It is not common.

Hi Paul, this is a very interesting topic. One of the aspects that I think it could be of interest to investigate is the impact of any forms of public financial aid on the performance of small and medium size firms. 

Hi Paul,

This is highly dependent on the area and topic of study. The key issue within your question is ‘SMEs’ which by the very nature in definition (whether by annual turnover or number of employees), the uptake on certain implementation issues might be limited by the size of the organisation. This could in turn result in fewer studies conducted in that particular area. Drawing upon the same argument, ‘Public procurement’ might involve bidding for larger projects and due to the manpower or resource restrictions as well as other factors which tend to affect these SMEs such as financial capabilities, they might not engage in some of these projects. I’m also aware that in certain countries, building contractors are categorised into different financial classes according to the individual projects that they can bid for from the government (i.e. public projects). Still using the construction industry as an example, the majority of the firms in most countries are classified as SMEs. This fact coupled with other barriers that SMEs normally face irrespective of the industry such as ‘lack of knowledge’, ‘lack of manpower (same as resources among others)’, ‘lack of time’ as well the type of pre-qualification conditions set for the bidding process might exclude them from tendering for huge projects (thus limiting any kind of experience from which the research could be drawn from). This in turn might explain the paucity of studies say in ‘public procurement’ as conditions might be more favourable to larger organisations.

The second aspect of your question relates to whether this common in other fields. The answer is ‘not necessarily’ as a search on ‘Emerald’ database of articles using the ‘Keyword’ of ‘SMEs’ generated some 5,926 articles suggesting that some form of face involving SMEs has been undertaken. Interestingly, when the search was narrowed to include the keyword of ‘Public procurement’, the number of hits or articles reduced to ‘478’. I have selected some three articles just to illustrate the current research in the areas of ‘SMEs’ and ‘Public procurement’. The first by Fee et al. (2002) rather reinforces and supports your question by highlighting the challenges as well as opportunities faced by SMEs.

Fee, R., Erridge, A. and Hennigan, S. (2002) "SMEs and government purchasing in Northern Ireland: problems and opportunities", European Business Review, Vol. 14 Iss: 5, pp.326 - 334.

The following two examples are from supply chain management related areas:

McAdam, R., Hazlett, S-A. and Johnston, S. (2011) "Establishing ex ante public construction supply chain guidelines in the public procurement of schools' estate", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 24 Iss: 3, pp.250 – 273.

Quayle, M. (2003) "A study of supply chain management practice in UK industrial SMEs", Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol. 8 Iss: 1, pp.79 – 86.

There are more studies ranging from e-commerce, risk management, total quality management (TQM) to ICT adoption and specifically focusing on SMEs. My own research (and subsequent publications) at the MSc and PhD levels were focused on examining the adopting of total quality management (TQM) among construction related SMEs. On a positive side Paul, the paucity of studies or research in any given area of micro-enterprises does provide us (academics, practitioners) with more scope for examining these overlooked or under researched fields.

Kind regards,

Nicholas

в настоящее время я провожу исследование в области участия малого предпринимательства в закупках. я также столкнулась с проблемой отсутствия исследований. некоторые материалы мне удалось найти. если вас заинтересует, напишите, пожалуйста, мне.

according to Russia came our investigation on your question. I hope it will be of interest to you