The Full IFRS caters to the needs of shareholding corporations and their investors, which also led to incurring high cost especially for SMEs due to the requirements of financial reporting constructed for public companies as it is very complex and requires a high amount of disclosure (Fearnley and Hines, 2007, Haller and Eirle, 2008, Eierle and Haller, 2009). Hence, for the purpose of reducing essentially the reporting burdens facing SMEs, IASB in 2009 issued IFRS for SMEs. This study aims to investigate the relevance and suitability of IFRS for SMEs in Jordan. It will also analyse the current problems faced by Jordanian SMEs in the light of applying the current IFRSs, furthermore, the expected benefits from applying IFRS for SMEs, will be addressed. A total of 10 interviews with external auditors were conducted to test the ground and determine the relevant topics within IFRS for SMEs in Jordanian SMEs context. In addition to that, a total of 605 questionnaires were distributed to external auditors and financial managers of SMEs who prepare financial statements based on full IFRS. The overall outcomes reveal that managers; banks and creditors; public authorities; and analysts were the most frequent and important SMEs’ financial information users while both employees and shareholders were found as rare users of financial statements presented by SMEs. Furthermore, the current applied standards are substantially characterised to embrace many problems such as; the complexity of measurements and recognitions; high disclosures requirements; making inappropriate decisions and other issues pertaining to preparing financial reports. On the other hand, although the respondents especially the auditors group were evidently worried about several potential obstacles that may impede the effective application of IFRS for SMEs, both groups of users were obviously optimistic about the capability of IFRS for SMEs to mitigate the aforementioned problems and to enhance the accounting practice in terms of preparing and using the financial information. With respect to topics from full IFRS that have been omitted in IFRS for SMEs, all respondents agreed to exclude these topics from the IFRS for SMEs’ content due to the irrelevance of these topics to SMEs’ context. Likewise, the overall participants approved on the most proposals under IFRS for SMEs compared to those based on full IFRS except the suggestion associated with measuring some kind of assets, for instance; investment property; intangible; property; plant and equipment, which were rejected only by the group of managers while several proposals regarding expensing some kind of costs instead of capitalise them as well as lease matters were neither agreed nor disagreed by respondents. Finally the majority of responses show that both groups were willing to adopt IFRS for SMEs. The key contribution provided evidences as to whether the adoption of IFRS for SMEs would be a necessary undertaking. Thus, a recommendation were mainly made to the standard-setters on the basis of preparers’ perceptions of the importance of applying such financial standards.

The research was conducted to determine what the success factors for new product development and commercialization were for a selected sample of SMEs in South Africa. Academic literature on success factors for New Product Development and commercialization, as well as small and medium businesseswere reviewed. The review of the literature provided the theoretical framework for 21 success factors relevant to the study. These success factors were further extrapolated to 36 success factors and used as a basis for determining South African SME relevance. The findings were consistent with the literature review and point to several success factors that South African SMEs deem critical to success of new product development. In conclusion, South African SMEs confirm the importance of the success factors as presented in the literature. The ranking by importance of these success factors highlight the specific value that South African SMEs place on these success factors. These need further in-depth research.

<p><strong><em>Introduction</em></strong></p><p>Entrepreneurship and SME development play a crucial role in speeding up the economic development of transition economies. Although entrepreneurship exists in all environments it flourishes in the conditions where it is supported. Transition economies, as well as Georgia, are characterized by inefficient framework conditions that present barriers to productive entrepreneurship and SMEs to develop and benefit the economies in their full potential.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Purpose</em></strong></p><p>The Thesis aimed at answering the following research questions:</p><p> </p><p>1)      To what extent the framework conditions necessary for promoting productive entrepreneurship and SME development exist in Georgia?</p><p>2)      What are the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship and SME development in Georgia?</p><p>3)      In what ways is entrepreneurship and SME development encouraged and supported in Georgia?</p><p><strong><em>Method</em></strong></p><p>The thesis consists of theoretical data such as literature review, secondary data presented by previous studies, and primary data collected by conducting interviews with Georgian entrepreneurs and representatives of governmental bodies and NGOs engaged in improving a business climate in the country.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Conclusions</em></strong></p><p>The study revealed that basic framework conditions for developing entrepreneurship are present in Georgia. Although inefficiencies and institutional gaps give rise to a number of barriers to entrepreneurship and SME development. They are mostly presented by inefficient tax system and financial framework. Despite their efforts towards fostering favourable business environment, GoG, as well as NOGs could do a better job in improving an indirect support in terms of abolishing imperfections in the taxation system, as well as directly providing finance, training and effectual information flow to existing and potential businesses.</p>

<p> </p><p><strong>Problem</strong>: Researchers argue that strategic management and its implementation has be-come the main focus in SMEs because of its role in generating economic wealth. Although, there are many advantages to use strategic management, there are still many SME organizations that resist using it, since some of them may think this process is only useful for larger organizations and they did not recognize that it‟s also very helpful for SMEs as a whole. Therefore, the organization face challenges such as how to use this strategic management, and how to recognize the importance of strategic management and so on.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Purpose</strong>: Our purpose is to find out how strategic management determines / affects / in-fluence SMEs performance in South East Asia and specifically in China and In-donesia. Moreover, its purpose is to identify the crucial factors that determine survival and growth in the two countries.</p><p><strong>Theory</strong>: The theoretical framework is divided into several major parts. We start with looking at definition of strategy and different types of strategy in organization. The chapter continues with looking at SMEs strategic Management Model (Analoui & Karami, 2003), strategic choice, strategic fit and theory of firm per-formance i.e. dynamic capabilities (core capabilities). The last part of the chap-ter combine the previous theory, i.e. strategy and firm performance. More spe-cific, we use our theoretical framework of the process, regarding the effect of strategic management on SMEs performance.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method</strong>: We chose qualitative method as our research method. We use case study to do this research and conduct interview to collect data. Qualitative is the appropriate method for this thesis since we aim to understand the phenomenon of SMEs strategic management on different levels. In order to gain more information, we conducted interview with middle management and top management of the com-pany. This method help us to explore into deeper stages of analyzing our subject and support our research.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> We found there is no general answer on how strategic management determine / affects / influence SMEs performance in East Asia SMEs specifically in China and Indonesia. Further, the studied companies have more common characteris-tics than different characteristics. All of them are aware of the importance of us-ing strategic management. Moreover, our research indicate that understanding the role of internal & external factors, and constantly combining the two factors into daily operation are the crucial factors for these companies survival and growth in the two countries</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>

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There have been the recent calls for additional research in order to enhance the understanding of the adoption of management accounting practices (MAPs) in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This, allied to an increasing importance of SMEs around the world especially in developing countries, is the motivation for this research. This research explores the uptake of a broad range of MAPs in Malaysian SMEs; identifies the roles of MAPs in the management of SMEs; determines factors that affect the extent of use of MAPs in SMEs and lastly examines the relationship between the use of MAPs and organizational performance of SMEs. A postal questionnaire was conducted to 1,000 Malaysian SMEs in manufacturing sector which elicited 160 useable responses. The results show that the majority of respondents have used the five management accounting areas identified. Use of the costing system, budgeting system and performance evaluation system are significantly higher than for the decision support system and strategic management accounting, which indicates that the uptake of traditional MAPs is greater than for sophisticated MAPs. The results indicate that medium sized firms make greater use of all MAPs as opposed to small sized enterprises. The most significant differences relate to the use of decision support system and strategic management accounting. The increased uptake of sophisticated MAPs by larger firms is in line with size being a contingent variable explaining the use of such practices. The results also suggest that MAPs were perceived as playing very important roles in the management of Malaysian SMEs. Performance evaluation and controlling activities were the major roles of MAPs in the management of SMEs. Overall the study suggests that MAPs are perceived by SMEs as relevant and useful in their management processes. Further, the study found that four out of five contingent factors; size of the firm, intensity of market competition; participation of the owner/manager in the development of MAPs in firm and advanced manufacturing technology have a positive and statistically significant relationship with the use of certain MAPs. The research however found weak support for the positive relationship between the use of MAPs and organizational performance of SMEs. This study enriches the existing body of knowledge of management accounting by providing information as to the use of MAPs in SMEs in Malaysia. The findings can be specifically informative for policy makers intent on developing management accounting skills among Malaysian SMEs. This research will provide valuable insights into the nature of MAPs in SMEs in a developing country and will promote interest among Malaysian researchers as well as researchers of other countries to make the SME sector a focus of interest in management accounting research.

The research was conducted to determine what the success factors for new product development and commercialization were for a selected sample of SMEs in South Africa. Academic literature on success factors for New Product Development and commercialization, as well as small and medium businesseswere reviewed. The review of the literature provided the theoretical framework for 21 success factors relevant to the study. These success factors were further extrapolated to 36 success factors and used as a basis for determining South African SME relevance. The findings were consistent with the literature review and point to several success factors that South African SMEs deem critical to success of new product development. In conclusion, South African SMEs confirm the importance of the success factors as presented in the literature. The ranking by importance of these success factors highlight the specific value that South African SMEs place on these success factors. These need further in-depth research.

In a fast changing business environment with accelerated technological development, new knowledge resources and developing dynamic capabilities are becoming vital issues in economic knowledge. Drawing on the Resource-based View in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and competitive dynamics perspectives, there has been a recent rise in the number of practitioners and academics integrating the knowledge resources of SMEs, which are intellectual capital (IC) and absorptive capacity (ACAP) to achieve superior performance. The main objective of this study is to investigate the mediating role of absorptive capacity on the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance in high-tech sector SMEs in the UK. Current research proposed a model for the direct and indirect relationships of IC- performance through ACAP, thereby increasing contributions to knowledge in the field of strategic management. A research conceptual framework was developed with reliance on an existing body of literature in the field of study. It integrates the effects of intellectual capital with absorptive capacity to create and develop dynamic capabilities in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and the publishing of computer games firms. A quantitative research employing surveys, the selected method of study was justified, because of the number of SMEs and their being geographically widespread around the UK. A five-point Likert-type scale has been used to measure research variables. A research conceptual framework has been developed and tested by using a structural equational modelling methodology. The results of this study suggested that high-tech SMEs could enhance and improve their financial outcome, if they associate and integrate the firm’s intellectual capital with the firm’s absorptive capacity to create or develop dynamic capabilities, which has greater significant effects on firm performance. This research concludes by saying that high performance firms respond rapidly to new knowledge and also that there is a strong association between IC and ACAP affecting the performance of SMEs. It is also concluded that CEOs and managers are able to enhance the level of performance in high-tech SMEs by the creation or development of dynamic capabilities through the integration between firm IC and ACAP.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are becoming increasingly engaged in B2B interactions. The ubiquitousness of the Internet and the quasi-reliance on electronic document exchanges with larger trading partners have fostered this move. The main technical challenge that this brings to SMEs is that of business document integration: they need to exchange business documents with heterogeneous document formats and also integrate these documents with internal information systems. Often they can not afford using expensive, customized and proprietary solutions for document exchange and storage. Rather they need cost-effective approaches designed based on open standards and backed with easy-to-use information systems. In this dissertation, we investigate the problem of business document integration for SMEs following a design science methodology. We propose a framework and conceptual architecture for a business document integration system (BDIS). By studying existing business document formats, we recommend using the GS1 XML standard format as the intermediate format for business documents in BDIS. The GS1 standards are widely used in supply chains and logistics globally. We present an architecture for BDIS consisting of two layers: one for the design of internal information system based on relational databases, capable of storing XML business documents, and the other enabling the exchange of heterogeneous business documents at runtime. For the design layer, we leverage existing XML schema conversion approaches, and extend them, to propose a customized and novel approach for converting GS1 XML document schemas into relational schemas. For the runtime layer, we propose wrappers as architectural components for the conversion of various electronic documents formats into the GS1 XML format. We demonstrate our approach through a case study involving a GS1 XML business document. We have implemented a prototype BDIS. We have evaluated and compared it with existing research and commercial tools for XML to relational schema conversion. The results show that it generates operational and simpler relational schemas for GS1 XML documents. In conclusion, the proposed framework enables SMEs to engage effectively in electronic business.