The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effects of competence networks on corporate branding in B2B SMEs and to develop a conceptual model of these effects. After reviewing the relevant literature that explores the field, eight components of corporate branding in an effective growth stage of an SME have been identified. Founders Alliance is a competence network in Sweden that was chosen as a case for our study. Representatives of five B2B SMEs within Founders Alliance were interviewed in order to understand what components of corporate branding the competence network influences. The study shows that even though B2B SMEs join competence networks for other reasons than improving their corporate branding, the corporate branding nonetheless is affected. However, the eight components of corporate branding are affected differently. Competence networks have no effect on three out of eight components of corporate branding, namely, controlling the corporate personality, assuring employees’ involvement and maintaining corporate image. Competence networks have possible effects on emphasizing brand-oriented strategic thinking, maintaining corporate identity and maintaining corporate brand communications. Finally, competence networks have an effect on managing corporate branding relationships and monitoring with feedback.

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are a definitive driving force of economic stability in the marketplace due to the number of jobs created by the small and medium sized business sector and there is a positive influence on a country’s national economy. While a considerable amount of research focuses on SME sustainability, empirical tests on the factors influencing sustainability of SMEs have not been piloted and researched to the completest prospective. The primary purpose of this study was to identify the determining factors that influence the sustainability of selected small and medium-sized enterprises. The empirical investigation was conducted among 135 SME owners and/-or managers in the Potchefstroom area of the North West province of South Africa. The methodology included the sampling procedure, data collection, questionnaire development and statistical techniques later used due to the nature of responses. Results were analysed with regard to the descriptive statistics and correlations between questions included in the questionnaire. The results of this study concluded that there are certain factors considered as important contributors for SME sustainability. The importance of this study is the contribution of a sustainability framework which will aid SMEs in the management of sustainability within their enterprises. The further development of a SME programme to equip the management members could be derived from the results in an attempt to ensure the encouragement of this very important commercial driver of the economy. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Previous research noticed a conflict between audit quality and efficiency that has been discussed when applying International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) in the audit of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, there is a lack of research that concerns ISAs affect on audit quality and efficiency in the same study. Hence, the following research question was formulated: How has the implementation of International Standards on Auditing in Sweden affected audit quality and efficiency in the audit of small and medium-sized enterprises? Based on the perceptions of the interviewees, the implementation of ISAs has resulted in clearer risk assessment and increased use of analytical procedures, thereby improved audit quality. Further, ISAs have increased the hours spent on internal control, which impair audit efficiency since this activity is not judged as important when gathering audit evidence. This conflict between audit quality and efficiency is mostly explained by the shall requirements of ISAs since many of these are not applicable in the audit of SMEs. Our findings indicate a need to adapt ISAs and to allow deviations from shall requirements. The outcome would be that ISAs are closer to fulfil their aim in the audit of SMEs, which is higher audit quality without the loss of efficiency.

This research examines the recent global financial crisis’ (GFC) impact on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and analyses governments’ responses. According to most literature, SMEs already faced obstacles prior to the GFC, such as paying high taxes, overcoming low profitability, being affected by rising business costs, finding qualified labour, dealing with increasing competition, etc. The GFC has had serious repercussions for SMEs with respect to financing, markets, and liquidity. In order to explore in depth the governments’ responses, qualitative methods are employed to test the following three research questions: 1) To what extent did governments aim to assist SMEs to survive the GFC? What types of programs have been implemented to address new and existing obstacles? 2) Did governments apply appropriate strategic initiatives to realize their goals? If the initiatives could not achieve the governments’ original goals, what obstacles did they address? 3) Did governments tend to help SMEs more after the GFC? Did governments give up on disadvantaged firms or did they try to help them survive the crisis? Analysis revealed that, as a result of the GFC, governments developed programs aimed at new obstacles and at some of the existing ones. The aims did not differ materially for developed and less-developed economies. Financing and taxation programs tended to be designed to achieve their goals directly, where other programs tended to achieve them in a more indirect manner. Overall, government initiatives covered most of the serious obstacles faced by SMEs and government assistance programs aimed at SMEs tended to have been augmented in light of the GFC.

Despite its name, Corporate Social Responsibility is not exclusively a concept for large corporations; however, previous studies have primarily focused on CSR within larger firms. As Small and Medium sized Enterprises both possess unique characteristics, and are important actors in the global economy, this is an area that deserves deeper research. As pressure from internal and external stakeholders are mounting, firms needs to ensure that they are following the current rules of the game. As such, firms put pressure on their suppliers, in order to protect their business. Consequently, a failure to cope with this pressure from the supplier’s part is a potential source for a conflict. Thus, the actual CSR standards used by a focal firm, has a direct link to a potential conflict within an offshoring relationship. Hence, this thesis aims to investigate how Swedish SMEs apply CSR policies and activities regarding social issues in their organisations, and how these policies and activities affect conflicts between Swedish SMEs, and their foreign suppliers. Three Swedish SMEs where interviewed, and their CSR activities, and conflict management were analysed. While all the three firms used CSR to a various degree, this research suggests that the nature and direction of the CSR activities are largely determined by the industry in which the firm operates. Furthermore, SMEs typically lack the power to enforce their CSR standards on their suppliers. However, SMEs can act in the roles of supervisors, in order to communicate that CSR is an important aspect within a relationship. The case companies also illustrated that clear goals of CSR activities within SMEs, connected to the actual business goals, aids in the establishment of CSR in small firms. Finally, none of the three case firms experienced any conflicts with their suppliers, based on social issues within CSR. Instead, this research suggests that SMEs avoid conflicts, by emphasising a careful selection of suppliers.

Research to date discovered two gaps restricts the existing service innovation theories from full support for SMEs - who also require good service innovation theory to innovate and to survive in the fast-pacing market - which are: goods-thinking-based service innovation logic and incomprehensible service innovation theory for SMEs. In this research, we share and enhance the vision of system thinking researchers - interaction plays the very basis and important role in service value creating and delivering - as our theory foundation. Founding on this interaction-centric notion, we propose an easy-to-adapt service innovation methodology which suggests that SMEs could do service innovation by adjusting business interactions, and justify it with a comprehensive model evaluated by simulation techniques and a prototype supporting information system mechanism to provide support for SME users. Last but not the least, at the end of this research, we re-examine the system thinking framework with our discoveries, and signaled a possible adjusting direction of the framework for more value-oriented purposes. From the practical view, we identify a way to extend the current system thinking theory to a practical model for real world SME’s service innovation purposes. For the academic research, our interaction-centric service innovation methodology is believed to enhance the to-date system thinking theories. In addition, we also identify several future possibilities for academic researchers in this field to discover.

Increasingly, communities in regional areas are turning to sports events of a small scale to bring new money into their local economy, provide employment, and provide intangible benefits such as increased community pride. Sports events held on an irregular basis can attract visitors from outside a host community, thus resulting in an increase in business during slow periods and possibly promote the host region as a tourist destination after an event has been staged.In many instances, sponsorship has proven to be the financial lifeblood of sport tourism events held in regional areas, and often provides a majority of the revenue necessary to sustain the successful staging of such events. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) frequently provide the sponsorship necessary to stage such events, owing to the fact that large businesses are sparse in regional areas.The academic community has paid little attention to the sponsorship nexus between SMEs and regional sport tourism events, which this study aimed to address. Grounded in the interpretivist social sciences paradigm, this qualitative study examined five case studies through interviewing five SME owner/managers and five managers of regional sport tourism events. Areas examined included perceptions of sponsorship, reasons why SMEs provided sponsorship to regional sport tourism events, sponsorship leveraging, evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness, and how sponsorships were initiated between SMEs and regional sport tourism events.The results of this research found that the event managers and SME sponsors shared differing perceptions of what constitutes ‘sponsorship’. Volunteer event managers tended to view sponsorship in a somewhat philanthropic manner, while professional event managers were well aware of the importance of reciprocating a return on investment to their sponsors. Sponsorships in this context were initiated either through formal request or networks of personal contacts between SMEs and event organising committees. The sponsorships studied were found to be highly informal in nature and bound by gentlemen’s agreements, as opposed to legally binding contracts.The primary reasons driving SMEs to sponsor such events were related to supporting their local community and to be seen as socially responsible. Engaging in sponsorship to achieve bottom-line objectives were secondary to community involvement, which confirmed findings from similar studies conducted previously.The results also indicated that sponsorship leveraging and evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness did occur, albeit with varying degrees of success. Both sponsors and event managers tended to exhibit low levels of proficiency in being able to carry out effective sponsorship leveraging and evaluations, and as such leveraging and evaluation techniques employed in these sponsorships tended to be unsophisticated and inexpensive to execute. Only one of the five events studied provided any written post-event feedback to their sponsors.

Increasingly, communities in regional areas are turning to sports events of a small scale to bring new money into their local economy, provide employment, and provide intangible benefits such as increased community pride. Sports events held on an irregular basis can attract visitors from outside a host community, thus resulting in an increase in business during slow periods and possibly promote the host region as a tourist destination after an event has been staged.In many instances, sponsorship has proven to be the financial lifeblood of sport tourism events held in regional areas, and often provides a majority of the revenue necessary to sustain the successful staging of such events. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) frequently provide the sponsorship necessary to stage such events, owing to the fact that large businesses are sparse in regional areas.The academic community has paid little attention to the sponsorship nexus between SMEs and regional sport tourism events, which this study aimed to address. Grounded in the interpretivist social sciences paradigm, this qualitative study examined five case studies through interviewing five SME owner/managers and five managers of regional sport tourism events. Areas examined included perceptions of sponsorship, reasons why SMEs provided sponsorship to regional sport tourism events, sponsorship leveraging, evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness, and how sponsorships were initiated between SMEs and regional sport tourism events.The results of this research found that the event managers and SME sponsors shared differing perceptions of what constitutes ‘sponsorship’. Volunteer event managers tended to view sponsorship in a somewhat philanthropic manner, while professional event managers were well aware of the importance of reciprocating a return on investment to their sponsors. Sponsorships in this context were initiated either through formal request or networks of personal contacts between SMEs and event organising committees. The sponsorships studied were found to be highly informal in nature and bound by gentlemen’s agreements, as opposed to legally binding contracts.The primary reasons driving SMEs to sponsor such events were related to supporting their local community and to be seen as socially responsible. Engaging in sponsorship to achieve bottom-line objectives were secondary to community involvement, which confirmed findings from similar studies conducted previously.The results also indicated that sponsorship leveraging and evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness did occur, albeit with varying degrees of success. Both sponsors and event managers tended to exhibit low levels of proficiency in being able to carry out effective sponsorship leveraging and evaluations, and as such leveraging and evaluation techniques employed in these sponsorships tended to be unsophisticated and inexpensive to execute. Only one of the five events studied provided any written post-event feedback to their sponsors.

Titel: Best Practice inom Benchmarking; Hur små och medelstora företag använder förebilder och jämförelser Nivå: C-uppsats i ämnet företagsekonomi Författare: Robert Eriksson & Evelina Skoglund Handledare: Tomas Källqvist & Stig Sörling Datum: 2015 – januari.   Syfte: Enligt tidigare forskning existerar det en problematik för SME att använda konceptet benchmarking, de befintliga modeller och tillvägagångssätt är främst anpassade för större organisationer. Syftet med studien är därmed av skapa en förståelse kring hur SME arbetar med förebilder och jämförelser i enlighet med best practice. Metod: Studien antar ett hermeneutiskt och socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv och använder en deduktiv ansats. Den teoretiska referensramen har byggts upp genom att sammanställa den tidigare forskningen under teman. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in ifrån fem SME genom en kvalitativ metod med en fallstudiedesign där semistrukturerade intervjuer och öppna intervjufrågor har använts. Den teoretiska referensramen har sedan ställts mot det empiriska materialet för att belysa skillnader och likheter. Resultat & slutsats: Studien tyder på att SME ständigt arbetar med jämförelser och ser till förebilder. Deras arbetssätt skiljer sig dock från tidigare forskning, då de arbetar mer ostrukturerat och använder en ständig öppenhet för att få nya idéer. Det framkommer också att ledningens roll har en stor betydelse. Resultatet visar att dessa SME använder best practice, men även att se ser till worst practice. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Utifrån denna studie ser vi det intressant att vidare se både kvantitativa och kvalitativa studier som fokuserar på begreppet worst practice, vi skulle även se det intressant att belysa ledningens roll inom konceptet för att få en djupare förståelse för dess vikt.   Uppsatsens bidrag: Det bidrag som studien genererar visar på att SME arbetar med jämförelser på ett mer ostrukturerat sätt än de presenterade modellerna. Den visar även att de ser till worst practice och inte bara best practice då de använder konceptet. Nyckelord: Best practice, SME, benchmarking, strukturlöst, worst practice öppenhet.

Even though family firms play a significant role in the economy, research regarding family firms is relatively new and is still an emerging field of study. Family firms possess specific characteristics distinguishing them from nonfamily firms. Moreover, there are other issues within the family firm research that has not been fully explored, and one of them is management accounting and control. Researchers have suggested that more research is needed on performance measurement focusing on both financial and non-financial information. A tool that includes both financial and non-financial measures is the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). As family firms are influenced by its location, the phenomenon known as the spirit of Gnosjö will be taken into consideration throughout the thesis. The aim of this thesis is to explore the usage of the perspectives comprising the BSC in SME family firms operating within the region of Gnosjö. In order to fulfill the purpose, a case study was carried out. The data was collected by conducting interviews. Further, the sampling process resulted in interviewing 13 participants in four companies. The findings show that all four companies use the perspectives comprising the BSC, however, the findings also indicate that the usage is influenced by familiness and the companies’ location. Further, this study confirms that using stewardship theory in family firms is suitable, aligning with previous research, specifically in SME family firms. Finally, we can conclude that formalized management accounting systems are not fully prevalent among the family firms.