Dear Coleen Fulguerinas

Greetings,

Please , find the three attached files about how to measure the growth of business may be useful and interesting for you 

Best Regards, 

Several measures including employment growth (% annual change), sales growth, or even total assets growth. If you have many firms (SMEs), and other data (financial), your research would quantitative. In other words, the determinants of growth (SMEs).

Good luck

Hello Coleen,

in adition to the measures indicated by Ghassan, you could do another kind of practice: try to analyse in the countries you are studiyng, the institutions that monitorize or give support to SMEs: usually these institutions have several measures or indicators by wich they monitorize this kind of enterprises. Among that measures or indicator you, maybe, can find some useful for your study - with the advantage that these kind of information can be used - free of costs. Good luck.

Helena

Hello Coleen,

A lot of measures exist, and can be more or less suited according your project.

Also there has been some discussions on this topic,  so I would really recommend you (to complement the OECD reports, and papers) to see the papers that are on the (researchgate) profiles of

- Per Davidsson

- Frédéric Delmar

- Johan Wiklund

Also see their 2008 book on Entrepreneurship and the Growth of Firms (Edward Elgar), or the 2013 one.

They both or individually made some methodological works ont the measures of growth and their impact on results... So it can be a good way to prevent errors in your work.

Wishing that this comment will be helpful to you

Best wishes

Didier

Kindly find the attached link, and go to section, 4.4 (business success), it may help..

Article Conceptual Framework of Factors Affecting SMEs Manufacturing...

Hi Coleen,

I agree with all measures suggested by the above namely, number of employees, stock turnover, asset base, market share as well as profit.  However, since you are dealing with SMEs whose definitions vary from nations to nations, it will be vital to consider the setting of your study.  Also if you decide on the profit, stock turnovers and profit as measures of SMEs perforance, since many of SMEs entrepreneurs will not be willing to state the actual amount of these issues in monetary terms.  Thus you may not achieve the gist of the study. 

Good luck in your research.

Sincerely,

Dr Ngoze Moses L.

Corporate Entrepreneurship and Management Science Expert and Research

I agree with Moses suggestions.

Dear Coleen

As stated by above writers, business growth could be measured by applying various indicators. Some authors measure the concept in terms of short term profitability or long term growth, where growth includes items such as sales growth, return on assets. Other authors insist that business growth measurement should encompass both financial  (e.g. gross and  net profit growth)  and  and non-financial indicators (e.g. growth in number of employees and level of community participation). It important to adopt a business growth measurement instrument bearing in mind the context of the study (where the study is carried out).

Best wishes in your study.

Dr Edem Agbobli

Entrepreneurship & small business development and research.    

Choosing between qualitative or quantitative research depends on ur access to data. In literature, where no bank data exists because companies are too small, don't have financial statements. can't answer the questions u can use non financial indicators to measure the perceived growth measured by sales, share of the markets ...

By sales, value added or employment, in a Gibrat's Law setting (see the attached article). Regards, MV

As have been indicated by writers before me, there are several indicators that measure the growth of a business, among them include market share, revenue growth, No of employees, value of assets etc