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Examining the goals of small and medium enterprise owner-operations

[Truncated abstract] The focus of this thesis is to investigate the meaning and measurement of business success for owner-operators of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Taking a first step towards a greater understanding of SME performance, the study develops an instrument specifically designed to measure the business goals and objectives of SME owners. This development is based on a combination of a: literature search; quantitative analysis of a secondary data set of the goals and expectations of Australian retailers; qualitative (focus group) study of West Australian SME principals; and quantitative (mail survey) study of West Australian SME principals. Both these primary data studies used SME principals from a wide variety of industries . . . Tests of the power of the SOS to account for differences in economic performance revealed that the SOS significantly increased understanding of variations in owner returns and profitability and had a limited capacity to explain differences in revenue growth and staff revenue productivity. SOS satisfaction was found to describe differences in owner-operators’ perceptions of business success significantly better than objective measures of economic return. It is expected that such knowledge will help subsequent research develop an understanding of how SME onwer-operators modify their expectations of economic return for the utility they gain from their working life.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221312
Date January 2006
CreatorsNewby, Rick
PublisherUniversity of Western Australia. School of Economics and Commerce
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
RightsCopyright Rick Newby, http://www.itpo.uwa.edu.au/UWA-Computer-And-Software-Use-Regulations.html

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