Mahmood, Muhammad (2004) The productivity performance of Australian manufacturing SMEs. Journal of new business ideas and trends, 2 (1). pp. 21-28. ISSN 1446-8719

Abstract

In an open economy like Australia, SMEs ability to export has become very crucial for their long-term servival and growth. This depends on SMEs capacity to remain internationally competitive. Productivity growth is the key which will enable SMEs to deliver products at lower costs. The results indicate that there are large differences in productivity between SMEs and large enterprises but there also exist significant differences in productivity levels across industries in the manufacturing sector. However productivity increased at a faster rate for SMEs than that for large enterprises in the period from 1994-95 to 1999-2000. Despite the faster growth rate achieved by SMEs in productivity, in most of the industries average productivity still remains much lower than that for large enterprises. At the aggregate manufacturing sector level, average productivity stands at half of that achieved by large enterprises. In this context, government policy initiatives need to be directed towards addressing the issues relating to market and institutional rigidities.

Search Google Scholar

Repository staff login