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The Network Characteristic of Chinese SMEs in Malaysia and Their Performance

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Proceedings of the ASEAN Entrepreneurship Conference 2014

Abstract

The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a salient role to prosper the economic and market development in Malaysia. Among the significant contributions of SMEs are to create a lot of job opportunities, increase tax income and export duties, and improve economic stability. However, the path of SMEs’ development and growth is not a smooth sailing journey. In fact, SMEs always face a lot of problems and obstacles that are possible to influence their development, survival, and growth in the economic market. Among the major constraints encountered by SMEs are financial difficulty and lack of information. These problems that arise could be due to the entrepreneurs of SMEs not being able to establish a good relationship with their network contacts. Even though there are many past researches who had discussed about network characteristic among owner-managers, however, a study on Chinese owner-manager in Malaysia is still limited. Therefore, this paper investigates the network characteristics among Chinese owner-managers and their relationship with SMEs’ performance. The findings showed that total network size is 44 persons and network diversity is 0.16 (race), 0.37 (relationship), 0.38 (occupation), and 0.16 (gender), while the network density obtained by Chinese is 0.69. The network size of Chinese owner-managers (family members, relatives, friends, suppliers, customers, bankers, trade organization, social organization, government officials, and total network size) indicates a significant result on the overall performance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Merbok, Kedah, Malaysia

    Law Kuan Kheng

  2. College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Merbok, Kedah, Malaysia

    Mohd Sobri Minai

Authors
  1. Law Kuan Kheng
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  2. Mohd Sobri Minai
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Law Kuan Kheng .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Teknologi MARA, Merbok, Kedah, Malaysia

    Noor Zahirah Mohd Sidek

  2. Universiti Teknologi MARA, Merbok, Kedah, Malaysia

    Siti Meriam Ali

  3. Universiti Teknologi MARA, Merbok, Kedah, Malaysia

    Mahazir Ismail

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore

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Kheng, L.K., Minai, M.S. (2016). The Network Characteristic of Chinese SMEs in Malaysia and Their Performance. In: Mohd Sidek, N., Ali, S., Ismail, M. (eds) Proceedings of the ASEAN Entrepreneurship Conference 2014. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0036-2_4

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