ISSN: 2222-6990
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In Malaysia, despite SMEs’ have a significant contribution to the economy, they have not been
given adequate attention as the various researchers have been biased towards larger and listed
enterprises in Malaysia. So, this study aims to investigate the factors affecting the performance
of SMEs in the manufacturing sector in Malaysia. The Contingency Theory developed by Fiedler
(1964) was used to support this research. Based on the data collected from 300 SMEs in the
Malaysian manufacturing sector, the results showed that there is a significant negative
relationship between ineffective entrepreneurship as well as inappropriate human resource
management (HRM) and the performance of SMEs. On the other hand, the results also proved
that there is a significant positive relationship between the use of marketing information as
well as the application of information technology and the performance of SMEs. In short, this
study found out that the use of marketing information can influence the performance of SMEs
at the highest.
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