RT Journal Article
T1 Stakeholders and Long-Term Sustainability of SMEs. Who Really Matters in Crisis Contexts, and When
A1 Manzaneque Lizano, Montserrat
A1 Alfaro Cortés, Esteban
A1 Priego de la Cruz, Alba María
AB The impact of crises on the long-term sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) has been attracting growing interest in the literature and from governments due to thesignificance of such companies with respect to economic growth, innovation, and employment.Although failure prediction models have been proposed based on accounting and other qualitativeinformation, little is known regarding the influence of stakeholders on the failure process of SMEs.From the perspective of long-term sustainability, this article analyzes the role of the financialinfluence of stakeholders on the likelihood of business failure. An empirical study was carried outon a sample of 2352 Spanish SMEs, examining the differences between failed and non-failed SMEsand using a classification tree methodology to investigate the role played by each type ofstakeholder in overcoming crisis events. The study provides empirical evidence regarding therelative importance of stakeholders to SMEs under conditions of financial distress, and proposestheir categorization on the basis of their control over firms’ financial resources. Specifically, theanalysis reveals that the capacity of the firm to generate sustainable wealth over time and toovercome critical situations is dependent on the most critical stakeholders. Workers, customers, andsuppliers are the most important in ensuring the long-term sustainability of SMEs during the firststages of a crisis. Following the initial operational problems, other creditors (financial institutions)become relevant. In this sense, the results of this study encourage firms and governments to developcooperation strategies with stakeholders (co-responsibility) in line with the proposed conceptualmodels of business sustainability.
PB MDPI
SN 2071-1050
YR 2019
FD 2019-11
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/17574
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/17574
LA eng
NO Manzaneque Lizano, M.,  Alfaro Cortés, E.,  Priego de la Cruz, A. M. (2019). Stakeholders and Long-Term Sustainability of SMEs. Who Really Matters in Crisis Contexts, and When. Sustainability, 11(23), 6551. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236551
NO This research was partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union, belonging to the research group: Sistemas de información externa e interna de las organizaciones: información corporativa y para la gestión (GISEIO). This research was also partially funded by the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, grant number 2019-GRIN-26906
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 13 jun 2026