The Impact of Business Networking and Internet Adoption on SME performance in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Many scholars have identified the importance of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in order to achieve a sustainable economic growth in developing countries. Practitioners and the governments in such countries have also taken steps towards strengthening the sector with the vision of sustainable economic growth yielding from the SME sector. The objective of the journal article is to identify and verify the contribution by Business Networking and Internet based ICT adoption in strengthening the performance of the SME sector. Building up alliances and the usage of new technology is deemed be vital factors in supporting the growth of SMEs. This paper flows through an analysis of the most recent literatures on the topic to construct a conceptual framework that is proposed to be utilized in the future research work together with the findings of model being empirically tested in Sri Lanka to validate the relevance of the proposed model to developing countries such as Sri Lanka. The paper also verifies the findings using statistical analysis of the data collected from a sample of SMEs in Sri Lanka covering all nine provinces. Variables in the model includes constructs of Business Networking; Competition, Necessity, Reciprocity, Stability, Legitimacy, Efficiency and constructs for Internet Adoption are business orientation, benefits, new work practice adoptability, ICT costs and  complexity.

Keywords: Business Networking, Internet adoption, ICT, SME Performance