Promoting Sustainable Performance (PSP) for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Birmingham City University has had a profound impact on SME growth. Key to this has been its PSP diagnostic, which has made a substantial impact on West Midlands and international organizations.

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Research summary

Birmingham City University’s Business School’s Centre for Enterprise, Innovation and Growth (CEIG) has had a world-leading impact on the growth of a series of national and international SMEs. Key to this has been its PSP diagnostic, which has been the basis for 630 practical SME interventions on a local and national level.

Working with national and local governments, and NGOs, PSP has provided direct support to firms, through workshops, one-to-one interventions, and a diagnostic report. It has been used in four funded West Midlands projects, and one of those alone is estimated to have created £2.5M GVA and 118 jobs in the regional economy.

Research background

Researchers in the Business School’s Centre for Enterprise, Innovation and Growth (CEIG) have built and extended a set of tools with the specific objective of connecting business research and practice.

The primary success has been the development and application of the PSP diagnostic. Its three innovative contributions include:

it incorporates a model of SME growth which examines firm objectives;

it models SME context and environment in the growth model;

the diagnostic provides metrics which guide the SME in their strategic decision-making, while providing the researchers with data to enhance the dataset.

The PSP is a longitudinal project in collaboration with international partners. The research team has developed a framework that supports firms in understanding their business context, which is then used to assess their performance in a variety of country-settings.

CEIG also incorporated into the PSP diagnostic internal factors such as Human Resource Management practices and use of high-performance work systems, which shape firms’ growth trajectory, and it seeks to address the gap between research and business practice and help develop university “triple helix” offers (i.e., the set of interactions between academia, industry and government). CEIG identified that’ academia-business interactions can be inefficient, so the research team developed an enhanced diagnostic method through which the data collection process provides a real-time analysis.

Research outputs underpinning this research are published in journals which are“internationally recognised” by the Chartered Association of Business Schools

Impacts and outcomes

Research has had a substantial impact in the West Midlands, with the PSP model being applied in several international organisations.

CEIG have engaged with 339 SMEs to develop new processes and systems which improve efficiency and introduce new products and services as part of The Innovation Vouchers programme. The SME’s report impacts of improved management of innovation and improvements to the quality of products or services. The Innovation Vouchers programme is estimated to have a £2.5M contribution to GVA, with 118 jobs created as a result, up to December 2020.

152 SMEs have been supported through the ERBDF Enterprise for Success programme. The programme enhances the leadership capabilities and marketing skills of local SMEs through providing them with business intelligence to inform decision-making. Positive feedback has been received from participating Managing Directors and Government Ministers.

139 SMEs from Birmingham accessed the Growing You programme and benefitted from the data and insight provided by the PSP diagnostic. Upon completion of the programme, each business was assigned a personal mentor by BCU, to guide and advise along the way, thus making it a truly sustainable initiative

REF 2021

Birmingham City University's hub for everything related to the Research Excellence Framework.

REF 2021

Professor Mark Gilman

Professor of SME Growth and Development

Professor Mark Gilman transitioned to academia after spending 16 years working in engineering. He writes extensively on SME Growth and people management issues and works closely with SMEs/entrepreneurs. He is presently Professor of SME Growth and Development; Director of the Centre for Enterprise, Innovation and Growth and Co-founder and Director of BIG Associates Ltd (a University spin-out). He has worked engaging with businesses of all sizes including Boots plc, Barclays Bank, British Airways and a number of public sector organisation. More recently, impacting the growth of 1000s of SMEs through research and coaching interventions for ambitious business owners.

Dr Jacob Salder

Visiting Professor

Dr Jacob Salder is a Lecturer in Enterprise in the Masood Enterprise Centre at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, where he teaches units in entrepreneurship and in venture creation.

He specialises in SME development and growth, entrepreneurship, regional development policy, and has research interests in business development in non-metropolitan areas, the governance of economic development and regeneration, and the creative industries.

Professor Hatem El-Gohary

Professor of Marketing

Professor Hatem El-Gohary has more than 20 years of experience in academia. Prior to this he worked as the marketing director of a multinational company as well as a marketing consultant for a number of multinational companies. His research interest include: electronic marketing, electronic business, electronic commerce, internet marketing, tourism marketing, Islamic marketing, Islamic tourism and small business enterprises.

Professor Javed Hussain

Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance

Professor Javed Hussain is Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at Birmingham City University where he currently leads the Accounting and Finance Group. Professor Hussain completed his PhD (1996) and M. Soc. Sci (1987) in Money, Banking and Finance from the University of Birmingham and a first degree in Economics, BA (Hons) From Birmingham Polytechnic (1985).

Currently, Professor Hussain supervises a number of PhDs in the areas of corporate, micro and small business finance. He also takes postgraduate courses on Research Methods and International Financial Strategy.

Dr Cindy Millman

Associate Professor in Business, Associate Director – Quality and Accreditation

Cindy joined the Business School in 2004 after completing her MSc in Management and Marketing (with distinction). Cindy is currently an Associate Professor in Business and Associate Director for Quality and Accreditation in the Business School, provide leadership for academic integrity of programmes, compliance with the University quality framework and other accreditation bodies and for monitoring and evaluation of programme and performance.

Cindy is a senior academic with business management experience in higher education (HE); An experienced researcher (have worked on several large projects funded by the EU and the UK funding bodies) in International entrepreneurship and innovation field, with a specific focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as lens of entrepreneurship education and gender.