A Review of Subjective Measures of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Performance A Case of Pharmaceutical SMEs

Abstract

In the current social and environmental challenges for SMEs, performance measurement systems need to be improved with multiple measures including objective as well as subjective measures. In the literature, performance measurement is largely focused but limited literature is available regarding subjective measures where objective measures are limited. The current study evaluates the importance of performance measurement and provides a critical literature review on the use of subjective performance measures. To further elaborate the use of subjective measures in the absence of objective measures, feedback was obtained from 60 pharmaceutical SMEs owners/managers via questionnaire and purposive sampling technique. The results of the current study revealed that due to difficulty in obtaining actual financial data and deficiency in the objective measures in SMEs’, subjective performance measures are best to use for their performance measurement. The study recommends a more in-depth search to evaluate subjective performance measurement.

     Keywords: Performance Measurement System, Subjective Measures, Objective Measures, SMEs