| |
|
|
| Home
> research >
enterprise and innovation
> projects
> project 4 |
|
|
|
Research Programmes 
Enterprise and Innovation
 Corporate Governance Research Activities  Survey & Database Unit  Policy Evaluation Unit  SME Surveys
Other CBR Surveys |
Project:
SME Performance and Policy
Project leaders: Alan Hughes and Andy Cosh Overview
| Output
Update on progress: September 2010 Aims and Objectives This project is concerned with developing and testing models of small and medium sized enterprise (SME) performance and its determinants, with policy analysis and with methods of complex survey design and analysis necessary to investigate models of business performance. Performance includes innovative activity and export activity, as well as growth, profitability and survival. Determinants include internal management and organisational characteristics, the strategic behaviour of managers including strategies of co-operation and collaboration, as well as external environmental factors, including financial, labour and product market constraints. The project is concerned with policy evaluation and evaluation methodology, and with the comparison of the performance characteristics of different groups of firms including high-technology and conventional businesses. The project develops and utilises appropriate databases for these purposes including, in particular, the complex panel survey data generated by the CBR biennial survey of SMEs. This survey is carried out by the project leaders and managed by Anna Bullock via the CBR Survey and Database Unit. The project is also concerned with the development of appropriate survey instruments for performance measurement and analysis. It also draws on the results of a complementary project on methods of missing data imputation (Missing Observations in Survey Data: An Experimental Approach) to enhance the usefulness of performance survey datasets. The econometric analysis undertaken is characterised by the development and use of appropriate multivariate techniques including sample selection modelling and robust regression methods. Careful account is taken of the extreme heterogeneity of SME performance and the endemic sample attrition and self-selection biases which can arise in complex panel data analysis. In addition the project produces rigorous but user friendly presentations of key survey results in the biennial publication of reports based on the CBR SME survey, as well as custom designed articles for practitioner journals. Use is also made of complementary case study and qualitative analytical techniques, and of interview based piloting of alternative survey instruments to assist in complex survey design.Results and Dissemination The members of this project have produced a series of working papers on clustering, networking, innovation, training and performance, and international trade. The work of the group continued to be heavily cited in a range of official policy documents and reports including publications by the DTI, the Bank of England, UK Trade and Investment and HM Treasury. Further details of this work can be found in the Survey and Database and Policy Evaluation Unit sections of this report.The paper by Andy Cosh, Douglas Cumming and Alan Hughes entitled "Outside Entrepreneurial Capital" has been published in the Economic Journal and further work is progressing in this area. In another paper Siqueira and Cosh investigate the extent to which product innovation moderates the relationship between capabilities and competitive advantage among small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Using resource-based and capabilities theories, they examine capabilities as organizational routines, focusing on job rotation and multi-skilling. With support from the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance, Andy Cosh, Anna Bullock, Isobel Milner and Alan Hughes carried out a survey of UK SMEs during the credit crunch. The findings have been published and attracted widespread interest.
|
|
|
|
| © 2004 Centre for Business
Research, University of Cambridge |
|