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Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) retail businesses in many countries, including Thailand, are facing challenges of high competition, as modern retail formats have grown rapidly in many Asian countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, China and Thailand (Howard, 2009). Thus, SME retail Businesses are facing an "innovate or die" situation, as non-adapting retail firms have always been and will continue to be driven out of the business (Evans, 2011). A new critical capability of retail business is the ability to configure and reconfigure its processes into a coherent blueprint - known in other words as a Business Model (Sorescu et al., 2011). The research question becomes "How can SME retail Business in Thailand successfully compete through Business Model Innovation?" Business Model Innovation requires system wide changes, since modifying one component always has network effects on other components (Tikkanen et al., 2005). There is no fixed method or successful formula that all companies will adopt; therefore disciplined experimentation and adaptation is recommended (Berman, 2011; Chesbrough, 2010; McGrath, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2003; Teece, 2010). However, most past studies on innovation are about large companies (Tim, 2004) and not many articles cover empirical studies on Business Model Innovation. In particular, few studies address the dynamic view (Demil and Lecocq, 2010; Svejenova et al., 2010; Sosna et al., 2010).This research focuses on the implementation of Business Model Innovation within SME retail business. The research uses a methodology called Action Research, and was conducted within the researcher's organization, which is a SME retail business in Thailand. This overcomes the practical challenges of studying SME business, which is related to limited opportunity to conduct empirical research. The study was conducted over the 4 year period from October 2010 to August 2014 by implementing Business Model Innovation in order to exploit opportunities in rural areas. Business Model concepts were employed as sources of innovation and units of analysis. Action Research consists of multiple cycles of changes and adaptation. It was found that Business Model concepts can be represented at different levels of abstraction from reality. At a high level of abstraction, the Business Model Canvas helps to understand the overview of the firm's business logic in a broad way, and provide ideas about what can be adapted. At the operational level, the Retailing Business Model provides a structural approach to the conceptualisation, planning and implementation of activities that support high level changes. In all, Business Model Innovation can be conceptualised as an ongoing learning process similar to the iterative cycles of Action research. These cycles consist of constructing actions, planning, taking actions and evaluating actions. The Business Model concepts at different levels of abstraction can be used for understanding and planning, as well as to capture learning experiences, both on the high level and on the operational level. Therefore, Business Model Innovation is a dynamic process where changes and learning happen continuously. Such a process enables SME retail businesses to improve their understanding of their Business Model and thus improve their chances of success?

This thesis explores the extent of use and the impact of the public financed support schemes using a human capital theory framework to analyse a large scale quantitative survey of 328 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Saudi Arabia. All of the businesses in the study are family businesses who employ at least one other family member in addition to the key decision maker in the businesses.

This thesis contributes to a field of scholarly research that seems to be receiving increasing attention, especially in recent times, although one has to acknowledge that there is still a severe lack of understanding. It is generally believed that the vast majority of research is still focused on large corporations, given their visibility and individual impact on the society, and this is particularly true in the re-search on sustainability and responsibility. In the course of this work, an extensive review of the relevant literature was conducted, including a holistic systematic analysis of a sample of leading small business and entrepreneurship journals, fol-lowed by an in-depth, narrative review based on a much broader selection of articles from various sources. The review revealed that there is little research on sustainability and responsibility in SMEs in Germany and that the vast majority of this research is quantitative in nature. The aim of this research is to, thus, develop an in-depth understanding of the sustainability and responsibility engagement of manufacturing SMEs in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg and, hence, also present and analyse the views of the participants in this research. Manufacturing SMEs were selected as the focal sample as the sector is very important to the regional community and it can be assumed that, given the nature of their operations, they are in some ways engaged in sustainability activities. For this reason, an interview-study with 30 participants from the SME sector was conducted, underpinned by an interpretive research paradigm. The interviewees included owner-managers (OMs) and managing directors (MDs) from a purposively created sample of SMEs. It must be noted that the focus is not on addressing some CSR role models, but on the ‘ordinary’ SME in-stead. The findings of this research are multifaceted. It was found that many SMEs in the sample tend to follow an extreme, long-term perspective based on a special ethos or values, such as fairness, honesty and trust. There seems to be a consider-able reservation towards the business principles of large corporations. The re-search provides an in-depth discussion on various sustainability dimensions identified in the data. This includes embeddedness in the local community, which varies considerably between the participating firms; focus on employees, which tendsto be seen as the most important resource, and caring for them is for most participants an essential point; and engagement in environmental issues, which tends to be of lower importance for participants except in the case of practices that directly lead to positive economic results. Overall, the research identifies that economic considerations dominate the worldview of participants. However, firms are not considered instruments of short-term profits; instead, natural, long-term development of firms is the overall goal. The research additionally finds that some SMEs in the sample are motivated to find a balance between informal and formal management approaches. In total, one can conclude that the behaviour of SMEs can-not be directly considered to be related to the principles of sustainable development. However, the sample firms and their behaviour are definitely closer to a responsible way of doing business in comparison to many large corporations which also tend to affect many SMEs negatively through their market power and price pressure. This research provides an insight into the world of (owner)-managers of SMEs, thus contributing to a field that is currently dominated by descriptive quantitative research in Germany.

The aim of the study is to investigate how owner-managers of Chinese SMEs explore and exploit knowledge while growing SMEs in the spirit of Wu Wei. SME growth has been an increasingly important topic, where there is an important link between SME leadership, knowledge and growth. However, a large body of existing research treats knowledge as a static or reified asset or resource such that these studies are mainly concerned with how to create, acquire, transfer or manage knowledge. Following that, the research methods tend to be dominated by quantitative analysis, and weighs towards large organizations in developed economies. Drawing on the data collected in China, this study employs a mixed-methods approach by administering 103 surveys, wherefrom nine owner-managers are isolated for in-depth interviews at three business stages of SMEs (micro, small and medium). By attending to three dimensions (genuine Wu Wei, You Wei and Wu Bu Wei) of a Chinese Daoist Wu Wei perspective, it re-examines the link between SME leadership, knowledge and firm growth. This empirically-derived work shows evidence of subtle changes embedded in the growing process: While owner-managers stress keeping inherent openness to explore knowledge (genuine Wu Wei) and strategically exploit knowledge deployed in their everyday leadership practice (You Wei), growth evolves as a spontaneous and continuous accomplishment (Wu Bu Wei). By adopting a Wu Wei perspective, this study makes distinctive contributions to the understanding of leadership, knowledge and growth, where leadership and knowledge co-evolve and disseminate in the dynamic processes of growing as ‘leadership becoming’ rather than ‘knowledge leadership’. Whilst fostering the co-flow and co-evolution of leading, knowing and growing, the owner-managers undertake the role of knowledge generalist, knowledge supervisor and knowledge mentor within micro, small and medium firms.