Small and Medium Enterprises and Global Risks: Evidence from Manufacturing SMEs in Turkey

• Published in: International journal of disaster risk science 2020-02, Vol.11 (1), p.59-73
• Main Authors: Asgary, Ali, Ozdemir, Ali Ihsan, Özyürek, Hale
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Climate Change; Cybersecurity; Cyberterrorism; Deflation (Economics); Disasters; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Economic conditions; Economic crisis; Economics; Environment; Environmental degradation; Environmental risk; Fraud; Geopolitics; Global risks; Governance; International relations; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Natural disasters; Natural Hazards; Production management; Ratings & rankings; Regions; Risk; Risk assessment; Risk matrix; Small & medium sized enterprises-SME; Small and medium enterprises; Small and medium sized companies; Small business; Social aspects; Structural unemployment; Surveying; Surveys; Sustainable Development; Theft; Turkey; Underemployment; Unemployment; Urban planning
• ISSN: 2095-0055; 2192-6395
• DOI: 10.1007/s13753-020-00247-0

This study investigated how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a country perceive major global risks. The aim was to explore how country attributes and circumstances affect SME assessments of the likelihood, impacts, and rankings of global risks, and to find out if SME risk assessment and rankings differ from the global rankings. Data were gathered using an online survey of manufacturing SMEs in Turkey. The results show that global economic risks and geopolitical risks are of major concern for SMEs, and environmental risks are at the bottom of their ranking. Among the economic risks, fiscal crises in key economies and high structural unemployment or underemployment were found to be the highest risks for the SMEs. Failure of regional or global governance, failure of national governance, and interstate conflict with regional consequences were found to be among the top geopolitical risks for the SMEs. The SMEs considered the risk of large-scale cyber-attacks and massive incident of data fraud/theft to be relatively higher than other global technological risks. Profound social instability and failure of urban planning were among the top societal risks for the SMEs. Although the global environmental and disaster risks were ranked lowest on the list, man-made environmental damage and disasters and major natural hazard-induced disasters were ranked the highest among this group of risks. Overall, the results show that SMEs at a country level, for example Turkey, perceive global risks differently than the major global players.