Aligning Manufacturing Strategy to Export Performance of Manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia

Abstract

The objective of this research is to determine if there is significant relationship between manufacturing strategy and export performance of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. Quantitative survey method was employed and data were collected from 201 exporting SMEs registered with the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. Descriptive statistics were reported, followed by reliability analysis, factor analysis, and hypothesis testing using multiple regressions. The finding suggests that there is significant and positive relationship between manufacturing strategy and export performance of manufacturing SMEs. The finding emphasizes the importance of adopting the manufacturing strategy among the owner/managers of manufacturing SMEs for their success and these firms would gain in terms of competitive advantage over their rivals and reap higher export performance. They could also anticipate future threats and seek out opportunities for further expansions in the international markets. The study limitations, managerial and theoretical implications are discussed as well as a number of directions for further research.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.