Effect of internal barriers on innovation performance in Malaysia’s embryonic SMEs (early view)

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Hasliza Abdul Halim
Tarnima Warda Andaib
Noor Hazlina Ahmad
T. Ramayah

Abstract

Manufacturing SMEs need to propel their creativity and innovativeness to enhance their innovation performance in the competitive and fast-changing environment. The current environment has transformed the internal working pattern, structure, and communication system to survive the rough business ecosphere. Consequently, SMEs encountered innumerable barriers to achieve the innovation performance and the SMEs should recognize the internal barriers so that, they are able to accelerate their innovation performance. Therefore, this study aims at examining the internal barriers namely constraint in financial resources, constraint in technology and constraint in human resources that hamper the innovation performance among the Malaysian manufacturing SMEs. This study embarked on two phases of data collection. First phase includes a series of semi-structured interviews with 15 participants from five SMEs via snowballing technique to gather their insights on internal barriers that impede innovation performance. For second phase, the survey method was adopted and 217 SMEs responded to the survey. All the responses were analysed using SmartPLS technique. The interview findings demonstrate that all the internal constraints are indeed important for SMEs to grasp and serve as the obstacles for innovation performance. Nevertheless, from the quantitative analysis, only financial constraints serve as the significant barrier that impede innovation performance. To summarize, this research produces insights on decisive proof regarding internal barriers that inhibit the manufacturing SMEs to achieve innovation performance.

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How to Cite
Hasliza Abdul Halim, Tarnima Warda Andaib, Noor Hazlina Ahmad, & T. Ramayah. (2023). Effect of internal barriers on innovation performance in Malaysia’s embryonic SMEs (early view). Asian Academy of Management Journal. Retrieved from https://ejournal.usm.my/aamj/article/view/3166
Section
Early Views - December 2023