Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lebanon are at risk of failure because of the geoeconomic crisis. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies that successful leaders of SMEs use to sustain their businesses during tenuous economic conditions. The target population for the research comprised 6 business leaders of SMEs in Beirut, Lebanon: 3 in the civil security field and 3 in the facilities management field. Kotter's change model theory provided the conceptual framework for this research. Data were gathered from company documents and interviews with SMEs leaders in Beirut. Data were analyzed using Yin's data analysis method, which included compiling the data, disassembling the data, reassembling the data, interpreting the meaning of the data, and concluding the data. Member checking and methodological triangulation were used to add consistency and rigor to the findings. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) leaders of SMEs embedded change management in their organizations to sustain their businesses, (b) leaders of SMEs increased awareness in their organizations, (c) leaders of SMEs succeeded in creating solid organizational and financial structures to ensure a sustainable cash flow, and (d) leaders of SMEs formed niche markets to grow. Leaders of SMEs achieved their strategies by (a) establishing a sense of urgency, (b) forming a powerful guiding coalition by creating awareness in leaders' organizations, (c) empowering others to communicate both organizational and financial visions, and (d) generating short-term wins. The implications for positive social change include the potential to reduce unemployment rates and create new job opportunities by sustaining businesses of SMEs during tenuous economic conditions.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for 92% of all Ghana firms, providing 60% of citizens' employment and contributing about 70% of Ghana's income from gross domestic products. Within the first 5 years of operation, 40% of new businesses fail. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies used by Ghanaian SME manufacturing leaders in the fruit industry to sustain business for longer than 5 years of operation. The conceptual framework for this study was open systems theory and complexity theory. The population for this study was 5 Ghanaian SME manufacturing business leaders in the fruit industry who maintained their businesses longer than 5 years of operation. The data sources were semistructured face-to-face interviews, interview notes, and the organizations' manuals for standard operations. Data collected were transcribed, member checked, analytically coded, and analyzed using Yin's 5-stage method of qualitative data analysis. Four themes emerged: training and capacity building, the need for good equipment and good packaging, the availability of working capital, and the need for target marketing. The implications of this study for positive social change include lowering high unemployment, alleviating poverty, supporting community development, and enhancing economic growth in the country.

<p>Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a global concern and has been adopted by many largemultinational corporations. Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the mostcommon type of business in the EU including Sweden, yet most research on CSR has beenfocused on large corporations. As SMEs run in various settings and there have been littleempirical studies on CSR in SMEs, the purpose of this study is to fill a part of the researchgap and provide an in-depth look at CSR in SME to investigate specific barriers and/oropportunities to addressing CSR. This study reviews the relevant literature of CSR in SMEs.Through semi-constructed interviews with two small-sized organic product companies inSweden, this study analyzed CSR from an SME perspective in a Swedish context by CSRtheory and Resource-Based View (RBV). According to the findings, the main barrier for CSRfor the case companies is financial recourse constraints, while the main opportunity is theircapability for communication. This study contributes and motivates CSR in SMEs bydemonstrating how they understand CSR, how they communicate with both internal andexternal stakeholders of their best practices, and providing examples to share the experiencesfor SMEs.</p>

Background Globalization has opened up new possibilities for firms of all sizes to operate internationally. In that context, especially small- and medium sized companies often have limited resources and market power, which makes efficient relationship building with new intermediaries a key component when entering foreign markets. Therefore, approaching foreign companies and potentially engaging in new business relationships should be a strategic managerial issue. Purpose The main objective is to analyze how Swedish SMEs in the textile industry should approach German buyers in accordance to their preferences, taking cultural differences into account, as well as maintaining and developing the relationship. The focus will primarily be on the on the stages where the initial contact has been made, thus aiming at advancing in the development process. For this to be achieved, Swedish sellers must know what values to communicate to their counterpart. Method A qualitative approach has been used in order answer the purpose of the thesis. We have gathered our data from ten in-depth interviews; five with Swedish sellers and five with German buyers. The essential part of the data collection was done over telephone. Conclusion The most critical components that are found to be vital in developing a successful buyer-seller relationship include trust, satisfaction and commitment with all their related aspects. It was found that the product offer plays a critical role in the Early Stage of the relationship development process. Communication is essential for the building of trust and satisfaction and supplements the actions of commitment shown by the parties. Having an understanding on what values the counterpart appreciates and when these are especially important in the respective stages of the relationship building enables the firm to adapt its relationship marketing to the buyers preferences in a cost efficient and successful way.

Business Administration, Business Process &amp; Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (master), 15 higher education credits, 4FE06E, Spring 2013 Authors: Doruntina Pacarizi and Ya-Hui Hsu Tutor: Petra Andersson Title: Conflicting Goal and its Impact on the Level of Supply Chain Integration between Supply Chain Partners in the Automotive Industry – From Manufacturing SME’s Perspective Background: Supply chain integration assists SMEs to improve their operational performance, however the existing theories in supply chain integration are mostly from the LEs perspective. Therefore this thesis chose to focus on the level of supply chain integration from manufacturing SMEs perspective. Nevertheless supply chain integration is not simple due to conflicting goal, which exists between supply chain partners. Based on previous knowledge, the level of supply chain integration is affected by conflicting goal, which exits between supply chain partners. We believe that this is based on how the conflicting goal has been managed. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to obtain an understanding if the level of integration in the automotive industry between the manufacturing SME and its customer is affected by how the conflicting has been managed. Method: This thesis is a multiple case study and was conducted with a deductive approach. The empirical findings were gathered through qualitative interviews with semi-structured interview guides. Conclusions: The conclusions of this thesis are that the level of supply chain integration, which exists between manufacturing SME and its customer, is low/medium. Furthermore, the conflicting goal, which exists between these partners, are that the demand of delivery and volume flexibility, storage flexibility, demand of quality level and the relatively high manufacturing complexity as well as downstream complexity. Finally, the result of this thesis shows that the level of supply chain integration is affected by how the conflicting goal has been managed.

No description available.

International entrepreneurship (IE) is “a combination of innovative, proactive and risk-seeking behaviour that crosses national borders and is intended to create value in organizations”. The IE literature has been concerned with entrepreneurial behaviour in multiple countries and cross-border studies of entrepreneurship and international activities of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Due to the potential for SMEs to serve as significant sources of export, considerable research has been conducted regarding their internationalization. However, despite attempts to integrate concrete frameworks of international entrepreneurship, some primary issues have not been adequately addressed and IE researchers are faced with challenges including insufficient micro-data for advancing quality research. The main objective of this thesis is to study and explore the limitations on researchers to access governmental data regarding small firms operating internationally and use it for scientific purposes. Despite company data being compiled and publicly available in some countries, such as Germany, other countries, including Canada, have not made any such efforts in a coherent way. There is a significant disconnect in the Canadian context between internationalization and firms’ data. This shortcoming may stem from various sources, including the legal framework in Canada for accessing data and a lack of sufficient financial support and expertise to gather and integrate such data. Furthermore, the type of data available to the research community through statistical institutions were identified and analyzed, as were access methods. With the increasing interest of researchers in accessing data gathered by the government, the formation of anonymized records or anonymized micro-datasets has acquired great importance. Therefore, the primary approach is to explore the extent to which data regarding firms’ characteristics and internationalization activities are currently available to the research community, as well as to ensure the confidentiality of official statistics, most notably in the Canadian context. The research resulted in the confirmation of data availability in Canada through government and statistical organizations. The latter bodies can provide researchers and research organizations access to some data but limitations arise in providing micro-datasets to researchers due to confidentiality issues; these constraints were identified and further analyzed. Moreover, this research has studied methods to overcome these limitations and assess the shortcomings in micro-data in order to advance quality research. Methods and recommendations were introduced and studied to allow researchers access to essential data and information while maintaining confidentiality.

The main purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of entrepreneurial team demographics, environmental scanning and networking on innovativeness. For this purpose, small and medium enterprises in Bursa region were chosen. A total of 74 general managers/owners filled out the questionnaire. Information about company, team members and firms&rsquo / environmental scanning, innovativeness and networking activities was collected. As hypothesized, findings supported the view that entrepreneurial team demographics (age heterogeneity and average educational level), environmental scanning and networking (networking with customers, competitors and particularly with public agencies) play a significant role in innovativeness of SMEs after controlling the significant effect of team size. The results were discussed together with the implications of the findings for managers and on the policies of government, public organizations and educational institutions, strengths and limitations of the study. Some suggestions for future research were made.

<p>This master thesis has been written at the School of Mathematics and System Engineering (MSI) at Växjö University in the field of computer science. IT security has become one of the main topics of every enterprise since they all use information technology in their business. Investments have to be done in order to achieve a high protection status of the IT environments. Specially small and medium-sized enterprises need more knowledge and advisory how to handle their IT security. This thesis analyses management tools that have the goal to improve the IT security. The second and main part of the thesis is the design of a tool that should helps to solve the described problems.</p>

Der Mini-Guide wendet sich an Prozess- und Qualitätsmanagementverantwortliche in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen, die eine Systematik suchen, mit einfachen Mitteln ihre Prozesse grafisch darzustellen, um in ihnen Verbesserungspotential zu erkennen. Der Modellierungsleitfaden im ersten Teil des Buches gibt dafür eine wertvolle Methodenhilfe. Die praktische Umsetzung wird mit Hilfe des Grafiktools MS Visio demonstriert. Es wurde dabei mit Standardeinstellungen (EPC-Shape) gearbeitet. Die Modellierungsmethodik kann damit auf sehr unkomplizierte Weise in einer Firma, die MS Visio installiert hat, genutzt werden. Der zweite Teil des Buches widmet sich dem Aufbau eines webbasierten Qualitätsinformationssystems, das die Arbeit von Teams an unterschiedlichen Standorten bei der Kommunikation, dem Dokumentenmanagement und dem Wissensmanagement unterstützt. Der Entwurf eines solchen Systems als webbasierte Kollaborationsplattform wurde auf Basis von MS Sharepoint WSS 3.0 prototypisch umgesetzt. Die dargestellten Inhalte sind Ergebnis eines von der Deutschen Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG) geförderten Projektes an der Fakultät für Maschinenbau der TU Chemnitz. Das Projekt hatte das Ziel, kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) bei der kooperativen Zusammenarbeit, insbesondere in Produktionsnetzwerken, zu unterstützen. Das aus erfahrenen Wissenschaftlern, Praktikern und Studenten zusammengesetzte Team des Instituts für Fertigungsmesstechnik und Qualitätssicherung (IFMQ) zeichnete im Projekt für das Thema Qualitätsmanagement (QM) und Qualitätsinformationssysteme (QIS) verantwortlich.