Going Local: A Relational View of SMEs in the Food IndustryTools Arbelaez-McCarthy, Paloma (2017) Going Local: A Relational View of SMEs in the Food Industry. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)]
AbstractThe purpose of this dissertation was to explore the relational benefits enjoyed by SMEs to improve their sustainability and competitive advantage. For small businesses, these relationships are often vital for their sustainable practices, with supplier sourcing and knowledge sharing key aspects of business and marketing strategy. Small businesses were chosen as the focus for this study as they are seen to lack resources and competencies to implement sustainability practices to the same extent as larger organisations. Little past research has focused on SMEs alone in terms of sustainability and relationship building. In addition to this, there is little research into the impacts of internal resources of a firm on their capabilities to forge strong relationships. To explore this, a combined theoretical lens of the resources based view of the firm and relational theory were applied to SMEs working within a local food market through semi-structured interviews of 6 SMES to form a multiple case study for cross-study analysis of this context. This was paired with a presentation of the current literature regarding SMEs and their resources, relational theory and sustainable supply chain management to provide a discussion of the key enablers, lack of enablers and barriers to relational benefits. The core findings were in the importance of owner/managers in the success of relationship building and how constraints of size can be overcome through sharing of resources with external partners.
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