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The rich financial knowledge of small and micro business owners helps to enhance the formal credit demand of small and micro enterprises and change the credit channel preference of small and micro enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between financial knowledge and the credit practices of 290 small and micro enterprises in China’s Jiangsu and Shandong provinces based on their formal credit needs and preferred channels of credit.

To measure the degree of the credit constraints of small and micro enterprises, this study applied questionnaire surveys to obtain information on the credit demand and supply of 363 small and micro enterprises in the Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. Firstly, a probit model is used to study the influence of financial knowledge on the formal credit demand and credit acquisition possibility of small and micro enterprises, and tool variables and a biprobit model are used to deal with the possible errors of endogenesis and sample selection. Secondly, a tobit model is used to study the influence of financial knowledge on the credit access of small and micro enterprises in different channels, and tool variables and a Heckman two-stage model are used to deal with endogenesis and possible errors in sample selection. Finally, this study carried out a series of robustness tests to make the conclusions more reliable.

This study is based on the perspective of the knowledge-based view to explore the impact of financial knowledge on the credit behaviour of small and micro enterprises. This study found that financial knowledge can increase a small and micro enterprise’s formal credit needs and drive the small and micro enterprise to actively apply for loans. Furthermore, financial knowledge has a significant and positive influence on the acquisition of formal credit and approved lines of formal credit and a significant and negative influence on the acquisition of informal credit and approved lines of informal credit.

The results indicated that increased financial knowledge can increase the likelihood of a small and micro enterprise to prefer formal credit and reduce the likelihood of it to prefer informal credit channels.

Financial knowledge is the ability to master basic economic knowledge and financial concepts as well as the ability to use knowledge to manage and allocate financial resources. The rich financial knowledge of small and micro business owners helps to enhance the formal credit demand of small and micro enterprises and change their credit channel preference. This paper offers a new perspective on the problems of credit constraint, low participation in formal credit markets and high participation in private credit markets among China’s small and micro enterprises and valuably supplements the research literature.

The recent pandemic period (COVID-19), while negatively impacting many companies, has contributed to the growth and adoption of online platforms such as marketplaces and e-commerce. This environment has led many companies, which previously acted only through offline channels, to adopt new technologies and online channels and develop new e-commerce strategies. Small and micro enterprises are most vulnerable due to their limited resources and lack of capabilities. For this reason, the main objective of this paper is to unveil the e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises should build and the challenges they must face when managing an e-commerce strategy.

The authors adopted an inductive qualitative research design approach focused on multiple case studies. The firms operate in the food and beverage industry.

The findings identify several e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises operating in the food and beverage industry should build to manage e-commerce strategies. These are related to outsourcing management, multichannel management, time management, internal stock management and marketplace choice. Moreover, the paper identifies key e-commerce implementation challenges these firms must cope with. These regard distribution management, potential loss of control, fresh product management and lack of resources, time and capabilities.

This research shows that proper capacity management in the implementation of micro and small enterprises e-commerce strategies is critical to achieving efficient results and preventing challenges that threaten such strategies. The research offers guidelines and frameworks for micro and small enterprises to understand how to manage e-commerce and face its challenges.

In this paper, the authors review the literature on the nature of the small and medium-sized enterprise concept. The review examines the broad diversity of terms and definitions used to describe these kinds of firms in scholarly and practical settings. They relate this examination to the concept of small business for the purpose of comparison, in order to highlight differences and similarities between the concepts.

Relevant literature including articles from academia and defining documents from practical settings was identified through a scope literature review. Field data were subsequently collected via questionnaires sent to editors and authors of articles related to the theme. The data were content analyzed and the resulting codes consolidated into dimensions in accordance with the Gioia method. Chi-squared tests were applied to categorical data.

The use of the composite category “small and medium” was found to be predominant in the labeling of small businesses in scientific articles, including those in journals that specialize in small businesses, with no justifications presented for this, characterizing a widespread and consensual practice between authors and editors. In the defining documents of practical settings, however, the authors observed greater consistency and precision both in the terms used and in the delimiting values for a small business (self-employed, micro business, small business). In the sample of 27 defining documents mentioned in the articles, 25 specifically defined “small business” and 20 defined “micro business,” using indicators such as number of employees and annual turnover. The indicators delimiting values regarding the category of micro business were the same in all the documents analyzed and, regarding the category of small business, many documents used the same delimiting values.

Recognizing the “non-large enterprise” myth will provide a more effective posture for editors and authors to avoid using the term “small and medium,” resulting in greater precision, understanding and knowledge regarding small businesses. A better definition of a small business by academia can help public policymakers and managers of organizations that support small businesses to tailor their actions better according to the different sizes of companies. This will also lead to social gains, given the importance of small businesses in terms of job creation and countries' economies.

The authors identified and described the myth of the “non-large enterprise” among academics, characterized by the dichotomous view of the business universe, composed of “large enterprises” and “non-large enterprises,” the latter group being characterized by the widespread use of the term “small and medium.”

This study aims to explore how horizontal collaboration can help small and micro enterprises within the drink sector through the relational theory lens.

The use of qualitative research methods, including focus groups and interviews, facilitated understanding the horizontal collaboration in micro and small companies within the Welsh brewery industry. Data collection involved conducting three focus groups and 13 interviews within the Welsh brewery sector in the UK. The collaboration phenomena were explained using the three elements of relational theory: relational rents, relational capitals and relational governance.

Micro and small enterprises in the drink sector use collaborative initiatives in building new capabilities to generate relational rents. In addition, relational capitals and relational governance mechanisms were identified to support the horizontal collaboration among these enterprises.

The focus is on only one part of the drinks industry, i.e. the brewery industry; therefore, this study could be extended to other industries within the drink sector or across manufacturing industries.

The micro and small enterprises can collaborate to achieve relational rent, but this collaboration requires strong relational capitals, such as trust. These partners need to change informal governance mechanisms that already exist towards more contractual formal mechanisms.

Prior research has largely focused on vertical collaboration, with limited studies using the relational theory lens to explicate horizontal collaboration phenomena and no previous research in the context of micro and small companies. Relational rents, relational capitals and relational governance mechanisms are studied to provide insights into an effective collaboration in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to compare “micro” enterprise (0-9 employees) to “small” enterprise (10-49 employees) family businesses with regard to 12 important managerial characteristics in eight countries: Argentina, Croatia, Egypt, France, Kosovo, Kuwait, Serbia, and the USA (n=601).

The research methodology was survey research. To statistical test 12 hypotheses, MANCOVA was run to compare differences between micro and small family business, while controlling for years in business.

Six significant differences were: “small” firms are more likely to employ non-family member managers, are more likely to engage in the formulation of succession plans, are more likely to utilize outside advisory services, make greater use of sophisticated financial management methods, and have a more formal management style than “micro” firms; but the influence of the founder is greater in “micro” firms.

For practitioners and consultants the findings of this study should enable family business owner/managers, and their advisors, to better understand the possible impacts of moving from a “micro” level to a “small” size level, and thus lead to more effective family business management.

This research fills a gap in the literature, as there has been minimal prior research with the specific focus of comparing “micro” vs “small.” Thus, it develops a foundation for further study in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore if and how micro and small firms apply management accounting (MA) techniques.

The study is based on 36 semistructured interviews with micro and small firm owners/managers in Mexico. Content analysis is used to identify how these enterprises use MA tools.

Micro and small firms consistently use MA tools. Most of them have some sort of planning, set objectives, have a costing system – even if budgeting is unusual – and use one or two metrics to monitor performance.

This is exploratory research with a limited and nonrandom sample. Only a limited number of MA tools were studied.

Micro and small firms’ use of MA tools. This is arguably important because these enterprises use these techniques in a way that is different from the traditional approach used in bigger corporations. A relevant implication emerging from the findings, as a contribution to practice would be the need to include MA for micro and small businesses in formal training and textbooks.

On top of providing and assessing empirical evidence on a debate that has been so far largely theoretical, and on the back of the relative weight of micro and small enterprises in any given economy, this paper aims at reinforcing awareness on the need to further the study of the decision-making process in such firms.

Promoting and supporting entrepreneurship is a critical pillar of Oman’s vision 2040. The need to understand to what extent the effectiveness of public funds given to micro and small enterprises in Oman as well as to understand the characteristics of the funds that can drive the impact of such government financial support programs on those enterprises motivated us to conduct this study. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the government loan support programs on job creation in micro and small enterprises in Oman.

Hypotheses were tested using data collected from 1,127 micro and small enterprises that received loan supports from the Government of Oman. The authors explored the impact of a set of predictors on a dependent variable (job creation) to understand to what extent do the supported micro and small enterprise characteristics significantly influence job creations in the enterprises. Multiple regression and General Linear Model Multivariate Analysis statistical techniques were used to test the hypotheses.

There is a positive relationship between government supported firms’ characteristics and job creation for both nationals and expatriates’ employment. The empirical results suggest that, when compared with the micro enterprises, the small enterprises were able to create more jobs for nationals than for expatriates, although the effect of the support program on job creation was significant for both groups.

This paper contributes to the literature debate on the effectiveness of Oman’s entrepreneurship policy. Using multivariate analysis, the study analyzes the public support program for enterprises in Oman and how it can be improved to support the Oman 2040 Vision.

The economy of the Palestinian Territories (PT) is small, poorly developed, and highly dependent on Israel; at the same time, the land is limited, Israel controls 80‐85 per cent of the Palestinian water, and there is large‐scale unemployment. Faced with this situation, small and micro‐enterprises have come to play a critical role in the economy of the PT. Donors, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and UNRWA have recognised that many of the managers suffer from managerial weaknesses, and training is one of the long‐term keys to promote the development of small and micro‐enterprises and alleviate the problem of persistent unemployment in the PT. To support the peace agreement, the International Community promised to support the Palestinian economy. Part of this aid has been spent for small and micro‐enterprise development, and for establishing managerial training programmes. These programmes aim to encourage economic development of the PT, through supporting small business education and entrepreneurship training. These programmes suffered from various problems, such as lack of professional trainers, the majority of the managers did not attend the training programme courses, some of these programmesmissed funding. Therefore, some training programmes were closed during the last two years. On the other hand, the managers of small businesses still suffer from various managerial problems. However, this article presents a description of the current situation in PT. Especially, the economic and managerial situation, particularly for the SMEs and TPs in the PT.

This paper is a case study of the use of information systems (IS) by a micro enterprise. In particular, it attempts to answer the question: can micro enterprises use IS strategically? It examines the distinguishing characteristics of micro enterprises and the use of IS in micro enterprises. It gives a brief history and description of the micro enterprise in question (Lanzarote First) and then analyses the use of IS from two angles: functionality and benefits. Importantly, the strategic benefits of the various IS are differentiated from other efficiency and effectiveness benefits. The case also tests the use of an IS planning methodology. The case illustrates that a micro enterprise can use IS strategically and, because of the absence of certain factors which are present in large organisations, the impact of IS may be even greater.

With the objective of trying to understand and assess the status of delivering business development services (BDS) and identifying the constraints, the Ethiopian Development Research Institute conducted a survey of randomly selected 974 MSEs (551 micro and 423 small enterprise operators) in 2003.

Random, anonymous survey of MSE operators in BDS in Ethiopia.

The results of the survey indicated that there were very limited BDS providers in the sector, which delivered limited services to few MSE operators (very low outreach). MSE operators had very limited vocational and technical training (before starting business), received few short‐term training, extension and counselling, and marketing services. The most important constraints were mainly related to access to markets and finance. Networks or associations in the MSE sector were not used as useful instruments to promote joint marketing. The results of the survey reveal that there is not significant difference based on size (micro and small) and gender in accessing BDS in the MSE sector. Addressing the constraints of delivering BDS requires clarity regarding the roles of facilitator and providers and the use of subsidies during the transition phase. The interventions should focus on delivering BDS on sustainable basis by responding to the needs in the market and providing incentives to the BDS providers, particularly the private sector.

Very few systematic studies of this nature have been carried out in developing countries. The paper offers clear implications for policymakers involved in economic development and poverty reduction.