SME Survey Methodology: Response Rates, Data Quality, and Cost Effectiveness

Newby, R.A.; Watson, John; Woodliff, David

doi:10.1046/j.1540-6520.2003.00037.x

Cited by 112 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Only one reminder was sent due to strict data privacy laws in Austria preventing us from implementing a wave of further reminders, in contrast to the recommendations of the Dillman (2000) protocol. Nevertheless, this response rate can be considered as quite good for an online survey in an SME context and compare favourably with extant studies using such a methodology (Ilieva et al, 2002; Bonometti and Tuang, 2006;Newby et al, 2003).In comparing our respondent firms with those of the overall population of Austrian SMEs, the number of family firms as well as the number of service firms within as well as typical firm size (see 8 was operationalized as the firm's responsiveness to customers and EO was operationalized in terms of its three chief components, namely, proactiveness, innovativeness, and risktaking. All scale items were scored using a Likert-type scale with response options from 1 ("do not agree") to 5 ("strongly agree"), with higher scores indicating higher levels of the construct in question.…”

supporting

confidence: 78%

Implications of customer and entrepreneurial orientations for SME growth

Eggers

Kraus

Hughes

et al. 2013

Management Decision

188

166

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The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. This article is © Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here http://dro.dur.ac.uk/17255/. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 0The implications of customer and entrepreneurial orientations for SME growth 1 IntroductionResearch has long recognized entrepreneurial small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as a major engine of economic growth (Henderson and Weiler, 2010). Understanding the factors behind growth has a broad economic and policy relevance, especially because growth-oriented enterprises are an important source of job creation and revenue generation in market economies (Parker, 2004;Valliere, 2006). Nevertheless, the growth of SMEs is still one of the unsolved puzzles in management and business research (Davidsson et al., 2005; Clarysse et al., 2011). In order to overcome existing liabilities of smallness or newness (e.g., Aldrich and Auster, 1986; Brüderl and Schüßler, 1990), and to be able to compete successfully in the market, firms need to grow at least to some extent (Garnsey, 1998). Accordingly, firm growth has become the major indicator for overall business success within entrepreneurship research (Carton and Hofer, 2006).Firm growth can be influenced by business orientations such as customer orientation (CO) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). However, research on EO and CO provides confusing results to some extent. Although there is a general understanding that these constructs are somehow related to increasing firm success, empirical studies have assumed different relationships among them, have measured them differently, and thus have obtained a battery of different results (Atuahene-Gima and Ko, 2001;Baker and Sinkula, 2009;Barrett and Weinstein, 1998;Becherer and Maurer, 1997; Bhuian et al., 2005; Hult and Ketchen, 2001; Li et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2002; Luo et al. 2005; Matsuno et al., 2002;Miles and Arnold, 1991; Narver, 1998, 2000;Tzokas et al., 2001).In addition, it remains unknown to what extent EO and CO represent distinct business philosophies, or whether these constructs contain negative redundancies. Also, it is not clear if these constructs necessarily lead to SME growth or how the different orientations can be balanced within one firm. One might assume that scoring high on all orientations should contribute to the highest growth potential, but this may not be the case....

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supporting

confidence: 78%

Implications of customer and entrepreneurial orientations for SME growth

Eggers

Kraus

Hughes

et al. 2013

Management Decision

188

166

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This allows us to contribute to theoretical considerations on KIBS and draw inferences regarding the role of KIBS in RIS. Since the response rate is -particularly for SMEs -rather low (Newby et al,(2003) and CEOs in SMEs prefer human interaction rather than anonymous questionnaires (Bartholomew and Smith, 2006), we use a semi-structured questionnaire answered in personal discussions. Furthermore, we argue that conducting in-depth interviews with experts helps to establish a broader theoretical understanding than comparable quantitative approaches in this area (Eisenhardt, 1989;Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge-Intensive Business Services as Credence Goods - A Demand-Side Approach

Feser

Proeger

2015

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) constitute a major source of innovative knowledge for small-and medium-sized enterprises. In regional innovation systems, KIBS play a crucial role in distributing innovations and improving the region's overall innovative capacities. While the specific properties and effects on client firms and sectors have been comprehensively discussed, the internal perspective of client firms, i.e. the processes and problems in selecting, using, evaluating and recommending KIBS, has been neglected to date. Using a qualitative approach, we describe the internal mechanisms and problems of SMEs cooperating with various KIBS and discuss the implications for regional innovation systems from a policy-making perspective. We find that all stages of cooperation of SMEs and KIBS are characterized by strong information asymmetries, distrust and uncertainty about the effects of using external know-how, which yields the interpretation that SMEs perceive KIBS as credence goods. While informal networks are used to reduce information barriers, they regularly prove counterproductive by disseminating worst-case examples. Regional policy aiming at developing instruments for fostering innovative cooperation could thus strengthen formal networks that primarily create trust between KIBS and SMEs to systematically reduce mutual suspicions and information asymmetries. Terms of use: Documents in

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“…In total, 607 surveys were completed, for a response rate of 6.1 per cent, which compares favourably with other samples targeting top management team members using online surveys (Newby et al, 2003). We tested for the effects associated with nonresponse bias, but no differences were found between early (first-wave) and late (last-wave) respondents for any of the study's key variables (Kanuk and Berenson, 1975).…”

Section: Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

The relevance of slack resource availability and networking effectiveness for entrepreneurial orientation

Hughes¹,

Eggers²,

Kraus³

et al. 2015

IJESB

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(2015) 'The relevance of slack resource availability and networking eectiveness for entrepreneurial orientation.', International journal of entrepreneurship and small business., 26 (1). pp. 116-138. Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJESB.2015.071323Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Seminal studies by Miller (1983), Slevin (1989, 1991), and Lumpkin and Dess (1996) theorised and partially tested the effects of organisational structure and contingencies in the internal environment of the firm as determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour (or an orientation) within firms. Studies into corporate entrepreneurship have also highlighted the provision of particular organisational conditions as drivers of an internal firm environment that encourages and enables entrepreneurial behaviour (Hornsby et al., 2002;Ireland et al., 2009). However, an assumption remains that in the presence of particular organisational conditions, an EO will then emerge and be enacted within a firm. We feel this oversimplifies the problem.A basis for our concern stems from the work of Sine et al. (2006) Gronum et al., 2012;Newbert, 2007) as determinants of the system of constraints impinging on entrepreneurial activity (de Brentani et al., 2010;Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978;Voss et al., 2008).Given this discussion, we draw on the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991) and its recent Penrose-rooted extension about resource orchestration to investigate the following research questions: 1) How does slack resource availability affect the SME's EO? 2) Does networking effectiveness influence the EO-firm performance relationship, and if so, to what extent? 3) Does firm performance influence slack resource availability? 5Through an empirical investigation of 607 German SMEs, we offer theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions. First, although entrepreneurial firms depend on their ability to employ resources more than other types of firms (Kreiser, 2011;Zahra et al., 2009), the effect of slack resource availability on EO has not been previously considered.Available slack resources allow firms to adapt to complex competitive landscapes (Bourgeois, 1981;Cyert and March, 1963;Penrose, 1959), thus influencing the performance frontier of firms (George, 2005)., Understanding the role of slack resource availability is therefore important because it 'provides resources for creative and innovative experimentation' (Bourgeois, 1981: 35), and carries...

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SME Survey Methodology: Response Rates, Data Quality, and Cost Effectiveness

Cited by 112 publications

References 35 publications

Implications of customer and entrepreneurial orientations for SME growth

Implications of customer and entrepreneurial orientations for SME growth

Knowledge-Intensive Business Services as Credence Goods - A Demand-Side Approach

The relevance of slack resource availability and networking effectiveness for entrepreneurial orientation

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