Condiciones ergonómicas de la estación de trabajo

To study SMME growth and development, there are various factors need to be examined. The variation in measures used in SMME growth studies, the varia- tion in growth indicators, the variation in the measurement of growth over time, and the variation in the characteristics of the SMMEs are all important features of SMME growth as a phenomenon. Some of these problems have been identified in SMME growth literature (Chandler and Hanks 1998;Delmar 2006).

Delmar (2006) has noted that the heterogeneity of measures used in SMME growth studies impairs the ability of scholars to accumulate and compare re- sults. Thus SMME growth is measured in several ways and various indicators are used to measure growth. Growth is measured in terms of increases in em- ployment, turnover, profitability, assets and market share. Measuring turnover growth and relative employment growth during a specific time period is the most common indicators used. Indicators such as profitability, assets and mar- ket share are also commonly used, however not as commonly used as turnover and employment (Poblete and Leon 2010).

Owners/managers of SMMEs are most attracted to financial indicators. Simi- larly, government, in addition to interest in increases in employment, has also been focused on the contributions of SMMEs to the economy, which can be mea- sured by the growth of sales or turnover growth (Storey 1994). Another aspect of financial indicators is profitability, since the profit focuses on the earnings of firm, various measures of profit are used: profit margin, earnings per share and earnings per capital employed (Dobbs and Hamilton 2007). Growth also takes the form of development in management, technology, employees and increase in the market share.

Turnover and employment growth are measured by absolute or relative growth. The choice of absolute or relative method is especially important for the rela- tionship between SMMEs size and anything correlated with its size and growth. Absolute measures tend to ascribe higher growth to larger firms whereas SMMEs more easily reach impressive growth in percentage terms. The implications of the choice between relative and absolute method are much discussed in the liter- ature and seem to be reasonably well understood by researchers when designing their studies (Donckels and Lambrecht 1995; Dunne and Hughes 1994).

There seems to be an emerging consensus that if only one indicator is to be

chosen as a measure of firm growth, the most preferred measure should be sales (Ardishvili, Cardozo, Harmon and Vadakath 1998). It is relatively easily acces- sible, it applies to all sorts of firms, and it is relatively insensitive to capital intensity and degree of integration. It has been argued that sales is a highly suitable indicator across different conceptualizations of the firm (Davidsson and Wiklund 2006).

Sales is not, however, the perfect indicator of growth for all purposes. Sales are sensitive to inflation and currency exchange rates and it is not always true that sales lead the growth process. For high-technology start-ups firms, it is possible that assets and employment will grow before any sales occur. Arguments have been offered for employment as a much more direct indicator of firm complexity than sales, and may be preferable if the focus of interest is on the managerial implications of growth (Churchill and Lewis 1983; Greiner 1998). Because no universally superior growth indicator seems to exist, some scholars composite measures using multiple indicators while other scholars use the same explana- tory model on several growth measures (Davidsson 1989; Delmar 2006).

The reason behind multiple-indicator measures is that different indicators of growth (such as change in employees, sales, or market share) are attributes of the same underlying theoretical concepts of growth and therefore tend to be correlated. The underlying causes of growth are assumed to be the same, but situational and characteristic factors that cannot be included in the research model may determine the specific form of growth a firm engages in.

Since there appears to be no one best measure of firm growth, as well as no one best composite measure of firm growth, it would be advantageous to explore the use of many different growth measures in a study of firm growth. The use of multiple measures of firm growth would likely provide a more complete picture of any empirical relationships as well as provide a way to test the strength of any theoretical model to misspecifications in the dependent variable. The use of multiple measures also offers the opportunity to use a measure optimized to the study’s specific purposes while allowing comparisons with the results of previous studies using other growth measures.

Therefore turnover and employment are the two most important multiple-indicators measuring SMME growth. Employment numbers is also a measure that is easily accessible, since it is an important figure for governments. Sales and turnover figures are on the other hand affected by inflation and exchange rates and it is

2. The Impact of Constraints on SMME Growth 37

difficult to compare sales figures between industries. That is why it is impor- tant to use multiple growth indicators to study firm growth (Delmar, Davidsson and Gartner 2003). This study uses two measures of SMME growth, change in employment and change in turnover.

This study focuses on sales and employment only, for the following reasons. First, the use of sales and employment measures are the most widely used in empirical growth research (Delmar 2006). Second, these growth indicators are the only ones available in the present study for all of the firms of interest. Finally, other indicators have some obvious shortcomings that limit their applicability outside of very special contexts. For example, such indicators as market share and physical output can only be compared within industries for firms with a similar product range. Using an indicator such as total asset value is highly related to the capital intensity of the industry and sensitive to changes over time. And, while profits are an important indicator of success, the relationship of profits to size is only evident in the aggregates of firms or over long periods for individual firms.