Title: Strategic Entrepreneurial Awareness and Business Performance: Empirical Evidence from Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Thailand
Abstract: Thailand 4.0 is the economic development model recently adopted by the government of Thailand. The model is based on the notion of industry 4.0 focusing on adding values to economic products and commodities using creativity and new innovation. Considering the Thailand 4.0 concept, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand are facing a new challenge on exploiting changes and opportunities determining their business and survival. This paper studies characteristics of business entrepreneurship of these SMEs involving with the combination of taking risk and adopting new innovation. It theoretically employs the concept of strategic entrepreneurship awareness discussed in previous studies and literature on its essence in helping firms promote their entrepreneurial capability and business innovation. However, the substantial understanding and evidences of this strategic concept empirically employed in the Thailand context are still limited. This paper therefore fills in the gap by employing the concept for investigating strategic entrepreneurship awareness in Thai SMEs. Using quantitative research instruments, a conceptual model was developed to form research hypotheses involving elements of strategic entrepreneurship awareness. Given the model, there was a theoretical testing of firms’ competitiveness, superior organizational innovation and outstanding business creativity and their relationships with the business performance. The population of this research is 3 million Thai SMEs. Mail-questionnaires were distributed to 1,805 registered Thai SMEs requesting a response from their managing director or managing partner. With 21.44% response rate, 387 completed questionnaires were used in the analysis using statistic techniques including VIFs, correlation analysis, and OLS regression analysis. The data analysis eventually delivered the examinations of the postulated hypotheses. By presenting the findings, this paper provides a new insight into the ways in which Thai SMEs are able to enhance their entrepreneurial orientation, perspectives and characteristics in order to achieve the higher-level performance, greater financial return and newer business innovation.