Determinants of SME competitiveness: An approach based on the manager's profile

Abstract

At the level of research on the SME, two main currents stand out: the SME as the object of research and the SME as a field of research. This article presents the particularity of integrating the two currents and has as its main motivation to highlight the profile of the manager of SME/VSE as one of the determinants of competitiveness in addition to what the literature considers as such, in particular internal factors (economies of scale, innovation -product and process-, product characteristics) and external (natural resources, availability of raw materials and economic and financial policies). Indeed, SMEs have the trivial characteristics of a low workforce and investment and above all a concentrated mode of management. This implies the importance of the place occupied by the leader and we assume that, as a result, his profile impacts the competitiveness of his company. In addition, regardless of the degree of formalization, SMEs / VSEs always have an important informal aspect in their transactions or mode of operation, making them specific compared to other forms of business. Hence the importance of integrating these aspects into the analysis of competitiveness. With regard to the methodology, through a process of collecting qualitative and quantitative data on 106 SMEs/VSEs located in the territory of Songololo, at the border post of LUFU in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a multivariate analysis by Binary logistic regression was performed, releasing an explanatory power of 51% of the phenomenon by the independent variables. The study highlighted that the profile of the manager of SME / TPE, in particular the age, the level of education, the marital status as well as the optimistic perception of the business environment, impacts competitiveness. This demonstrates the importance on the one hand, of integrating into the analysis of the determinants of the competitiveness of SMEs/VSEs, the two dimensions which are the profile of the manager and the often-informal nature of these entities and on the other hand, to adopt a dualistic object-field of study approach for the SME when we want to highlight the determinants of its competitiveness.

Keywords: Determinant, competitiveness, SME, leader

JEL Classification: E26, F1, F15

Paper type: Empirical research