International Journal of Business Marketing and Management (IJBMM) Volume 3 Issue 2 February 2018, P.P.47-51 ISSN: 2456-4559 www.ijbmm.com
The Moderating Effect of Environment Uncertainty on the Relationship between Distinctive Capabilities and Performance of Manufacturing SMEs in Palestine: A Conceptual Framework Hashem Ismail Mohammad Ramadan School of Business Management University Utara Malayisa 06010 UUM Sintok, KedehDarul Aman, Malaysia
Dr. Saari bin Ahmad School of Business Management University Utara Malayisa 06010 UUM Sintok, KedehDarul Aman, Malaysia
Abstract: This study aimed to examine the moderating effect of Environment Uncertainty (EU) on the Relationship between Distinctive Capabilities (DC) and Performance of SMEs (PS).Interestingly, only a few empirical researches wereexploredon theeffect of business environment onthe Distinctive Capabilities and Performance of SMEs in Palestine.The number of Questionnaire which will useto collect data from the respondentswill be341. The respondents are from manufacturing SMEs in West Bank of Palestine. Theresult of this research can give a high benefit for government policy makers, owner-managers, scholars, and educators. Also, will indicateif there is anegative relationship between environmental uncertainty andthe performance of manufacturing SMEs. Keywords:environmentuncertainty,Performance, small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs), Palestine.
I.
Introduction
A review of the business literature in Palestine shows specifically that limited researches have surveyed the types of business strategy being adopted by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, a few of the previous studies and researches were focusing on the connection between performance and business strategy, while most of the research concentrated on large business firms(Hashim, Ahmad, & Zakria, 2015; Ramadan & Ahmad, 2018), for example USA which it is considered as a developed country they link performance with strategy in most of the published strategic group, furthermore differences between SMEs and large enterprises documented well in the literature, but the greater part of strategic studies concentrate on large enterprises (Parnell, Long, & Lester, 2015). The Manufacturing sector consider as the backbone and one of the most productive sectors of any country and play a key role with the rest of the production sectors to increase the gross domestic product (Palestinian Business Forum, 2014).This sector employs 11.9% of total employment in Palestine, 15.3% of workers in the industrial sector in the West Bank and 5.4% of workers in the Gaza Strip, this percentage distributed among 12.6% of males and 8.5% of females(Rantisi, 2016). All companies regardless of different forms (financial institution, small manufacturer, support provider, professional services, distributor, and countless others) needs to know the level of its performance (Dubihlela & Dhurup, 2015), with regard to this, SMEs are anticipated to upgrade their performance, especially in developing and emerging countries context (Amroune, 2016). On the other hand, environmental uncertainty for a long time has been considered as an important variable to determine firms performance (Jauch & Kraft, 1986; Song, Augustine, & Yang, 2016). Different environment
International Journal of Business Marketing and Management (IJBMM)
Page 47