The impact of intangible capital on the Business performance of Moroccan companies: the case of SMEs in the Grand Agadir

Abstract

value and source of performance. The purpose of this study is to show the impact of intangible capital, through its components, on the business performance of Moroccan SMEs. To do this, we have retained the theory of resources (Barney, 1991), and the strategic approach to the management of intangible capital (Arrègle, 2006) as theoretical foundations of the literature. Thus, in this study we adopted a positivist epistemological position and a hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Indeed, a questionnaire was administered and survey data were collected from the managers of a sample of forty (40) SMEs in the Grand Agadir. For the choice of the sample, we opted for a reasoned choice by opting for a modeling, by structural equations using the software AMOS V23. The results of our study show that the commercial performance of Moroccan SMEs comes essentially from internal resources and skills rather than from customer capital. It also turned out that Moroccan SMEs give more importance to human and organizational capital, while relational capital is relatively neglected. This, consequently, is detrimental to their business performance. However, although the results of this study were satisfactory and consistent with the results of empirical studies in other contexts, it is difficult to generalize them due to the small sample size.

JEL Classification: E22; H11

Paper type: Empirical research