Job creation in the MENA area: SME’s Sustainability Challenges

This paper presents the current state of ongoing research on intellectual capital of SMEs. Sustainable competitive advantage is very important if SMEs are to survive and thrive in a globally competitive environment where uncertainty and ambiguity are the norm. Business sustainability makes firms resilient so they are better able to adapt to change. It is said that SMEs are vulnerable and not robust enough to withstand the onslaught of the economic and global competition. Entrepreneurship is more than resources and capabilities. It is about exploiting opportunity through its resources and capabilities to be innovative and creating value. Knowledge is one of the resources that when managed properly and intelligently, can turn into innovation that can help the SMEs to gain sustainable competitive advantage. The paper focuses on the questions: Why SMEs are lacking in sustainable competitive advantage? and How sustainable competitive advantage can be achieved through intellectual capital, knowledge management and innovation intelligence in SMEs? The purpose of the study is to construct a conceptual framework of Sustainable Competitive Advantage through knowledge management and innovation intelligence for SMEs.

Promoting (SMEs) have been one of the best strategies for achieving economic development. Many Arab countries have recognized the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and have formulated policies to encourage, support, and fund there. The benefits of SMEs to any economy are easily noticeable, they include: contribution to an economy in terms of creation of jobs, development of skilled and semi-skilled workers, and developing and adapting appropriate technological approaches. Following are the major driving force to strengthen SMEs in the Arab countries: (1) SMEs are the important vehicle in terms of employments and poverty alleviation. SME employs a large share of the labour force in many Arab countries.(2) SMEs make significant contributions to the national economy of the country; and can be a tool to accelerate the growth of exports.(3) SMEs foster an entrepreneurial culture and make the economy more resilient to the global fluctuations. This paper ultimate aim is to layout some general principles of support to enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs in the Arab countries. To do so, the paper Divided to two sections; in section I: Small and medium enterprises in the Arab countries (definition and importance), It starts by identifying the General problems of the Arab economies, and then goes on to discuss definitional aspects of SMEs. After that, the study then summarizes the SMEs definition in the Arab countries and concludes the important of SMEs in the Arab countries. in Section II. Enhancing the competitiveness of the Arab SMEs in the knowledge economy. It discusses the concept and the characteristics of the knowledge economy. Then goes on to discuss the competitiveness of SMEs in the context of economic globalization and then concludes by offering some recommendations, which concentrate on the discussion of the important criteria that needs to be followed by SME support institutions in order to enhance the competitiveness of SMEs and hence their role in economic growth in the Arab countries .

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The European officials have recently identified a relatively low level of entrepreneurship in the European countries comparing with others regions of the world. Dealing with the Lisbon objectives (for example, increasing the EU competitiveness), European’s authorities have recommended a set of economic policies in order to increase competition and stimulate entrepreneurs. Obviously, the large majority of these policies are related

The existential threat to the Jamaican society, economy, way of life and civilization is our failure to successfully and sustainably grow our GDP and so increase national prosperity for our citizens and subsequently equitably distribute prosperity gains throughout the society. A review of the evolution of global industrial development suggest that Jamaica may be struggling on the periphery of the global economy due to its historic failure to assert its stake in the industrial centre. The shape of the current constellation of domestic firms as well as the quantity and quality of their workforce derives largely from these decisions, or indecisions, of the past. Despite this, it is still possible for Jamaica to leap-jump towards the centre. The Small Medium Enterprise Working Group of the Technology Innovation and Productivity Committee (SME-WG TIPC) examined these issues over the last nine months. Its concise Initial Report comprises three sections o Introduction o Situational Analysis o Recommendations for Actions Two broad categories of recommendations emerge from the report; 1. Specific Priority Recommendations: These number seven and include;  a. High-growth SME’s should be identified and supported with business development banking, special equity financing and operational efficiency training  b. Adopt / Adapt Business Excellence Frameworks (BEF’s) to unique context of Jamaican firms  c. Employee compensation to be linked with firm and business unit productivity  d. Deploy mobile money for increasing productivity, compliance & reducing informality  e. Address youth unemployment with a microwork model  f. Encourage indigenous innovation by modernizing the legislation to strengthen patent rights protection  g. Institutionalise the development and maintenance of national consensus on medium-term and long-term economic framework so as to provide a consistent, certain and predictable environment for businesses to operate within. The economic development process today is defined by the ongoing revolution in the tools of the workspace and along with that the global integration of the firms around the world on the basis of the digital technology platform. This process calls for a fundamental shifts in how we prepare the workforce and assign resources to firms to compete in today’s globally competitive economy. Under the old agro-industrial paradigm, economic growth was driven by competitive advantages that were constructed around a model of cheap labor and natural resources. This model was supported by foreign direct investment into productive sectors to generate exports for what were largely protected markets. Under this paradigm, the real bottlenecks to economic expansion were primarily capital and to a lesser extent, natural resources. Analysis of business ownership data from developed economies, in the late 1980’s pointed to the detection of a distinctive U-shaped curve, reflecting the transition from large, capital-intensive firms to smaller, knowledge-based entrepreneurial firms in those developed countries; the modern Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). This phenomenon was interpreted as evidence of a structural shift in those economies from a traditional to, what has been termed, a knowledge-based entrepreneurial economy, or the new digital economy. The old economy thrived for nearly three centuries from the days of the first Industrial Revolution in the mid 18th Century when the environment was relatively stable and a degree of certainty prevailed. The new economy emerged beginning in the 1980’s as a response to the global events of that period with the main drivers being; the globalization / IT revolution shortening economic distance; routinized tasks shifting from high-cost zones to low cost zones and ; high-cost zones re-aligning to leverage comparative advantage in high-value knowledge industries and services. The maintenance of high wages required knowledge-based economic activity that could not be costlessly diffused across geographic space. Recent expansion of broadband availability and capability in emerging economies, the ubiquity of the mobile smartphone and combined with the changing nature of work and new innovative business models are opening opportunities for the former geographic limitations to be relaxed and so enable the engagement of high-quality, high-wage decent work to be delivered from high-value-add, innovative, agile enterprises in the emerging economies. A monumental shift in the economic fortunes of developing countries across all geographies have been occurring since the early 1990’s significantly transforming the hopes, incomes, health, education democracy, governance and general well-being of billions of consumers across the globe. These countries have been growing their GDP at higher than historic annual levels through an