Productivity and Innovation in SMEs

Azad Singh Bali is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Melbourne. Peter McKiernan is Professor of Management at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland.Christopher Vas is Associate Professor at Murdoch University, Australia, and Deputy Dean and Director of the Singapore Centre for Research in Innovation, Productivity and Technology (SCRIPT).Peter Waring is Associate Professor at Murdoch University, Australia, and Dean of the Singapore campus.

"In the 2000s, Singapore’s leaders worried that their success had stalled and that the city-state’s political economy might unravel. As this book makes clear, one of the problems identified was lagging productivity growth. Enhancing this through the upgrading of SMEs would reinvigorate both the economy and the state’s faded political agenda. This book results from a determined effort to discern what went awry and then how to improve SME productivity. Bringing an array of academic knowledge and insight and considerable experience, the authors set out a series of pathways and scenarios they created for Singapore’s policymakers. A fascinating social science approach to productivity, the book provides a fascinating foundation for later scholars and policymakers, not just for those studying productivity but also as a baseline for assessing the implementation of strategies for navigating the future." -- Kevin Hewison, Weldon E. Thornton Distinguished Emeritus Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA"Singapore is a paradox: one of the world’s most competitive economies while strangely scoring relatively much less well in the domains of productivity and innovation. The strength of this book is that it addresses both the academic lacunae and the Singaporean paradox. Pleasingly, the book is a strong blend of detailed description of the Singaporean manufacturing sector embedded in the wider scholarly and applied policy study of the causal relationship between productivity and innovation and successful SME activity. Specifically, the authors are to be commended for the manner in which the book provides a superb interdisciplinary study of the relationship between the core factors of productivity (not only labour and capital but also management practices, ICT investment, R&D intensity and innovation) and the competitiveness of Singapore’s manufacturing sector SMEs." -- Richard Higgott, Emeritus Professor of Int

• List of FiguresList of TablesList of ContributorsAcknowledgements1 Introduction 2 The South East Asian Context 3 Research Method4 Research Findings5 Recommendations for Policy and Practice6 Conclusion and Scenarios for the Future of WorkIndex