Success in challenging times: Key lessons for UK SMEs

Towards a new framework for SMEs success: a literature review

“…Disney et al (2003) further concludes that the slowdown in growth in older SMEs is due to: (i) a slackening in entrepreneurial motivation, once the business owner has achieved a satisfactory level of income; (ii) the firm may have moved beyond its minimum efficiency level and (iii) diseconomies may have emerged with the need to employ and manage others. Regardless of the rates of growth, and as already discussed earlier, SMEs exhibit high risks of failure in the first years of operation (Baldwin et al, 2000;Disney et al, 2003;Franco and Haase, 2009;Gray et al, 2012;Ropega, 2011) supporting the argument that the younger the company is, the more likely it is to fail.…”

“…More recent data for the UK (Gray et al, 2012) further support that successful SMEs proactively monitor their cash flow and liquidity and are likely to use more than one source of finance to both start and sustain their business. According to the same authors, most SMEs only use one source of finance to start the business, the main source being personal or family savings with a smaller proportion using a bank loan.…”

“…Most importantly, and regardless the business environment (country and industry) they operate in, SMEs tend to exhibit high failure rates and poor performance levels (Arasti et al, 2012;Franco and Haase, 2009;Gray et al, 2012;Ropega, 2011) with their success and/or survival receiving an ever increasing attention from academia and professionals alike. This inevitably creates a need for more empirical studies to investigate the impact of the already identified success factors on each individual industry and in a specific country setting.…”

Critical Success Factors for SMEs: An Empirical Study in the UK Chemical Distribution Industry

“…Despite their well-established importance, there is still no universally accepted definition for SMEs with significant variations in different countries (Smallbone et al, 2010;Unger et al, 2011), no single agreed-upon definition of success (Beaver, 2002;Rogoff, Lee, & Suh, 2004), no universally accepted model to incorporate all aspects of small business success (Chawla, Khanna, & Chen, 2010;Lampadarios, Kyriakidou, & Smith, in press) and with knowledge being more fragmented than cumulative (Dobbs & Hamilton, 2007). Most importantly, SMEs tend to exhibit high failure rates and poor performance levels (Arasti, Zandi, & Talebi, 2012;Franco & Haase, 2010;Gray, Saunders, & Goregaokar, 2012;Ropega, 2011) with their success and/or survival receiving an ever-increasing attention from academia and practitioners alike. Business literature features a wide range of success factors through a number of conceptual frameworks that attempt to capture aspects of SMEs success.…”

A Qualitative Perspective of Enterprise Success Factors for SMEs: A case study in the UK Chemical Distribution Industry

“…Despite their well-established importance, there is still no universally accepted definition for SMEs with significant variations in different countries (Smallbone et al, 2010;Unger et al, 2011), no single agreed-upon definition of success (Beaver, 2002;Rogoff et al, 2004), no universally accepted model to incorporate all aspects of small business success (Chawla et al, 2010;Lampadarios et al, in press) and with knowledge being more fragmented than cumulative (Dobbs & Hamilton, 2007). Most importantly, SMEs tend to exhibit high failure rates and poor performance levels (Arasti at al., 2012;Franco & Haase, 2010;Gray et al, 2012;Ropega, 2011) with their success and/or survival receiving an ever-increasing attention from academia and practitioners alike. Business literature features a wide range of success factors through a number of conceptual frameworks that attempt to capture aspects of SMEs success.…”