An investigation into the current success factors for small and medium Essay

An investigation into the current success factors for small and medium enterprises in Thailand - Essay Example That is, identifying those characteristics of the enterprise relating to its management, relationships with other entities, contextual variables, etc. that either lead to or contribute in some way to the enterprise being successful. This research thus makes use of the construct of ‘success factor’, which is also mentioned in the hypothesis. The success factors themselves are qualitative because they are not quantifiable. These are possible underlying factors, which could indirectly contribute to the success of the SME based on the information gathered during the literature review. Examples are as a highly knowledgeable manager or a strong link to a supportive larger enterprise so they are not apparent as such. The success however, is measurable, for example, in terms of total sales growth, number of customers, and amount of profits as done by Vichitdhanabadee et al. (2009) or volume of exports. The major research question, which derives directly from the stated purpose o f the study, has been framed as follows: What are the underlying success factors for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand?The major hypothesis that will be tested in the quantitative phase of the study will be: There is a significant degree of positive underlying success factors that are contributing to the success of the SME. We assume that it is the preponderance of underlying success factors, such as those identified in Chapter One that lead to the success of a SME. A number of null hypotheses can be constructed, as in the two examples below, for testing the validity of the major hypothesis based on measurable quantities. There is no causal relationship between the value of capital and business performance. There is no causal relationship between the size of the enterprise in terms of the number of employees and total sales. 3.3 Research design and method This study will combine both quantitative and qualitative methods for the data collection and data analysis. It will thus take a mixed method approach, as il lustrated in Figure 1. These will then be compared and combined to construct a composite model of the study findings. This research design is shown in the figure below. It is to be noted that the quantitative phase will commence first followed by the qualitative phase. This will therefore be an explanatory sequential model. Figure 1: Mixed method (explanatory sequential) research design to be employed During the quantitative phase, data will be collected from the return of questionnaires from a mail-administered survey. During the qualitative phase, data will be collected by conducting a few case studies, which will involve carrying out interviews of Thai SME managers. In addition, some document analyses will also be conducted for gathering relevant information, such as from company profiles, reports and websites. The analysis of the quantitative data will be in the form of descriptive statistics of the data gathered from the survey. Descriptive statist