Which SMEs seek external support? Business characteristics, management behaviour and external influences in a contingency approach
基于2011年对英格兰1202家中小企业的电话调查，研究企业主管理者寻求正式外部支持（公共和私人提供者）的影响因素，发现增长目标和企业规模推动需求，而担忧和信心不足影响公共来源的使用。
To improve SME growth and competitiveness, governments often encourage business owner-managers to make use of external sources of support. Whether they seek this depends on the degree to which they perceive themselves to need assistance. Additionally, its use can be constrained by market failures. In this paper, we model whether SME owner-managers seek information and advice from formal sources, including public and private providers. In 2011, the researchers conducted a telephone survey of 1202 SMEs (1–249 employees) in England to assess the use and non-use of external support between 2008 and 2011. Using a contingency approach, we model various influences on the use and non-use of formal support and identify those owner-managers who face more concerns but have less confidence in their capabilities. We find that the demand for support, especially from private providers, is fuelled by a firm’s objective to grow and a size threshold, although this is moderated by various concerns which increase the likelihood of using public sources. The willingness to take informal advice can act as a stepping stone to using formal sources. Whilst market failures affected less than a fifth of firms, those with women directors were particularly affected as were newly founded firms.