Finansiell Bootstrapping i SME

: en kvantitativ studie om hur ett starkt socialt och affärsmässigt nätverk påverkar valet av bootstrappingmetoder

Abstract

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to see how strong social and business networks influence the choice of bootstrapping methods in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). This is because SME make up 99.9 percent of all companies in the Swedish market and are therefore significant for the country's economic growth and employment. However, SME face difficulties in receiving external financing. SME solve this issue by engaging in various "bootstrapping activities”. Bootstrapping can be described as a bunch of methods to reduce the need for external funding. Like bootstrapping, the network facilitates the acquisition of external financing. The corporate network can be divided into two groups of networks, social networks and business networks. Furthermore, this study focuses mainly on how strong relationship ties in social and business network can be used to take advantage of the available bootstrapping methods.

In order to create a general picture of this relatively unexplored field, this study has a quantitative research approach that is based on a positivist research approach. This study has been completed by a survey of 154 SME in Sweden. This study is based on the resource-based theory, which then resulted in the financial gap, financial bootstrapping, the growth cycle and networks. The main result from this study is that the strong relationship ties within the social network leads to the use of owner-related bootstrapping methods, and the strong relationship ties in the business network, leads to the use of customer-related bootstrapping methods.