Mike Simpson

E‐commerce adoption support and advice for UK SMEs

The small business sector of the UK economy is extremely important and the government expends considerable resources in providing support services for this sector. This paper investigated the reasons why SMEs move from traditional commerce to e‐commerce, the efficacy of the support services and the barriers encountered by SMEs adopting e‐commerce. The research methodology involved literature review and interviews with SMEs’ owner‐managers and a UK Online business adviser. It was found that at least two “e‐commerce stars” used by the government to promote its support services had in fact not used those services. The historical relationship problems between Business Link and SMEs were still causing problems. Cost was not seen as an inhibitor to adopting e‐commerce. Some evidence was emerging that e‐commerce may be able to save failing or struggling businesses. Other unexpected outcomes were that e‐commerce had social benefits for SMEs’ owners in reducing working hours yet still increased sales.

A Review of Interventions to Encourage SMEs to Make Environmental Improvements

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important part of the world economy but they are thought to be responsible for around 60% of all carbon dioxide emissions and 70% of all pollution. SMEs often have major problems with limited resources, limited knowledge, and limited technical capabilities to deal with their own negative environmental impact. SMEs exhibit widely differing characteristics and commitment where environmental issues are concerned. Yet under these conditions they are all expected to engage in environmental improvement. Interventions that encourage environmental improvement are often polarised between regulation and legislation at one extreme and voluntary environmental agreement at the other. It is clear that a holistic mixture of interventions is necessary to achieve maximum engagement and environmental improvement by all SMEs. In this paper we categorise the different levels of environmental commitment observed in SMEs and develop a selection or ‘toolkit’ of intervention strategies that might be deployed within each category of SME.

Small Business Success Factors: The Role of Education and Training

Interest in successful small businesses continues to grow, but is influenced by the different ways in which small businesses are categorised and the difficulty of defining “success”. There is a range of criteria associated with success in terms of individual owner characteristics, organisational values and performance measures. However, few researchers have consulted owner/managers about their views on success. This research is instructive in that it used a grounded theory approach to investigate success in small service sector organisations. The impact of education, training, development, prior knowledge and experience on the success of these businesses was investigated. Four substantive categories were developed, but only one category showed clear evidence that education and training had a positive effect on the success of the business. Most businesses relied heavily on prior knowledge and experience. The properties, personal characteristics of the owner‐manager and some hypotheses were also developed for each category.

Marketing in small and medium sized enterprises

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a full‐scale testing of the role of marketing and its relevance in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The objective is to present the results of a rigorous assessment of a new model of marketing in SMEs.Design/methodology/approach – A positivist approach relied on the use of the hypothetico‐deductive method to produce the theoretical model. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied to investigate the model. This paper reports on a large‐scale questionnaire survey, follow‐up interviews with SMEs owner‐managers and the use of published accounts to show how companies have performed during this study.Findings – The role and relevance model of marketing in SMEs has been thoroughly investigated and tested. The model offers a straightforward way of diagnosing the situation within an SME. The simplicity of the model allows for a clearer understanding of what is often a complex and messy situation within these companies and their bus...

Change and uncertainty in SME manufacturing environments using ERP

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate how enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems could create a competitive advantage for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The objectives of this study are to examine how responsive and agile the existing ERP systems are to change and uncertainty, and to identify the types of change and uncertainty in SME manufacturing environments.Design/methodology/approach – A mixed methodology is used in this study, which involves literature review, questionnaire survey and follow‐up, in‐depth telephone interviews. An uncertainty diagnosing business model is applied to collect data from SME manufacturers in make‐to‐stock (MTS), make‐to‐order (MTO) and mixed mode (MM) manufacturing environments in a structured manner, and to analyse the effects of the underlying causes of uncertainty on product late delivery in MTS, MTO and MM manufacturing environments in SMEs. Some 108 enterprises responded (86 per cent response rate), of which 64 are SMEs. Analysis of varianc...

The role and relevance of marketing in SMEs: towards a new model

This paper presents a new model of the role and relevance of marketing in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The model was developed to explain the apparent mismatch between the need for marketing activities to sustain and grow these companies in a competitive business environment (i.e. relevance of marketing) and the actual marketing efforts used by these organisations (i.e. role played by marketing). The methodology used theoretical development and initial testing of the role and relevance model on a small number of SMEs. Primary data were collected via interviews, questionnaires and observations of the marketing activities of the organisations studied. This paper describes the role and relevance model in theory and shows how to apply the model in practice. The results of the initial tests using a carefully selected number of SMEs are discussed and form the basis of the illustrative case studies presented in this paper.

An exploratory study of enterprise resource planning adoption in Greek companies

Purpose – To examine enterprise resource planning (ERP) adoption in Greek companies, and explore the effects of uncertainty on the performance of these systems and the methods used to cope with uncertainty.Design/methodology/approach – This research was exploratory and six case studies were generated. This work was part of a larger project on the adoption, implementation and integration of ERP systems in Greek enterprises. A taxonomy of ERP adoption research was developed from the literature review and used to underpin the issues investigated in these cases. The results were compared with the literature on ERP adoption in the USA and UK.Findings – There were major differences between ERP adoption in Greek companies and companies in other countries. The adoption, implementation and integration of ERP systems were fragmented in Greek companies. This fragmentation demonstrated that the internal enterprises culture, resources available, skills of employees, and the way ERP systems are perceived, treated and ...

Could enterprise resource planning create a competitive advantage for small businesses

Purpose – This paper seeks to show how enterprise resource planning (ERP) could create a competitive advantage for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).Design/methodology/approach – The main methods used in this study were questionnaires and interviews based on the application of an uncertainty diagnosing business model. Data were collected, using a questionnaire administrated to 126 SMEs, in the form of percentage contributions of the underlying causes of uncertainty (structured in the business model) on product late delivery. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was carried out in SPSS to analyse the effects of the underlying causes of uncertainty in SMEs.Findings – ERP could create a competitive advantage in delivery for SMEs by being responsive and agile to change, but not to uncertainty. Results suggested that only a few features in an ERP system were used to deal with change due to uncertainty. It was found that SMEs generally use their ERP system to generate a plan for production and use it as a guid...

Towards a new model of success and performance in SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop an academic theoretical framework relating success and performance in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) so that future research could be carried out to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for SMEs.Design/methodology/approach – The research used a literature review, in‐depth interviews with owner‐managers of SMEs and a knowledge elicitation exercise was carried out based on the experience of the researchers and on the interviews with owner‐managers.Findings – A new academic conceptual model was developed linking CSFs, definitions of success and performance to the characteristics of the business environment, the characteristics of the owner‐manager and the characteristics of the business. The relatively new idea that feedback on performance in the model could modify the strategic/tactical behaviour of the SME owner‐managers was introduced.Research limitations/implications – The many research problems posed by performance studies aimed at est...

Benchmarking the performance of English universities

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of teaching and widening participation as measures to assess, compare, and benchmark the performance of English universities.Design/methodology/approach – Uses data from a paired sample English universities to compare the effectiveness of teaching and widening participation in: research‐orientated “Russell Group” universities versus teaching‐orientated “post 1992” universities. All data were in the public domain and provided from reports of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, The Higher Education Statistics Agency and The Times Higher Education Supplement.Findings – The analysis quantified the greater academic effectiveness and academic efficiencies of post‐1992 universities compared with members of the Russell Group. These results are the complete opposite of the widely accepted position of universities in published league tables and so are likely to be controversial.Research limitations/implications – The equations used for the numeri...