Competence Challenges and Strategies in Swedish Family SMEs : The Role of Industry Affiliation and Location

Mittuniversitetet, Institutionen för ekonomi, geografi, juridik och turism 2024

In recent decades, it has become increasingly difficult for rural firms to attract workers with specialised skills, and employment rates have decreased. A majority of rural firms are family SMEs. Family SMEs are, therefore, important contributors to employment in rural areas. In spite of this, little attention has been given to rural family SMEs in terms of competence management, geographical location and comparative industry affiliation. Thus, the aim of this qualitative multiple case study of two labour-intensive industries in Sweden is to explore how industry affiliation and geographical location affect competence management in rural family SMEs using the resource-based view. The findings show that irrespective of industry affiliation, rural family SMEs face similar competence challenges as a consequence of their rural setting, and the examined industries employ similar yet different strategies to moderate the negative effects of these competence challenges. Due to the scarcity of internal competencies, rural family SMEs rely on coopetition, local networks, and mutual industry-specific recruitment to make ends meet. The finding that rural family SMEs gain a competitive advantage by cooperating with competitors contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the resource-based view, where competitive firm resources are mainly managed internally in the firm.

Business Administration; Företagsekonomi; Article in journal; info:eu-repo/semantics/article; text

10.5771.0935-9915-2024-2-222

Open access content. Open access content
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess

English

UPE oai:DiVA.org:hj-66091
0000-0002-5012-7830
doi:10.5771/0935-9915-2024-2-222
ISI:001293018000004
1457572718

UPPSALA UNIV LIBR
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edsoai.on1457572718