A Simple Management Tool for SMEs amid the Challenges and Initiatives

摘要

After some years of neglect the phenomenon of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs), together with the associated concept of entrepreneurship, has attracted increased attention from policy makers, academic researchers and business people around the globe. The major reason for the recent scrutiny is due to the significant role played by 'SMEs around the world, especially in job creation. Apart from job creation, SMEs also play a variety of other roles. For example, whilst the economies of scale in production and distribution enable large firms to make a significant contribution to the national and international economies, many of them would not survive without the existence of SMEs. Moreover evidence suggests that financial institutions lend large sums of money to this sector. Thus if the banking sector is to retain its financial viability by, for example, avoiding non-performing loans, then the overall health of SMEs is essential. Data on SMEs reveal their economic significance. For example, 93 percent of all European enterprises have less than 10 employees,while two-thirds of all jobs are in SMEs. Furthermore, with an average size of six people, European enterprises are relatively small since an average Japanese enterprise employees 10 people and an average American enterprise has 19 employees (SMEs in Focus, 2003). China is no exception as a few select statistics will confirm. For example, at a World Convention in Changzhou in 2002, the vice-minister in charge of the State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC) was reported as indicating that the number of registered SMEs in China had exceeded eight million and that both industrial output and export volume of these enterprises made up 60 percent of China's total, in addition to providing about three-quarters of employment opportunities in Chinese cities (Asia Times, 21 Sept. 2002). The objectives of this paper are twofold. First, we briefly review the literature highlighting the role of SMEs in modern society, the challenges facing them and present some support suggestions and initiatives. Second, we propose a simple and easy to use man-age-ment tool to assist managers of SMEs to cope with the complexity of modern business. The development of this tool has been influenced by the extensive writings of Kaplan and Norton (1996) together with consulting assignments undertaken by this author.