[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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221312 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Newby, Rick |
| Publisher | University of Western Australia. School of Economics and Commerce |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Rick Newby, http://www.itpo.uwa.edu.au/UWA-Computer-And-Software-Use-Regulations.html |
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