbated in the particular case of sustainable finance due to insufficient regulation and knowledge, and implementation of sustainability criteria by SMEs [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade Credit as a Sustainable Resource during an SME’s Life Cycle

2019

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Inadequate access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can present a major impediment to SMEs’ contribution towards driving sustainable economic growth. The aim of this article is to investigate the role of life cycle on SME financing decisions while focusing on trade credit. To this end, we study whether trade credit and its firm-factor determinants differ depending on the stage of life cycle of the SMEs. For the empirical analysis, a sample is employed of manufacturing SMEs operating in 12 European Union countries over the period 2008–2014 and a panel data model with fixed effects is applied. We find that the business life cycle influences trade credit and that this influence is stronger in young firms, although this relation is non-linear across the firms’ life cycle. We further show that the impact of firm-factor determinants on trade credit differs across the business life cycle in terms of magnitude levels. Our results demonstrate that the business life cycle matters when analysing trade credit, and it should therefore be considered when managers and policymakers strive to solve the financial problems of an SME and to consequently incorporate the SME into the sustainable economy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade Credit as a Sustainable Resource during an SME’s Life Cycle

2019

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“…Business organizations, regardless of their size and the nature of business, have given enough attention to invest in tangible and intangible resources to gain SCP [1]. In the last decade, a burgeoning literature has discussed the factors that significantly contribute to firm performance and success such as financial capabilities [2][3][4], networking [5,6], IT capabilities [7], innovation [8][9][10], business model innovation [11,12], intellectual capital [13,14] and corporate social responsibility [4,15], etc. in developed and emerging economies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do International Capabilities and Resources Configure Firm’s Sustainable Competitive Performance? Research within Pakistani SMEs

Ullah

Khattak

et al. 2018

Sustainability

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Market conditions in emerging economies are often reported as less stable and volatile. The business sector, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies, face several shortcomings including lack of resources, lack of finance, lack of support and lack of human skills, etc. Hence, they look to international support and resources to survive in a long run in the dynamic markets. This research examines the role of international finance, international technology, international experience and international network in SME firms’ Sustainable Competitive Performance (SCP) in Pakistan. SMEs are a major source of employment and value creation and, therefore, are very relevant to Pakistan economic and social development and improved sustainability. Hypotheses were tested on the data set collected from 304 emerging SMEs. After Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was applied in Analysis of a Moment Structures (AMOS), the results indicate that international finance, international experience and international network significantly positively contribute to SCP, but international technology is not a significant predictor of SCP. This research recommends top managers and policy makers to give enough attention to the particular international resources and capabilities in order to configure their firm survival in the turbulent market.

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“…Globalization has brought a threatening competition among organizations either business or non-business, towards the new product development. To build the new products that result in sustainable competitive performance, some managers rely on tangible resources such as adopting a new technology [2,3] accessing sufficient financial capital [3,4]), and infrastructure [5,6], etc. However, others have faith in intangible resources such as intellectual capital [7,8], networking [9,10], market knowledge [11,12], and reputation [13,14]), etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, both the strategies (either building new products via tangible or intangible approach) is useful. For instance, one zone of research has given weight to the tangible factors [2,3,6], while others claimed that intangible resources and capabilities are more useful in response to the globalization [15,16]. Resource-Based View (RBV) also states that a firm needs both tangible and intangible resources for its sustainable competitive position and superior performance [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpacking the importance of intangible skills in new product development and sustainable business performance; strategies for marketing managers

Ali¹,

Li²,

Yang³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Firms need sufficient resources (tangible and intangible) and capabilities to build unique products due to customers' demands and choices, market competition and globalization. Despite sufficient resources, many firms cannot build new products according to the customers' preferences and market trends due to lack of marketing capabilities, lack of skilled marketing staff and lack of experienced managers. However, studies have not yet examined what types of intangible skills of marketing managers are prominent for building new products. This study examines the importance of the intangible skills; intellectual captial, financial literacy and business experience in new product development that results in sustainable competitive performance. We used a mixed-method approach; questionnaire (283) and interviews (16) for data collection and then applied structural equation modelling for testing the hypotheses. The results revealed that all the three intangible skills; intellectual captial, financial literacy and business experience significant influence new product development and sustainable competitive performance. However, considering the relative importance, financial literacy and intellectual capital are the most significant predictors of sustainable competitive performance and new product development respectively. Moreover, new product development fully mediates the path between intellectual capital and sustainable competitive performance while it partially mediates the link between financial literacy, business experience and sustainable competitive performance. Considering the importance of tangible resources, our study scrutinized that financial resources have a significant influence on new product development and sustainable competitive performance while technological resources do not play a significant role. This research recommends firms to emphasize on the improvement of intangible skills of the managers in order to build new products that result in sustainable competitive position. This study also recommends marketing managers to improve their financial skills and experience by participating in various seminars and workshops that can spur their new idea generation and new product development capabilities.

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Financial Infrastructure and Access to Finance for European SMEs

Cited by 21 publications

References 38 publications

Trade Credit as a Sustainable Resource during an SME’s Life Cycle

Trade Credit as a Sustainable Resource during an SME’s Life Cycle

Do International Capabilities and Resources Configure Firm’s Sustainable Competitive Performance? Research within Pakistani SMEs

Unpacking the importance of intangible skills in new product development and sustainable business performance; strategies for marketing managers

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