RESOURCES AND FAILURE OF SMEs: ANOTHER LOOK

Failure among SMEs has been attributed to size, age, location and being part of particular industries and not part of a network. These determinants, if used as surrogates for resources, suggest firms that lack such resources are more susceptible to failure. Using the resource-based view of the firm, this paper aims to do a post-mortem examination on the attributes of failed SMEs by analyzing data of more than 13,000 failed firms in the UK between 1999 and 2009. The findings reveal that failure is not merely a function of lack of resources. Although these findings shed new light on attributes of failed SMEs, there are still some limitations to the work that must be taken into consideration when applying the results.