Small Business

A Study of critical success factors of Thai SMEs and its implications for Saudi Arabian SMEs .1 .0 INTRODUCTION

2 .0 LITERATURE REVIEW

2 .1 Questions to be investigated

3 .0 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

4 .0 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

4 .1 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

4 .1 .1 Case-Study Research Methodology

4 .1 .2 Observation Research Methodology

4 .1 .3 Ethnographic Research Methodology

4 .2 QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

4 .2 .1 Descriptive Research Methodology

4 .3 .2 Experimental Research Methodology

4 .3 .3 The Quasi-Experimental Research Methodology p

5 .0 DATA COLLECTION METHODS

5 .1 Questionnaire Survey

5 .2 Interview

5 .3 Secondary Sources

5 .4 Data Analysis

5 .5 Research Outcome

1 .0 INTRODUCTION

Today the world is becoming increasingly integrated market for goods and markets making nations more competitive to come up with new goods and services . This increase in demand for products is making private sector the engine of economic growth around the world , which is making the role of SMEs (Small Business Enterprise ) more important than ever for the governments and policy makers around the world . SMEs are traditionally considered engines of the private sector in developed and developing countries . The reason is that SMEs are considered engines of private sector and economic growth which are playing an effective role in developed countries and in Asian countries , such as Singapore , Thailand and Indonesia . However Saudi Arabia lacks the success of SMEs for many reasons , which will be reviewed in this

2 .0 LITERATURE REVIEW

SMEs are classified by number of employees and by value of their assets In Saudi Arabia any enterprise which employ ten workers with a capital less than US 50 ,000 are considered SME or micro-enterprise many of which operate in traditional sector . There are others who employ up to 100 workers and considered medium enterprise . The table one below shows this classification . SMEs in Saudi Arabia are a major source of private investment . SMEs mainly are operating in service , trade and manufacturing forming about 90 percent of private enterprise in the country , which makes their role more important in creating new products services , motivating the entrepreneurial culture and contributing to the large chunk of industrial production (Radwan , 1991

Radwan , 2001

In Saudi Arabia the successive five years developmental plans have accelerated the private sector within context of free economy . And over the past thirty years the developmental plans have made many achievements with number of factories increasing many folds raising the share of GDP . At present SME account for the 74 percent of non-oil GDP while the 1 .83 million in 1970 to 6 .16 million which shows the expanding role of SMEs in the Kingdom (Radwan , 1991

In to understand the issue , it is important to study the countries where SMEs are a success story . According to statistics in 2003 the number of Indonesian SMEs reached to 42 .4 million which contribute to the 56 percent of the GDP and 19 .4 percent of the export with 79 millions of jobs...