Abstract

This paper aims to intensively explore the factors that affect competitiveness for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and how SMEs can improve their competitiveness in the context of an emerging economy like Vietnam. This study combined qualitative and quantitative methods and employed covariance base structural equation model (CB-SEM). The originality of this study is of great contributions including (1) Proposing the latest model for SMEs for improving their competitiveness, taking internal and external factors aggregation into consideration; (2) Research context particularly on emerging economy like Vietnam, an emerging economy with great economic and medical achievements that has received special attention from the world after a long period of fighting against the global Covid19 pandemic. More importantly, in the context of increasing competitive pressure due to global integration; (3) Deliverable of this study disclosed the overall decisive factors for firm’s competitiveness, both internal and external. More importantly, it revealed the impact mechanism of each factor to contribute to increasing firm’s competitiveness in some ways. This study provides the implications of this study are expected to make breakthrough contributions for SMEs in Vietnam to gain higher achievement, towards sustainability. Furthermore, the contributions of this study are also expected to be a valuable source of reference for SMEs in other emerging countries, as long as in similar economic settings. The findings are interested to business practitioners, economics and policy maker as an attempt to boost SMEs’ competitiveness in a systematic and sustainable manner by integrating multilevel powers of firm, industry and nation.

摘要

本文旨在深入探讨影响中小企业竞争力的因素，以及在像越南这样的新兴经济体中中小企业如何提高竞争力。这项研究结合了定性和定量方法，并采用了协方差基础结构方程模型（CB-SEM）。这项研究的独创性做出了巨大贡献，包括：（1）提出了针对中小企业的最新模型以提高其竞争力，同时考虑到内部和外部因素的综合；（2）研究背景，特别是对像越南这样的新兴经济体的研究背景，这是一种在经济和医学上取得了巨大成就的新兴经济体，在与全球Covid19大流行进行了长期斗争之后，受到了世界的特别关注。更重要的是，全球一体化带来的竞争压力越来越大的背景下；（3）这项研究的成果揭示了企业内部和外部竞争力的总体决定性因素。更重要的是，它揭示了在某种程度上有助于提高企业竞争力的各个因素的影响机制。本研究提供了本研究的意义，有望为越南的中小企业取得突破性贡献，从而在可持续性方面取得更高的成就。此外，只要在类似的经济环境中，这项研究的贡献也有望成为其他新兴国家中小企业的有价值的参考来源。调查结果对商业从业者很感兴趣，