The impact of industry, firm age and education level on financial management performance in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): evidence from Turkey

Abstract

Small and medium sized enterprises are crucial for socio-economic growth, due totheir significant role in creating new workforce, GDP increase, innovation andentrepreneurship. This article examines financial management performance in smalland medium-sized enterprises with regard to industry, firm age and education level ofowner/managers differences. The data used in the study is collected from 188 smalland medium-sized enterprises through structured questionnaires and threehypotheses regarding the associations are tested by using structural equationmodeling. Findings of one-way ANOVA tests indicate that performance in financialmanagement practices has a strong and positive correlation with education level ofsmall business owner/managers, whereas no significant difference is found regardingSMEs operating in different industries. For the impact of company age, independentsamples T-test is conducted and a meaningful difference between small andmedium sized companies which are five years or older and younger is found.