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This study aims to investigate whether “small- and medium-sized enterprises” (SMEs) benefit from their external accountants’ business advice through enhanced firm performance. Most SMEs draw on external support, and their main advisors are external accountants (Bennett and Robson, 1999). The resource-based view of the firm suggests that firms will seek external support if they perceive a gap in their internal resources.

Data were collected from a questionnaire mailed to a random sample of Australian SMEs, defined as businesses having between 5 and 200 full-time employees.

An analysis of 380 survey respondents confirms a positive relationship between the voluntary purchase of business advice and SME performance, and that SME performance is further enhanced when business advice is purchased jointly with auditing. These relationships apply to the small (5-49 employees) but not to the medium-sized (50-200 employees) businesses. Findings are consistent with smaller firms having narrower resource bases and thus a greater need to source business advice.

The accounting profession has long encouraged a broadening of its service base, and evidence that small businesses perceive a performance benefit from their accountants’ business advice provides support for the profession’s strategy.

This research extends the empirical literature investigating the link between the business advice of an external accountant and SME performance. It explains small firms’ demand for business advice by extending the application of the resource-based view of the firm and provides new evidence consistent with “knowledge spillover” from auditing to business advice in the small firm environment.

Business advisory services are an emerging service category for external accountants in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) environment. The purpose of this study is to investigate determinants of SME demand for business advice, drawing on the agency theory, relational marketing and resource-based literatures.

The study empirically tested theoretical predictions based on an Australia-wide survey of SMEs, in which 485 firms responded to a questionnaire.

The results show that the purchase of business advice is significantly and positively associated with the perceived competence of the external accountant, but significantly and negatively associated with length of the relationship. However, the authors observe a significant positive interaction between tenure of the relationship and competence. A unique contribution of this study is the development of the understanding of the combined role of the external accountant’s competence and the tenure of the relationship. The findings indicate that SMEs require time to verify whether accountants have the competence to provide business advice, suggesting that information asymmetry and uncertainty is minimised only after SMEs have nurtured relationships with their external accountants, and after they have developed some confidence in the competence of their external accountants. At the same time, the negative association with tenure suggests that when accountants are not perceived as competent advisors, SMEs purchase less advice over time.

The paper has important theoretical implications by augmenting agency theory, the relational marketing and the resource-based literature, and it clarifies which antecedent factors are important in explaining demand for business advisory services provided by accountants to their SME clients. In particular, the paper highlights the importance of the combined roles that the external accountant’s competence and tenure play in the SME–accountant relationship, highlighting how these two factors can overcome credence issues and ex ante information problems.

The findings have practical implications for government initiatives targeting support to SMEs, as the findings identify small firms and firms planning to grow as likely to gain the greatest benefit from external advice and support.

This study adds to the limited literature and scant theoretical discussions on the emergence of business advisory services that accountants provide to their SME clients by drawing on several theories to explain the determinants of business advice.

Following on studies of the reported importance of a range of external advice and a study of the impact of marketing advice on small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) performance, this study seeks to examine the relationship between business performance (growth) and the nature and degree of a wide range of business advice used by a sample of owner/managers of SMEs in the Manchester City‐region of the UK.

The study was conducted with 140 SMEs in the Manchester City region using an administered survey instrument.

The degree of use of a range of external advice was positively related to the growth rate of the SME. In common with most previous research, the most sought‐after advisers were external accountants and network contacts. Academic advice was sought very rarely. This study extends previous research and examine the nature of the advice provided by external accountants, which was found to include business, emergency, and financial management support in addition to statutory advice. The degree of provision of this additional assistance was associated with higher growth.

The relationship of advice and growth has been examined using a survey instrument. Further research is needed to understand how advice is sought, provided and used.

Accountants, network contacts and others were significant providers of advice and, where this advice was used, then SMEs reported higher growth rates. The direction of effect is probably in favour of the value of advice, but there could be virtuous cycles of advice and growth. However, the nature and quality of advice sought, offered, understood and embedded in business practice networks and contributing to social capital require further study.

The research extends previous studies by the range of advice and the nature of advice provided by external accountants, considered in relation to firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual framework explaining the role of relationships and trust in enabling the purchase of business advice by small business owner–managers from their external accountants.

The study uses a semi-structured interview approach with 20 small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners and accountants in London and Melbourne.

The interview data support the conceptual framework’s central proposition that relationships and trust, rather than being antecedents of demand for advice, are necessary conditions for enabling latent demand. SMEs with greater propensity to trust are more open to buying business advice but not necessarily from their accountant.

A limitation of the fieldwork is that it is based on a non-random and limited sample of accountants and SMEs.

Accountants in public practice can no longer assume that the already established relationships with their clients, developed while providing compliance services, will automatically lead SME clients to purchase business advice.

The paper contributes to the accounting literature by developing a conceptual model of relationships and trust that will assist the profession in better understanding the complex dynamics of the accountant–client relationship. The conceptual model distinguishes, for the first time, the antecedent factors of demand for business advice from the enabling roles of relationships and trust. Fieldwork interviews also yielded new insights into how SMEs’ decisions to purchase business advice are influenced by specific personality traits of SME owner–managers and additional antecedent demand factors not identified in the extant literature – economic conditions, environmental turbulence and business life-cycle.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest two main objectives: to analyze if the size of the company is determined by the use of external legal and human resources (HR) advice; and to analyze if the size of the family business is determined by the use of these two same types of external advice.

The assessment is developed (2,013 firms, the Spanish industrial sector) by using descriptive statistics to compare the features of the different types of firms in the sample: family and non-family ones. This is completed with a test of equality of means and using econometric models.

Regarding legal advice, results show that as far as legal matters are concerned, when family businesses make greater use of this type of advice, they are smaller. This is a remarkable and interesting result because it differs from non-family firms, in which the use of this type of advice is positively related with size. Regarding the use of HR advice, while it remains significant in general cases with a positive result, this is not the same for family firms.

The use of advising in family firms is seldom dealt with in the literature, despite its helpfulness for family firm managers. There is gap in this field and a great deal of interesting research remains to be developed, because the authors consider that factors determining the use of advice in family and non-family firms are different.

El presente documento propone dos objetivos principales: (1) analizar si el tamaño de la empresa está relacionado con el uso de asesoramiento externo tanto jurídico como de recursos humanos. (2) examinar si para el caso de la empresa familiar su tamaño está relacionado por el uso de estos dos mismos tipos de asesoramiento externo.

El análisis se desarrolló (2.013 empresas, el sector industrial español) utilizando técnicas de la estadística descriptiva para comparar las características de los diferentes tipos de empresas de la muestra: familiares y no familiares queridos. Esto se completa con una prueba de la igualdad de medios y el uso de modelos econométricos.

En cuanto a asesoramiento jurídico, los resultados muestran que, en lo que se refiere a asuntos legales, las empresas familiares hacen un mayor uso de este tipo de consejos a medida que son más pequeñas. Este es un resultado notable e interesante, ya que se diferencia de las no familiares, en las que el uso de este tipo de asesoramiento se relaciona positivamente con el tamaño. Respecto al uso de asesoramiento de recursos humanos, mientras que sigue siendo significativa en los casos generales con un resultado positivo, este no es el mismo para las empresas familiares.

El uso de asesoramiento en las empresas familiares rara vez se aborda en la literatura, a pesar de su utilidad para los directivos de este tipo de empresas. Hay un vacío en este campo y una gran cantidad de investigación interesante que queda por desarrollar, teniendo en cuenta sobre todo, que los factores que determinan el uso de asesoramiento en las empresas familiares y no familiares no son los mismos.

The aim of this study is to examine whether there are significant differences between female and male entrepreneurs’ use of consultation during business start-ups.

Using several statistical tools, including ANOVA and seemingly unrelated regressions, empirical analyses are conducted on a unique and firm-level panel database of 837 female- and 1926 male-owned active small firms.

The results indicate that gender may be an important variable in the use of advice among small business owners in Sweden. Female owners in this study are shown to be more eager than male owners to use external business advice, and do so to a higher extent.

One implication of this study is that firms may not be able to use all business advice types simultaneously during their start-up stage, so an ordered list of consultancy services would help them prioritize and adjust their needs accordingly. Because the use of business advice is context-based, the findings of this study may not be generalized to firms in other countries. This paper shows some gender-based attributes/features relating to the use of business advice, which need to be better integrated into policymaking for the future assistance of small businesses.

This article focuses on an important issue and is unique partly because few studies have examined the relationship between gender and external business advice. By explicitly and empirically examining this issue, this article makes a contribution to the small- and medium-sized enterprises’ literature.

This paper aims to examine the perceptions of small business entrepreneurs regarding the efficacy of external business advisers in delivering sustainable strategic and operational guidance.

The research is interpretivist, exploring the narratives of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owner/managers in manufacturing. Five in-depth interviews were carried out, revealing a range of decision stories about the use of external business advisers.

While there was some scepticism towards the use of advisers in certain situations, the research revealed that levels of trust, relationship building and the credibility of the consultant are substantial factors in determining whether the engagement is successful.

As a small-scale study, it would be worthwhile to examine the perceptions of additional entrepreneurs to business advisers to compare research findings.

Policy regarding advice to small businesses should be framed in terms of the local context of the firm and its owner, rather than on broad and generalisable systems of business knowledge. Time and effort is required to build a sustainable relationship between advisers and owners, and it is recommended that particular attention be paid to the process.

The research suggests that potentially, industrial policy regarding current delivery of small business advice requires readjustments towards more of a relationship focus.

Little established research appears to exist in relation to the tendency or otherwise, for SME decision makers to pursue and use external advice. This paper helps to fill an important gap in the literature while offering some significant and nuanced insights into the perceptions of SME owner managers.

Aims to provide an assessment of the role of external business advice for small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), comparing “soft” outcomes (improved ability to manage, ability to cope), “hard” outcomes (profitability, turnover, reduced costs), and overall satisfaction levels.

A telephone survey using a stratified random sample frame provides a representative sample that allows comparison of the benefits of advice to SMEs in different size categories.

The paper demonstrates a large and varied supply of advice with no evidence of reluctance by owners/managers to seek advice. “Hard” and “soft” outcomes tend to be combined for many SMEs, but the widest effects of external advice seem to be intangible, such as reassurance or reducing uncertainty. There is less variation between SMEs of different size than expected, but strong variation between types of external suppliers of advice. The level of regulation of suppliers and extent of their reputation or brand appear to have positive association with the level of their use, impact and satisfaction levels. Public sector advisers have special difficulties of managing quality and better relating marketing to what they can reliably deliver.

The research provides to researchers a better understanding of the form of intangible benefits that businesses receive from advice, and how these interrelate with “hard” benefits of reduced costs and increased profits. Private sector advisers need to note the interaction between feelings‐based and “hard” outcomes. Public sector advisers need significantly to improve their consistency and better relate marketing to their capacity to deliver.

The size, characteristics and structure of boards of directors have been claimed to be an important influence on the performance of large firms, but have been less examined in small firms. For larger firms the role of boards acts more as a substitute for the development of internal staff and management skills, indicating that for large firms directors chiefly support the control role of CEOs. The importance of seeing boards, external consultants and internal management skills as substitutes is demonstrated, and is shown to have a non‐linear relation with firm size. However, a key finding of the paper is that there is little evidence of a strong association of board size, board qualifications, or board structure with firm performance, measured by profitability, employment growth or propensity to innovate.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the often questioned willingness of family businesses (FBs) to seek external advice on challenges they face.

Mixed methods were employed gaining 140 responses to a survey of FB CEOs on their use of advice, followed by 51 semi-structured interviews of FB owners, managers and advisers. It drew upon institutional theory and those concerning both trust and organisational knowledge creation; also upon experiential knowledge gained in advising FBs.

Cost was found to deter use of professional advice, also unawareness of where it was to be found. Dissatisfaction with many advisers’ “soft” skills was prevalent. Clients took as given advisers’ technical knowledge; empathy and listening skills being the discriminants of successful practice. Effective means of skills creation were identified but seen to be obtained fortuitously, not systematically. The professional institutions of accountants, the most frequently used professional advisers, require tertiary institutions seeking their accreditation to develop their students’ “generic skills”, including “the ability to listen effectively”: conditions not being complied with. However, advice-seeking is found to be greater than assumed because of an unexpected resort to peers, often through networking. Widespread peers’ recommendations of professional advisers impart instantaneous “vicarious” trust, found to be more common than the “slow maturing” kind posited by previous researchers.

This paper offers a rarely recorded FB client perspective on their use of external advice. It extends understanding of the trust upon which they rely. It discloses how some achieve a mutual learning that expands understanding of organisational knowledge creation. It describes a route, “shadowing”, through which professional advisers have achieved outstanding performance.