INFLUENCING FACTORS ON MALAYSIAN MANUFACTURING SMES’ PERFORMANCE

Abstract

SMEs’ performance has been researched previously in the relation to firms’ resources and external environment. Recent studies initiated that the resources play significant roles in determining the firm’s performance. However, not much has been done looking to the relationship between firms’ internal resources and organizational learning in the firm, especially on manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to determine factors (namely production technology, staff training, networking usage and organizational learning) that influencing manufacturing SMEs’ performance. This study applied quantitative approach on 152 usable questionnaires using IBM-SPSS for further analysis. The result showed that organizational learning is the most important factors that affect organizational performance among Malaysian manufacturing SMEs. Discussions of the findings, the significance of the study and direction for future research are then discussed.