Factors Influencing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs): an Exploratory Study of Owner/Manager and Firm characteristics

In recent times, there is an extensive amount of literary research devoted to the influence of the characteristics of the owner/managers and the firm on the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises. Nevertheless, the bulk of such research tends to concentrate on SMEs in developed countries; very limited studies have provided such research on SMEs in Africa, and even less in Nigeria. This paper fills this gap; it incorporates an analysis of influence of five owner/managers and four firm characteristics on the growth of the firm. Our result reveals that SME growth is largely influenced by firm characteristics such as age, sector, legal status and number of employees. Owner/manager characteristics proved seem to influence growth include age, education, previous experience, and three motivation variables, namely finance, employment creation and self-fulfilment. Owner/manager characteristics such as gender and two motivational variables such as desire to be independent and job satisfaction were not seen to exert an influence on SME growth in our sampled firms in Nigeria.