Developing an index to measure globalisation competencies of Small-and-Medium Enterprises.

Abstract

Small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of Singapore‘s economy. Faced with issues of home market saturation, they encounter difficulties in growing their businesses within the city-state. To date, aside from venture capitalists and financial institutions providing funding to SMEs, the Singapore government has been active in supporting them by injecting capital and providing growth-related training and advice to SME owners and employees. The Singapore government takes steps to encourage free trade, and in the process takes indigenous SMEs to global markets.

However, with some 160,000 small-and-medium enterprises in Singapore, identifying and assessing the more deserving firms to provide the relevant support for overseas ventures is not a straightforward task. There is currently no viable index that holistically measures a SME‘s readiness and potential to globalise. Indeed, there lacks an approach, and very importantly, a measuring instrument with which assessors can use to analyse and measure strategic competencies of SMEs in globalising their businesses. The research objective is thus to develop an index which assesses such salient globalisation competencies of SMEs. The validity of the index is tested via a pilot study conducted on a sample size of SMEs.