IMPACT OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ON THE PROFITABILITY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM TRADE AND SERVICE ENTERPRISES IN THAI NGUYEN PROVINCE A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty Graduate School Southern Luzon State University Lucban, Quezon In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Business Administration by PHAM ANH NGOC (RANDY) 2013 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge Dr. Joanna Paula A. Ellaga and her assistants from the Southern Luzon State University (SLSU) I also acknowledge Mrs. Le Thi Xuan from the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Thainguyen of Economics and Financial (TCEF) for her comments on English in earlier drafts of my disertation. In the process of data collection for this research, many people contributed to the task and I am particularly grateful for their contributions. I am greatly indebted to Mr Nguyen Quoc Huy and Accounting Faculty of TCEF for their introduction to contacts with the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) community located in Thainguyen city. I also wish to thank to Department of Taxation, Department of Investment and Planning for providing secondary data related to the current practices of SMEs in Thaingyen province. I would particularly like to thank the following friends for their support related to data collection: Mrs. Ha Thi Hương and all teachers of Finance Faculty of TCEF and all my students who worked as fieldworkers for data collection. Finally, to my parents and my wife, I wish to extend my loving thanks for their encouragement. iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the relationship between financial management and profitability of SMEs to determine whether financial management practices and financial aspects impact on SME profitability. Specific Objectives of the disertation are: 1. To determine the profile of the respondents in terms of the following 1.1. The form of business organization affiliated with 1.2. Position in the company 1.3. Highest educational attainment 1.4. Attendance to financial management-related trainings 2. To Identify the financial management practices of the company in terms of the following areas: 2.1. Accounting information system 2.2. Working capital management 2.3. Fixed asset management 3. To assess the company in terms of the following financial aspects: 3.1. Liquidity 3.2. Financial leverage 3.3. Activity 4. To know the relationship of financial management practices and financial aspects to the company’s profitability in terms of the following: 4.1. Return on sales 4.2. Return of assets 4.3. Return on equity 5. To develop a model for the SME’s profitability iv 6. To propose solutions to improve the company’s and SME’s profitability In this research, both survey and secondary data methods are used in combination. Survey was chosen to investigate financial management practices. The secondary data method was used to examine the financial aspects. Respondents in this study can be: Owner, Manager, Chief-accountant of SMEs located in Thai Nguyen City. The disertation provides descriptive findings of financial management practices and financial aspects and demonstrates the simultaneous impact of financial management practices and financial aspects on SME profitability. In addition, the research study provides a model of SME profitability, in which profitability was found to be related to financial management practices and financial aspects. With the exception of debt ratios, all other variables including cash ratio, total asset turnover, accounting information systems, working capital management and fixed asset management were found to be significantly related to SME profitability. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF TABLE vii INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 1 1.2. STATEMENT OF THE OBJECTIVES 2 1.3. HYPOTHESIS 4 1.4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 4 1.5. SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 5 1.6. DEFINITION OF TERMS 6 Chapter 2 8 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES 8 2.1. QUALITATIVE DEFINITIONS OF SMES 8 2.2. QUANTITATIVE DEFINITIONS OF SMES 9 2.3. FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT FOR SMES 10 2.4. FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES 13 2.5 FINANCIAL ASPECTS 17 2.6 SME PROFITABILITY 19 2.7. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND SME PROFITABILITY 22 2.8. THE MODEL OF IMPACT OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ON SME PROFITABILITY 22 2.9. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 23 Chapter 3 24 METHODOLOGY 24 3.1. RESEARCH DESIGN 24 vi 3.2. LOCALE OF THE STUDY 25 3.3 BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND SMES IN THAI NGUYEN PROVINCE 25 3.4 SAMPLING DESIGN AND TECHNIQUES 25 3.5 DETERMINATION OF SAMPLE SIZE 26 3.6 SUBJECT OF THE STUDY 26 3.7. RESEARCH INSTRUMENT 27 3.8. DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE 36 3.9. DATA PROCESSING METHOD 37 3.10. STATISTICAL TREATMENT 37 Chapter 4 39 PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 39 4.1. DESCRIPTIVE OF THE RESEARCH STUDY 39 4.2 ASSOCIATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RESEARCH STUDY 62 Chapter 5 71 SUMMARY, FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 71 5.1 SUMMARY 71 5.2 FINDINGS 73 5.3 CONCLUSIONS 76 5.4 RECOMMENDATIONS 77 BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 APPENDIX 1 82 APPENDIX 2: SURVEY INSTRUMENT 83 SURVEY OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES 83 OF SMEs IN THAI NGUYEN CITY 83 APPENDIX 3: REGRESSION 95 APPENDIX 4: CORRELATIONS 97 vii LIST OF TABLE Table 1.1: Classifying enterprise by total capital and number of laborers 6 Table 3.1. Number and percentage of SME sample and population 26 Table 4.1: Structure of SMEs in the sample by form of ownership 40 Table 4.2: Structure of respondent by the position 40 Table 4.3: Structure of respondent by the highest educational attainment 41 The level education 41 Table 4.4: Structure of respondent by the frequency of attendance to 41 Table 4.5: Responsibility – accounting information system 43 Table 4.6: Using computer in accounting information system 44 Table 4.7: Weighted Mean Distribution on Accounting information system 45 Table 4.8: Preparing cash budgets 46 Table 4.9: Cash balance determination 47 Table 4.10: Weighted Mean Distribution on Cash management practices 49 Table 4.11: Sales on credit and credit polices 50 Table 4.12: Frequency of reviewing receivable levels and bad debts 51 Table 4.13: Weighted Mean Distribution on Receivable management practices 52 Table 4.14: Frequency of reviewing inventory levels and preparing inventory budgets 53 Table 4.15: Weighted Mean Distribution on Inventory management practices 54 Table 4.16: Frequency of evaluating investment projects and reviewing efficiency of using fixed assets after investing 56 Table 4.17: Weighted Mean Distribution on Fixed asset management practices 57 Table 4.18: Descriptive statistics of financial ratios of trading and service SMEs 58 Table 4.19: Descriptive findings of SME cash ratios 59 Table 4.20: Descriptive findings of SME Debt-to-equity ratio 60 Table 4.21: Descriptive findings of SME activity ratio 60 viii Table 4.22: Overview of SME profitability 61 Table 4.23: Correlation matrix of PRO and independent variables 63 Table 4.24: SME profitability regression model using profitability as dependent variable 65 Table 4.25: Descriptive finding of relationship between profitability and cash ratio 67 Table 4.26: Relationship between SME profitability and the efficiency of financial management practices 68 T able 4.27: Regression model of SME profitability after removing debt ratio 70 1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides a general introduction to the research study. The purpose is to establish foundations for following chapters and the study as a whole, by providing a general picture of the study. This chapter is structured into ten sections Section 1.1 examines the research background where the research problem is identified. Section 1.2 defines the research problem, presents a statement of the problem and expands the research problem in two subsections 1.2.1 and 1.2.2. Subsection 1.2.1 presents research objectives that the study covers in the process of solving the research problem defined. Subsection 1.2.2.addresses the research questions that will be respectively answered in chapters of the study Section 1.3 provides hypothesis of this study. Section 1.4 and section 1.5 points out the significance and scope of the study. Lastly, section 1.6 presents definition of terms 1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Vietnam was a strong command-economy system in the mid-1980s. The difficulties from years of war and the inefficiency of the command-economy system had led the Vietnam economy to crisis. Face with stagnant growth, shortage of food, deficit budgets, increase in inflation and trade imbalances, the Government of Vietnam started an economic renovation policy in 1986. According to Vietnam Chamber Of Commerce And Industry (VCCI), since the government introduced the series of economic reform, the private sector has rapidly grown in terms of the number of businesses, capital and employees. From the base of zero in 1991, the number of private businesses, limited companies and joint stock companies had quickly risen to 543.963 in 2011 and almost all are small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SMEs have 2 contributed considerably to growing GDP and creating jobs for labour-age people as follows (VCCI): Total of capital was 6.000.000 billion VND Providing a large number of diversified products, occupying 40 percent of GDP Creating jobs for 26 million people, Mobilizing temporarily unused resources such as land, capital labour and management skills to develop production, and Increasing export volume and lessening trade deficits. Originating from recognition of the increasingly important role and contribution of SMEs as well as the recent promotion and supporting policy on developing SMEs, this research study the Impact of Financial Management on the Profitability of Small and Medium Trade and Service Enterprises in Thai Nguyen Province. 1.2. STATEMENT OF THE OBJECTIVES The problem that SMEs in Thai Nguyen province face appears to be that inefficient financial management has adversely affected their profitability (Thai Nguyen Young Businesses's Union 2010). Therefore, the problem to be addressed in this research is to investigate effects of Financial aspects and financial management practices on SME profitability, and then, to determine the best measures for improving SME profitability in Thai Nguyen province by using efficient financial management tools. 1.2.1. Research objectives In solving the research problem and answering the research questions mentioned previously, this study has the following objectives: 1) To determine the profile of the respondents in terms of the following 1.1) The form of business organization affiliated with [...]... theory and practice For theory, this study is an expansion of previous studies on financial management of SMEs by focusing on examining the impacts of financial management on SME profitability In addition, utilizing data from Thai Nguyen province contributes to the literature of SME financial management In practice, results will indicate relationships between financial management and SME profitability and. .. researchers in the developed economies Section 2.7 concentrates on examining the relationships between financial management practices, financial aspects and SME profitability Section 2.8 provides the model of impact of financial management on SME profitability Lastly, section 2.9 develops a model of the impact of financial management practices and financial aspects on SME profitability and conceptual... accounting information systems - Frequency of accounting information preparation - Promptness of accounting information system in reflecting business transactions - Owner/manager involvement in preparing accounting information - Owner/manager involvement in the interpretation and use of accounting information - Reasonableness of accounting information systems - Usefulness of accounting information in decision-making... Major decisions of financial management Generally, previous authors had no differences in opinions of major decisions in financial management H Kent Baker, Gary Powell (2009) indicated three kinds of decisions the financial manager of a firm must make in business: (1) the budgeting decision, (2) the financing decision, and (3) decisions involving short-term finance and concerned with the net working capital... from the literature concentrated on examining, investigating and describing the behaviour of SMEs in implementing financial management The specific areas of financial management practices including accounting information system, financial reporting and analysis, working capital management, fixed asset management and capital structure management have attracted the attention of many researchers Their findings... socio-economic exchange with the Red River delta The exchange is carried out via road, rail and waterways in the province Main water features include the Cong River and Nui Coc Lake 3.3 BUSINESS STRUCTURE AND SMES IN THAI NGUYEN PROVINCE According to the Thai Nguyen of Department of Investment and Planning, at the time of 2011, there are 1.854 trading and service businesses (consisting of 770 private enterprises, ... M King (2011) defined fixed-asset management including non -financial and financial considerations in fixed-asset acquisition, quantitative techniques for capital project evaluation, investment hurdle rate determination, and handling risk and uncertainty in this context This research examined the efficiency of fixed-asset management in terms of financial management In this study, the efficiency of fixed-asset... areas of financial management including all areas that relate to items on the balance sheet of the business The specific areas financial management covers consist of managing working capital, managing long-lived assets, managing sources of finance, planning financial structure, and planning and evaluating profitability In summary, financial management is concerned with many specific areas Probably the balance... Jain (2007) also indicated three main financial decisions including the investment decisions, financing decisions and dividend decisions Sudhindra Bhat (2008) suggested another way of identifying the major decisions of financial management is to look at the balance sheet of a business There are many decisions regarding items on the balance sheet However, they are classified into three main types: investment... research questions: 1) How important are financial management practices and financial aspects to SME profitability? 2) What are the relationships between financial management practices, financial aspects and SME profitability? 3 3) How do financial management practices and financial aspects affect SME profitability? 4) What action can improve profitability of SME in Thai Nguyen province? 1.3 HYPOTHESIS Cash . specific areas financial management covers consist of managing working capital, managing long-lived assets, managing sources of finance, planning financial structure, and planning and evaluating. literature of SME financial management. In practice, results will indicate relationships between financial management and SME profitability and will assist owner-managers and financial managers to improve. defined as financial management that achieves financial management objectives without wasting financial resources. Conversely, inefficient financial management is not to achieve financial management