Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to interconnect the firm level competitive performance (competitiveness) to the financial performance of the firms. The goal is to give evidence on how successful small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) use their financial performance to support their competitive performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Competitiveness is interpreted and measured through the resource-based view theory on a wide range of competitiveness measurements with a sample size of 639 SMEs. Financial data originate from official, publicly accessible governmental archives. All data are from a mid-size Central European country (Hungary). To interconnect competitiveness and financial performance, this paper recognizes two types of cash flow, namely, cash flow to the “past” (dividend and debt service) and cash flow to the “future” (CAPEX and innovation). This paper used ordinary least squares regression and binomial logistic regression to analyze connections.

Findings

Cash flows to the “future” have much stronger effects on competitiveness than cash flows to the “past.” Debt services do not affect competitiveness, whereas dividends, CAPEX and innovation efforts have a significant positive connection to competitiveness, showing that higher cash flow indicates higher competitive performance. If this paper knows how much the firm spends on innovation and dividends, in about the four-fifths of the cases, this paper can predict the level of the competitiveness of the firm without any additional information. The level of these variables gives enough information, the variability of them is not relevant.

Research limitations/implications

The explanatory power of future-oriented cash flow elements is much higher than that of the past-oriented ones, while innovation dominates all models. Firms with higher competitiveness build their returns in their cost structure, and only when the financial position of the firm is stable enough, withdraw the financial resource based on a long-term plan. The results are limited by the fact that using the current sample, detailed and representative (e.g. cross-industrial, spatial, etc.) decomposition is not possible.

Originality/value

Literature is focusing on how SMEs reach success, how SMEs “earn money.” There is no evidence on how SMEs “spend money,” earned during their success.

中文翻译：

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了解中小企业竞争力与现金流量产生之间的联系：匈牙利的一项实证分析

目的

本文的目的是将公司层面的竞争绩效（竞争性）与公司的财务绩效联系起来。目的是提供证据，证明成功的中小企业（SME）如何使用其财务业绩来支持其竞争业绩。

设计/方法/方法

通过基于资源的观点理论对竞争力进行解释和衡量，该理论涉及广泛的竞争力衡量标准，样本量为639家中小型企业。财务数据来自可公开访问的官方政府档案。所有数据均来自中欧中型国家（匈牙利）。为了使竞争力和财务绩效相互关联，本文认识到两种现金流量，即流向“过去”的现金流（股息和债务偿还）和流向“未来”的现金流（资本支出和创新）。本文使用普通最小二乘回归和二项逻辑回归分析了联系。

发现

流向“未来”的现金流对竞争力的影响要强于流向“过去”的现金流。债务还本付息不会影响竞争力，而股息，资本支出和创新努力与竞争力有着显着的正相关关系，这表明现金流量越高，竞争绩效就越高。如果本文了解公司在创新和股息上花费了多少，那么在大约五分之四的情况下，本文就可以预测公司的竞争力水平，而无需任何其他信息。这些变量的级别提供了足够的信息，它们的可变性无关紧要。

研究局限/意义

面向未来的现金流量要素的解释力比过去的现金流要素的解释力高得多，而创新主导所有模型。具有较高竞争力的公司会在成本结构中建立回报，只有当公司的财务状况足够稳定时，才根据长期计划提取财务资源。结果受到以下事实的限制：使用当前样本，不可能进行详细且具有代表性的分解（例如，跨行业，空间分解等）。

创意/价值

文献集中在中小企业如何取得成功，中小企业如何“赚钱”上。没有证据表明中小企业在成功过程中如何“花钱”。