SME growth in the digital era The moderating role of digital capabilities and institutional quality on digitalisation
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2025-06-26
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en
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This study addresses a gap in the literature regarding digitalisation and firm growth, which often leaves the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) underexplored. It investigates how digitalisation impacts SME growth in terms of turnover and how the relationship is moderated by digital capabilities and institutional quality. Using a quantitative method, the study uses the Flash Eurobarometer 486 (FL486) dataset and World Governance Indicators (WGI) for the 27 European Union (EU) member states. Logistic regression was conducted to analyse the data. The findings show that digitalisation directly and significantly boosts SME growth. This suggests that digital adoption offers strong benefits for SMEs. However, digital capabilities did not significantly strengthen this relationship. Institutional quality also showed no significant effect. Therefore, while digitalisation is a direct driver of SME growth, the expected enhancing roles of digital capabilities and institutional quality are not present in the studied EU sample.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen