Exploring the Internationalization of Small and Medium Enterprises

The provided content consists of various academic articles and book excerpts that explore the themes of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) internationalization, competitiveness, and sustainability. The texts discuss factors influencing SME success, such as market orientation, ICT implementation, strategic planning, and corporate social responsibility. Additionally, they examine the roles of entrepreneurship, innovation, and resilience in driving SME performance. Overall, the content highlights the complexities and challenges faced by SMEs in their quest for internationalization, competitiveness, and sustainability.

Small Medium Enterprises

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
2.1................................................................................................................................................3
2.2................................................................................................................................................4
2.3................................................................................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................5
3.1................................................................................................................................................5
3.2................................................................................................................................................6
3.3................................................................................................................................................6
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................7
4.1................................................................................................................................................7
4.2................................................................................................................................................8
4.3................................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Government has designed some criteria to define Small and medium enterprise, if the
enterprise succeeds in fulfilling 2 out of 3 criteria then is considered as SME. The criteria
prescribe as: Turnover is less than £25m, not more than 50 employees and gross assets of less
than £12.5m. In UK, SME acts as the backbone of the economic growth and development. In
order to understand this topic in the better manner, Researcher have taken Cote Restaurant that is
one of the well known Bistro in UK. The present report discusses the profile of the chosen
organization and its comparative performance with the other firm. It has suggested the means to
overcome the weaknesses of the company and area of expansion. This report assesses the
existing business plans and objective and recommended the plan to incorporate changes and its
impact on the business and its workforce. It evaluates the means to evaluate the employees
performance.
TASK 1
Enclosed in PPT
TASK 2
2.1
In order to overcome the weakness and loopholes in the system, The management of Cote
Restaurant needs to take corrective action to reach the topmost position in the market. The firm
needs to consistently monitor the performance by taking feedback from clients and customers
and take measures accordingly:
 Human Resource Planning: The HR manager needs to analyze the requirement of
number of Individual and the qualification required. Then will identify the sources where
they can find the most appropriate person for their restaurant. Due to this measure, High
turnover problem will be resolved and helps in infusion of fresh blood in the firm that
will bring new and creative ideas in an organization.
 Proper training session: The Cote Restaurant will organize proper training session for
the employees to make them learn how to handle customers and manage the restaurant
when it is over loaded with visitors (Johnson, 2015). They need to learn presentation
skills and should hold expertise in serving the food in attractive manner. The
management can consistently monitor the performance of the employees and will identify
their training needs and will provide them guidance accordingly.

 Innovative interior design: The customers consider the interior designing while rating
the restaurant. Now a day’s people are crazy of pictures and selfies and are always
looking for the places where they can click pictures with best background. Cote
Restaurant’s interior is nice but not as per the expectation of customers. So firm can hire
expert in this field who can suggest best ideas to make the interior environment attractive
and classy.
 Making proper arrangements for visitors: The researcher have identified that the visitors
feel disturbed and interrupted as the place is mostly crowded (Chen and Elsto, 2013). In
order to resolve this problem, the manager should design the separate place for those
visitors who are willing to occupy the place in peace.
 Identify niche in the market: In order to hold competitive advantage, firm needs to
identify the niche in the market (Sandada, Pooe and Dhurup, 2014). It has been found that
now days, people are more concern and give priority to their health. So they can add one
more section in the menu of the healthy food dishes with taste. The people got attracted
with this concept as they always seek food which is hygienic and tasty.
2.2
Quality performance forms the crucial part in maintaining competitive edge in the
market. It is the means through which customers are satisfied and its forms the aim of Cote
Restaurant (Polo Peña, Frías Jamilena and Rodríguez Molina, 2011). It has been found that it has
become the fastest growing firm in the market. It has got specialty in French food but some
people get bored of eating the same dishes. So the firm should always make some changes in the
taste and serve it with innovative style as per the taste and preference of the customers. They
should try to maintain their quality by using fresh and great quality ingredients and preparing the
dish by considering the hygiene and health factor. They can come up with new style as they
should set up the system where chef prepares the food at the place where customers can easily
view as it makes them ensure that the food served is prepared on using clean and tidy tools (Tan
and Smyrnios, 2011).
The Cote restaurant should consistently take feedback from the customers and should
maintain friendly relation with them so that they can share their view and suggest any idea
without any hesitation. Customers expect quality food at possible lowest price so firm can
monitor its prices and try to keep the prices of the food served is low as compared to its

competitor. The management of Cote Restaurant should ensure that their plans and policies
should be dynamic so as to keep them updated with the changing trends and expectation in the
market. The above given tool helps the firm to maintain its position in the industry.
2.3
Any business always have the scope of expanding its business. It has been rightly said by
Eudora Welty “ Never think you’ve seen the last of anything” so it is in the business. Here, the
management of Cote Restaurant needs to critically study the market needs and expectation and
design its expansion plan accordingly. The firm can target youth and further design its plan and
policies accordingly.
The Cote Restaurant has created brand image in the market and is expanding its business
all over the market in UK. The firm can open up another branch which is specifically for the
youth so have to decide the place which can be easily accessible by the youth of the country
(Gunasekara, Rai, and Griffi, 2011). In this place, the firm will set up the platform in which the
interested people can perform dance, sing song, play musical instrument, etc. The Cote
Restaurant should make proper arrangement of these stuffs as now days the craze of these
creative and artistic things is increasing over the period of time. The firm can grab this
opportunity and attract new section of people. The Company can choose funky and creative
interior design and will create the environment. So researcher has suggested expanding the
business by opening another brand with the unique and different concept. The manager should
also consider the ideas inculcated by its competitor.
TASK 3
3.1
Objective is the statement that provide guidance and direction to the staff member and are
basically short term as compared to goals (Ait Razouk, 2011). The firms needs to keep the
objective updated and monitor consistently so as to make sure that the implementation part is
going as per the plan designed. The management of Cote on analyzing the internal and external
environment has created new objective and design the plan accordingly. The firm’s new
objective is to enhance the profit of the company by 10% in the 6 months and expand the
customer base. The management will try to spell out the plan and should stand on following
parameters. The food served should meet out the expectation of the client in every perspective
such as taste, ambience, texture, etc. They should offer them healthy and friendly environment.

In order to attain this objective, the firm needs to come up with the realistic plan. The restaurant
mostly serves general crowd that is people from all age group (Alonso and Ogle, 2010). They
can identify the niche in the market and can try to fulfill it. They can target student crowd that is
the youth of the nation. In order to attract them, the firm really needs to work hard to impress
them. In exam time, students don’t get time to run here and there for food so the restaurant can
serve the food on one call. The management can tie up with famous band player and can come
up with unique ideas on weekends such as dj night, call film stars, guitar player, theme party, etc.
3.2
In order to uphold competitive position in the market, the management needs to revise its
plan as per the market demand and expectation. The firm needs to consider the strength of the
business and find ways to overcome the weakness and design new plan. The plan of the
management is the same that is to target student crowd that is youth, but needs to make some
changes in the plan designed (Fujita, 2012). The firm should also take care of the health of the
client as Now day’s youth are more concerned about their health and hygiene. So can serve them
diet food which has taste and affordable. This helps the firm to attract large number of teenage
crowd as they are getting desired food and friendly environment.
The firm has also made arrangement for the entertainment of the customers in the
weekends as discussed in the above task. But what about other days?? To resolve this issue, the
firm has decided to set up the small platform with the mic, sound system and musical instrument
(Hsu and Cheng, 2012). The people in UK are creative and artistic so they will make use of these
tools to enjoy and make others enjoy. This helps them to create strong bond among the visitors
and get a sense of attachment with the staff members. This will be one time investment in which
firm will yield future returns.
3.3
In order to implement the above plan, the management needs to prepare action plan
which is realistic and attainable (Gunasekaran, Rai and Griffin, 2011.). The Cote Restaurant
needs to consistently bring change in its system as per the change in market trend in order to
survive long last in the industry. They need to decide budget and plan for the activities
accordingly. The firm can undertake following actions to bring the plan into action.
 Training: The firm needs to organize proper training session for the employees to
introduce healthy and tasty food section in the menu card. They need to guide and

educate them to prepare and serve the food in attractive manner (Muhammad and et.al.
2010). They can employ an expert who can monitor the performance of the employees
and guide them instantly so as to prevent mistakes in future. The firm need to appoint
people in the organization that can suggest and implement unique and innovative ideas in
the cooking and serving and handling customers. The firm can motivate them to manage
changes and improve their work performance (Theories of Motivation. 2016).
 Hiring interior designer: In order to design and set up unique platform for performance,
the management need to hire interior designer who can suggest changes that are
necessary and affordable (Garay and Font, 2012).
They can tie up with the band players so that they can come and entertain the visitors on
weekends.
TASK 4
4.1
The change in the business operation can have affect on the internal and external
functional area that can be positive or negative (Wynarczyk and et.al, 2016). The change can
help the Cote Restaurant to uplift the positive in the market but on the other hand can also
collapse the entire business firm, so firm needs to manage its changes efficiently so as to avoid
future consequences. The organization can face following changes due to the proposed
amendments in an organization as given below:
 Finance: The changes will have great impact on the finance section of an organization. It
might imbalance the budget decided by the planning department. So firm needs to
carefully allocate and raise the funds from the market to avoid future mishappenings
(Agyapong, 2010). In terms of finance, the new change is a new venture for the restaurant
and can have positive impact if it is implemented in the planned manner.
 Workloads: The restaurant is already overloaded with the visitors and now if its planning
to increase the profit and enhance the customer base. The staff member need to work
really hard as its not possible to recruit immediate people in an organization. So the
company have decided to train the existing employees to train to manage the vistors
(Jasra and at.al, 2011). They have planned to appoint new people in the firm who have
the required skills and capabilities.

 Morale: Whenever the change is introduced, there is always the probability of employee
resistance as some of the employees have lower morale and have ego issues and some
don’t want to learn new things. In this plan, new people will join the Cote Restaurant that
may make the existing employees insecure (Kamakura, Ramón-Jerónimo and Gravel,
2012). But the management have found that the employees are corporative and have good
ethical behavior so will understand their perspective.
 Organizational structure: The changes may be necessary in the structure of the firm and
also the job profile of the employees so as to design new team and introduce new concept
in the firm.
4.2
Change is inevitable but most company’s employees resist change. It is important that the
employees should be flexible enough to work in dynamic environment and should always have
the curiosity to learn new things. In order to inculcate this characteristic, the organization can
introduce training session where they will introduce the changes and will disclose the reason for
such changes so that the staff member understand the base behind the changes and should
understand and corporate with it (Chittithaworn and et.al, 2011). The firm can also give hope to
the employees that with the enhancement of the profit, there profit will also be incremented. It is
crucial that the team spirit should be developed through efficient leadership as the leader play
integral role in managing changes they are the one who dictated the changes in an organization
and guide them in managing changes (Cordano, Marshall and Silverman, 2010). The firm can
introduce open forum where the employee grievance’s related to managing changes will be
resolved and helps them to perform the job efficiently.
The management needs to ensure that on bringing any changes its impact should be kept lower
on the business functions and performance
4.3
The management of Cote Restaurant needs to consistently monitor the performance of the
employees to make it ensure that the implementation is carried out as per the plan decided (Jamil
and Mohamed, 2011). After the completion of each task, the plan needs to be updated that will
assist the organization to know its progress on the implementation stage of the firm.

The firm can set benchmark for the employees performance and on regular intervals will
compare the actual performance with the set standard so as to find the loopholes and take
corrective action to cover them all.
The management will introduce the score card system where the employees will give
scores on the different parameters of their job such as quality and attaining target, punctuality.
Etc. Here the employees will be given chance to judge their performance (Terziovski, 2010). The
firm will provide training based on their feedback.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that small business enterprise forms the backbone of the economic
system. In the present case, the researcher have taken Cote Restaurant to understand this concept.
The Restaurant is situated at the place where can attract wide range of public and can expand its
business, but have some weaknesses. So the firm can train the employees and change the firm as
per the market demand in order to survive longer in the market. The management needs to
reassesses its objective and plan and have found that there is need to bring some changes in the
planning process where have decided to introduce the concept of healthy and tasty food. The
reason behind this concept is that the customers and youth are now concerned about their health
and hygiene. Here, the firm is targeting youth as its strategy to attain the objective of increasing
certain percentage of profit and enhancing its customer base. If the plan is implemented the
organization faces some changes in its system. So the organization needs to manage these
changes by developing the sense of team spirit and introducing the concept of open forum.

REFERENCES
Journals & Books
Terziovski, M., 2010. Innovation practice and its performance implications in small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector: a resource‐based view. Strategic Management
Journal. 31(8). pp.892-902.
Jamil, C. M. and Mohamed, R., 2011. Performance measurement system (PMS) in small medium
enterprises (SMES): A practical modified framework. World Journal of Social Sciences. 1(3).
pp.200-212.
Chittithaworn, C. and et.al, 2011. Factors affecting business success of small & medium
enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand. Asian Social Science, 7(5), p.180.
Cordano, M., Marshall, R. S. and Silverman, M., 2010. How do small and medium enterprises go
“green”? A study of environmental management programs in the US wine industry. Journal of
Business Ethics. 92(3). pp.463-478.
Kamakura, W. A., Ramón-Jerónimo, M. A. and Gravel, J. D. V., 2012. A dynamic perspective to
the internationalization of small-medium enterprises. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science. 40(2). pp. 236-251.
Jasra, J.M and at.al, 2011. Determinants of business success of small and medium
enterprises. International Journal of Business and Social Science. 2(20). pp. 211-224.
Agyapong, D., 2010. Micro, small and medium enterprises' activities, income level and poverty
reduction in ghana-A synthesis of related literature. International Journal of Business and
Management. 5(12). pp.196.
Wynarczyk, P. and et.al, 2016. Managerial labour markets in small and medium-sized
enterprises. Routledge.
Muhammad, M.Z. and et.al. 2010. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) competing in the
global business environment: A case of Malaysia. International Business Research. 3(1). pp.66.
Garay, L. and Font, X., 2012. Doing good to do well? Corporate social responsibility reasons,
practices and impacts in small and medium accommodation enterprises. International Journal of
Hospitality Management. 31(2). pp.329-337.

Gunasekaran, A., Rai, B. K. and Griffin, M., 2011. Resilience and competitiveness of small and
medium size enterprises: an empirical research. International Journal of Production
Research. 49(18), pp.5489-5509.
Hsu, J. L. and Cheng, M. C., 2012. What prompts small and medium enterprises to engage in
corporate social responsibility? A study from Taiwan. Corporate Social Responsibility and
Environmental Management. 19(5). pp.288-305.
Fujita, M., 2012. The transnational activities of small and medium-sized enterprises. Springer
Science & Business Media.
Alonso, A.D. and Ogle, A., 2010. Tourism and hospitality small and medium enterprises and
environmental sustainability. Management Research Review. 33(8). pp.818-826.
Ait Razouk, A., 2011. High-performance work systems and performance of French small-and
medium-sized enterprises: examining causal order. The International Journal of Human
Resource Management. 22(02). pp.311-330.
Gunasekaran, A., Rai, B. K. and Griffin, M., 2011. Resilience and competitiveness of small and
medium size enterprises: an empirical research. International Journal of Production
Research. 49(18). pp.5489-5509.
Tan, C. S. L. and Smyrnios, K. X., 2011. How do Australian fast-growth small-to-medium
enterprises measure performance?. Journal of Enterprising Culture. 19(01). pp.41-60.
Polo Peña, A. I., Frías Jamilena, D. M. and Rodríguez Molina, M. Á., 2011. Impact of market
orientation and ICT on the performance of rural smaller service enterprises. Journal of Small
Business Management. 49(3). pp.331-360.
Sandada, M., Pooe, D. and Dhurup, M., 2014. Strategic planning and its relationship with
business performance among small and medium enterprises in South Africa. The International
Business & Economics Research Journal (Online). 13(3). pp.659.
Chen, S. C. and Elston, J. A., 2013. Entrepreneurial motives and characteristics: An analysis of
small restaurant owners. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 35. pp.294-305.
Johnson, M. P., 2015. Sustainability Management and Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises:
Managers' Awareness and Implementation of Innovative Tools. Corporate Social Responsibility
and Environmental Management. 22(5). pp.271-285.

Online
Theories of Motivation. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/motivation.htm>. [Accessed on 18th November 2016].