Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2016

Abstract

Innovation has been considered as a key element for the growth of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) for a long time. Though this field of research has been subject to numerous studies, the links between the factors that affect innovation within SMEs still need to be clarified and investigated (Leghima, 2014). Several studies have suggested that there are many factors that lead to innovation, including individual, organizational and environmental factors as well as those related to—or are considered to be—innovation attributes (Saunière et al. 2012). They have, moreover, underlined the importance of recognizing that most of these factors can influence unevenly the process of innovation, in that they are not of equal strength nor all act in the same direction (Ducaux, 2013). In Algeria, however, very few researches have dealt with this subject (Metaiche M. & Benhabib A. 2013). The aim of this paper is to understand the entrepreneur, its human skills, financial capacity and collaboration with the external environment, the competition as well as R&D on capacity innovation of the SMEs. The choice of variables is based on a study that has regrouped several researches undertaken in 23 countries. For the purpose of this study, we have developed a conceptual model that has been tested empirically using data from 118 Algerians SMEs. After an exploratory analysis followed by a confirmatory analysis and using structural equation modeling, we have come to the following results: the capacity of innovation of the Algerian SMEs depends mainly upon entrepreneur’s attributes as well as his/her financial capacity.

Journal Title

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

ISSN

2334-282X

Publisher

Middle East Economic Association and Loyola University Chicago

Volume

18

Issue

1

Comments

Presentation of the articles in the Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies was made possible by a limited license granted to Loyola University Chicago and Middle East Economics Association from the authors who have retained all copyrights in the articles.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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