Networking has shown to benefit SMEs in terms of increasing resource acquisition and knowledge transfer, two vital components in SME growth and survival. However, previous research has indicated that SME network management is largely determined by the strategic orientation of the firm, which in turn, is influenced by the owner/manager. Third party involvement has moreover been suggested to positively influence networking participation by facilitating the overall networking process for SMEs. In the present study, the moderating effect of non-profit, municipal third party involvement, on the relationship between firm growth orientation and network intensity and range, is thus examined.

Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) analysis and financial ratios are all managerial accounting and financial accounting tools that can help managers to make informative business decisions within their organisations. In addition, certain strategic tools such as Porters five forces, SWOT analysis, identifying of core principles, the compilation of the vision and mission statement will empower the small to medium business to be successful as an entrepreneurial venture. The problem arises in many small to medium business (SMEs), that once growth occurs and important decisions needs to be made, which may include relocation of the business and buying of capital equipment. The owners of these ventures struggle to make informative decisions. The general objective of this research is to apply financial and managerial accounting principles as well as strategy principles to a small business called Envirocare Laboratories. The aim of this research is to empower the small business owner with these tools to ensure success in future ventures. Literature on financial, managerial and strategic principles advises that the objectives, measurements and targets should be aligned with the SMEs long-term goals and performance. An empirical study done with the owner of the SME called Envirocare, has indicated serious shortcomings in terms of understanding how long-term goals are defined and the objectives achieved. The most important conclusion includes that certain capital expenditure projects have been viable, that the SME has been adding value to the economy and that the current strategy needs to be revised to include long-term goal planning. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) analysis and financial ratios are all managerial accounting and financial accounting tools that can help managers to make informative business decisions within their organisations. In addition, certain strategic tools such as Porters five forces, SWOT analysis, identifying of core principles, the compilation of the vision and mission statement will empower the small to medium business to be successful as an entrepreneurial venture. The problem arises in many small to medium business (SMEs), that once growth occurs and important decisions needs to be made, which may include relocation of the business and buying of capital equipment. The owners of these ventures struggle to make informative decisions. The general objective of this research is to apply financial and managerial accounting principles as well as strategy principles to a small business called Envirocare Laboratories. The aim of this research is to empower the small business owner with these tools to ensure success in future ventures. Literature on financial, managerial and strategic principles advises that the objectives, measurements and targets should be aligned with the SMEs long-term goals and performance. An empirical study done with the owner of the SME called Envirocare, has indicated serious shortcomings in terms of understanding how long-term goals are defined and the objectives achieved. The most important conclusion includes that certain capital expenditure projects have been viable, that the SME has been adding value to the economy and that the current strategy needs to be revised to include long-term goal planning. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The mobile payments industry has in recent years experienced large growth and rapid changes. Several different actors are trying to capture the market, to get enough users of their system to reach critical mass. This study investigates how a small Swedish mobile payments company have utilized its business network in their strive to reach critical mass, both in their domestic market and internationally.  The study intends to describe how the company has developed its network and which stages of the network development that have been the most important.  We utilize the ARA-model to analyze the business network and the Uppsala Model and born global theory to define how the company has internationalized.  Our main results indicate that our case company has the mindset of a born global but the particulars of the industry have forced it to internationalize following the Uppsala Model. The development of the business network have to a large part been dependent of the initial activities since this builds the credibility needed to work with large actors.  Moreover the business network is found to not only help the company, but to be essential for their plans on reaching critical mass.

Der Transformationsprozess in der Mongolei stellt besonders für den wirtschaftlichen Bereich eine große Herausforderung dar. Bei der Umgestaltung von der Plan-zur Marktwirtschaft nehmen dabei Führungskräfte eine Schlüsselfunktion ein, da sie wesentlichen Einfluss auf den Gestaltungsprozess der sich neu orientierenden Unternehmen haben. Die Arbeit untersucht das Verhältnis der Führungskräfte zu ihren Mitarbeitern vor dem Hintergrund neocharismatischer Theorieansätze und kommt zum dem Schluss, dass es Hinweise auf transformationale Führung gibt. Dabei nehmen Gruppenprozesse, die Person der Führungskraft sowie traditionelle und sozialistisch sozialisierte Elemente zentrale Rollen ein. Des Weiteren gibt es Verweise auf Konzepte der Authentizität und der Geteilten Führung. / The postsocialist transformation process in Mongolia represents - particularly for the ecnomic sector - a major challenge.With the transformation of the planned economy to a free enterprise economy top executive personnel, especially entrepreneurs, have a key function, since they have substantial influence on the reorganization process of the newly orienting enterprises. The dissertation examines the relationship of entrepreneurs and top executives to their employees against the background of neocharismatic theory approaches and comes to the conclusion that there are thoroughly indications referring to a transformational leadership. Group processes, the personalities of top executives as well as traditional and socialistically socialized elements play a central role. Moreover there are references to concepts of authenticity and shared leadership.

Trust is a crucial element in business relationships. The early internationalization of a firm is interesting as a context for studying trust-building processes for several reasons. The internationalization is related to risks just as trust is. New business relationships are opened up, situations in which trust is a critical element. But internationalization is also connected to circumstances wherein trust-building is particularly challenging to achieve.   This dissertation increases understanding of the process of trust-building in a firm’s early internationalization. It represents a view where trust is not an irrational act but a manageable act of faith in people, relationships, and social institutions. The communication of trustworthiness is argued to be one of the critical empirical problems in the early stages of starting up a relationship with a party on a new market. To manage this communication an ability to communicate must be fine-tuned along the way. Trust-facilitators in the form of organizations and individuals can also strategically be used to strengthen the trust-building process.   By following three Swedish high-tech SMEs along their way into the Japanese market, lessons have been learnt on how actors have provided a more or less beneficial environment for trust-building to take place and in this way actively affected the building of trust. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2008

In today’s technological environment, organizational capabilities for managing change are regarded as important for business survival and growth. In particular, dynamic organizational capabilities have attracted considerable research interest over the past decade. Recently several studies have suggested that dynamic capabilities may be associated with a concept termed organizational fitness. What is not clear in this emerging research stream is whether firms with superior organizational fitness are more likely to prosper than unfit firms. In addition, relatively little attention has been directed toward creating a systemic model of dynamic capabilities that explains organizational fitness. The nature of fitness has been intensively debated in the biological sciences over a period of several decades. A confusing variety of fitness definitions have emerged from this literature. The lack of an agreed definition of fitness has resulted in several streams of research on organizational fitness. As a result of this fragmentation, there has been little progress toward answering the question of how to measure organizational fitness. The fragmentation in organizational fitness literature is problematic, because research into the relationship between organizational fitness and firm performance is not well-advanced. In this study, organizational fitness is defined in terms of organizational capability to produce variation. By defining fitness in this way, the tautological criticisms leveled against existing concepts of fitness are avoided. The definition of fitness proposed here accommodates both an evolutionary learning perspective and a perspective of strategic management, and thus reflects an integrative approach to the concept. A notable feature of the literature exploring organizational fitness is that it has been focused on large corporations. However, a growing body of literature suggests that SMEs are different from large firms and need to be examined in their own right. SMEs are important contributors to business in most countries throughout the world. This study addresses that perceived gap in the literature and asks: What relationship, if any, is there between organizational fitness and business performance for SMEs? Theory is developed and tested here by means of a large sample of SMEs in New Zealand. Two distinct aspects of organizational fitness are identified for SMEs. First, survival fitness is associated with generic combinative capabilities. Second, growth fitness is associated with knowledge assimilation and transformation. SME growth fitness and survival fitness are each found to be positively related to business performance under a variety of contexts. Further, an increase of growth fitness and survival fitness provides a means of alleviating selection pressures for SMEs. That is, dynamic capabilities of knowledge assimilation and integration are found to be positively associated with SME business performance. In contrast to studies that advocate SME development of context-dependent capabilities, the findings of this study suggest an alternative perspective: variable selection pressures can be influenced by SMEs with a high level of survival and growth fitness.

Work-life balance is a dominant discourse in contemporary Western society. It has been built on a language of large organizations, hence has not been widely considered in relation to the small-medium enterprise sector. As a consequence, scant research has been conducted on the experiences of immigrant entrepreneurs and work-life balance within the small-medium enterprise sector in New Zealand, a country largely populated with migrants and small businesses which account for 96 per cent of the total enterprises. This study aims to fill this gap by firstly exploring the interpretations of the concept of work-life balance by Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs and, secondly, the main challenges they face in achieving work-life balance. This is done by drawing on literatures including those on work-life balance, small-medium enterprises, and immigrant entrepreneurship theories. Primary research was conducted using a critical interpretive approach where the researcher is an insider to the study. This philosophical and methodological approach makes it possible to give a minority group a voice to effect social change and gain further research attention. Fifteen Chinese business owners, chosen from a variety of industries within the Auckland region, participated in this study. A qualitative methodological technique and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data for the case study on these entrepreneurs. The results indicate that the majority do not enjoy a sense of work-life balance because they take on filial obligations important for their own culture. They need to work hard to generate financial profit for the benefit of family. About half of them work more than 60 hours per week and three works longer than 70 hours weekly. The motivation for them to work in this way is to provide their family with desirable housing and to enable their children to meet higher education goals. This study challenges the applicability of the work-life balance discourse among the immigrant entrepreneurs who perceive the concept differently based on their cultural values. The results emphasise the need for business case studies from Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs and research attention on contemporary human resource topics to be given to minority groups.

<p>Vi vill få en ökad förståelse i hur svenska SME:s etablerar sig på den afrikanska marknaden. Uppsatsen är en kvalitativ studie där vi utfört intervjuer med regionala företag och organisationer. De företag och organisationer som ingår i arbetet är Sustainable Sweden, Norba, Norden samt Regionförbundet Kalmar län. Anledningen till att dessa valdes var att de har kontakt med den afrikanska marknaden. De teoriområden vår uppsats utgår ifrån är huvudsakligen etableringsform, etableringsprocess och kultur. Empirin utgör en sammanställning och jämförelse mellan de intervjuade företagen i fråga. De slutsatser vi har funnit är; vikten av kunskap vid en etablering i Afrika, vikten av rätt etableringsform, lärande i relationerna samt fördelarna med en tidig etablering i Afrika.</p>

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att belysa faktorer som påverkar SMF:s marknadsföring samtidigt som studien söker att kartlägga innehållsmarknadsföringens tillämpningsgrad hos studieobjekten. Metod: I studien används den kvalitativa forskningsmetoden. Tio telefonintervjuer ut fördes på hälsokostbutiker i Stockholm, Göteborg och Malmö. Urvalsgruppen valdes utifrån ett bekvämlighetsurval. Slutsatser: Innehållsmarknadsföring tillämpas av tre av dem tio SMF inom urvalsgruppen. Metoden anses ha en låg tillämpningsgrad. Studien har framgångsrikt belyst faktorer som påverkar urvalsgruppens marknadsföring med hjälp av den teoretiska referensramen. Dessa faktorer är närverkande som marknadsföringsverktyg, empirisk omvärldskontakt som inlärningsprocess för marknadsföring, slumpmässighet i marknadsföringsplanering och resursknapphet som påverkande kraft i marknadsföringsplanering.