Sustainable development strategy for small and medium-sized enterprises?

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important force in China's economic development, which have made significant contributions to increasing national income, expanding employment, stabilizing the society and prospering the market. However, SMEs have certain problems in terms of strategic awareness, talents, financing, technology and marketing ability, which seriously hinder the sustainable development of SMEs. This paper describes the importance of the sustainable development of China's SMEs, and puts forward the strategic initiatives for the sustainable development of SMEs.

With the further opening and development of China's market economy, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have become the most energetic source of China's sustained economic growth and social stability and progress, and their status and role in the national economy are becoming more and more important. The sustainable development of small and medium-sized enterprises has an irreplaceable role in the prosperity of the market, to meet the changing individuality and diversified needs; to cooperate with and assist the production of large enterprises to increase exports; to create employment opportunities, active market and optimize the adjustment of industrial structure. However, due to its own special characteristics, the sustainable development of SMEs is constrained by various aspects. This paper discusses the necessity of the sustainable development strategy of small and medium-sized enterprises, analyzes the problems faced by the sustainable development of small and medium-sized enterprises, and puts forward countermeasures and suggestions for realizing the sustainable development strategy.

I. The Necessity of Sustainable Development Strategy for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs." It pursues moderate economic growth based on natural resources, harmonized with the carrying capacity of the environment, and focusing on improving the quality of human life. Sustainable development is not only the responsibility of the government, as the microeconomic subject of the enterprise also has an unshirkable responsibility for sustainable development, especially in the national economy, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises is becoming more and more prominent in the sustainable development of the vital force, small and medium-sized enterprises in the healthy and sustainable development of China's social and economic sustainable development is of great significance. At the same time, small and medium-sized enterprises also have the need to implement sustainable development strategy.

First of all, the successive introduction of relevant environmental laws and regulations, prompting small and medium-sized enterprises to actively implement sustainable development strategy. This is because the relevant laws and regulations impose a binding force on the environmental behavior of enterprises. From the international point of view, the global and regional environmental protection legal documents involved in an increasingly wide range of areas, and more linked to international trade, which makes the trade barriers from tariff barriers to green barriers; from the domestic situation, the formulation of "China's Agenda 21" and "sustainable development strategy" as a basic national policy, has pointed out the way for domestic enterprises to implement a sustainable development strategy. The formulation of "China's Agenda 21" and the proposal of "sustainable development strategy" as a basic national policy have pointed out a sustainable development path for domestic enterprises, and the implementation of the ISO14000 and ISO19000 series of standards in line with international standards since 1996 has put forward clear standards and norms for the environmental behavior of enterprises. Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises should take the initiative to implement a sustainable development strategy based on natural resources and coordinated with the carrying capacity of the environment.

Secondly, in the face of over-exploitation of resources, energy and environmental degradation, small and medium-sized enterprise development of the environmental concept has undergone a fundamental change. "Natural resources are inexhaustible", resources are "free to take products" concept has been abandoned, people began to realize that natural resources and environmental capacity are limited, should be "high input, high consumption, low efficiency, Low output" as the main characteristics of the "resource-based economy" to "low input, high efficiency" as the main characteristics of the "conservation-oriented, circular economy". "The enterprise must take "sustainability" as a long-term enterprise development strategy to plan and implement.

Finally, the market demand for "green products" to promote small and medium-sized enterprises to take appropriate environmental protection measures, the implementation of sustainable development strategy. At present, more and more consumers prefer to consume "green products". Under the influence of this green consumption trend, small and medium-sized enterprises in order to maintain the production and efficiency of the sustainability, we must abandon the production of highly polluting products in the past and replace it with "green products" consumption-oriented, in order to bring consumers and the market ecological and environmental protection effect at the same time, to maintain and even increase the market share, enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.

In short, both the development trend of society as a whole and the needs of the enterprise's own development, small and medium-sized enterprises will be required to raise the sustainable development of the strategic height to consider.

The problems faced by SMEs in the process of sustainable development

Compared with large enterprises, SMEs, in addition to having a small scale, a single business; high flexibility, strong responsiveness; a high degree of specialization and so on, in the market competition is also faced with a lack of strategic awareness, decision-making arbitrariness, lack of talent, financing difficulties, information blockage, technological backwardness, weak marketing capabilities and other issues.

(a) the development of small and medium-sized enterprises lack of strategic awareness. In the strategic naivety and immaturity, the development stage and growth environment in which it is directly related. On the one hand, small and medium-sized enterprises due to small scale, poor strength, personnel quality is generally low, resulting in small and medium-sized enterprise management methods and means backward, management system is not sound, the operator of the strategic awareness is weak; on the other hand, because many small and medium-sized enterprises is by virtue of the entrepreneur of the personal value, the cause of the business and the spirit of adventure and the rapid growth and development of the formation of the inherent in the mind of the" Successful thinking style", resulting in operators have long not paid attention to the enterprise's overall, long-term, basic issues, the lack of strategic awareness and strategic planning, often focusing on the immediate market, can not look to the future, in order to seek short-term interests, while ignoring the long-term interests.

(ii) The decision-making of small and medium-sized enterprises is arbitrary and lacks scientific decision-making mechanism and constraint mechanism. At present, most of the small and medium-sized enterprise adopts the family management system, the entrepreneur plays a decisive role in the development of the enterprise, the decision-making power is highly centralized, the decision-making process is too simple, in the case of insufficient information collection and argumentation, the lack of scientific decision-making and constraints for the major strategies related to the long-term development of the enterprise. This highly centralized decision-making mechanism can still play a role of high efficiency in decision-making in the relatively stable and upward market environment, in the early stage of business and relatively single day of operation. But with the development of enterprise diversification process, in the uncertain and competitive market environment, this decision-making arbitrariness often cause blind development. To the enterprise to bring extremely unfavorable impact and serious consequences.

(C) the lack of high-quality personnel and abundant funds. Market competition is fundamentally a competition for talent, most of the small and medium-sized enterprises are in the initial stage of development, due to low treatment, the lack of reasonable incentives and training mechanisms, and therefore it is difficult to attract and train high-quality professionals. This makes it difficult for them to form their own unique core competitiveness, i.e. the ability to continue to develop unique products, to continue to invent proprietary technologies and to continue to create advanced business tools. At the same time, small and medium-sized enterprises are small in scale, with little accumulation, high business risk, weak credit guarantee ability, and it is more difficult for them to raise funds through loans from financial institutions and the securities market, which leads to difficulties in financing and a shortage of production funds.

(4) Lack of effective competition constraint mechanism. In our country, because most of the small and medium-sized enterprises are concentrated in the labor-intensive industries, product structure is single, so that the competition between enterprises are low-cost, low-priced vicious competition, they in order to have a place in the fierce competition in the market, they tend to take the race to the price, and even cut corners to obtain short-term economic benefits, so that the market is in the state of disordered competition. This practice may have good results in the short term, but if an enterprise wants to be invincible in the market competition, to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to get rid of this vice, the establishment of an effective competition mechanism, so that the enterprise to get long-term development.

In addition, most of China's small and medium-sized business activities lack a scientific concept to support. Embodied in the lack of reasonable enterprise system and enterprise management. Some of the small and medium-sized enterprise internal communication is poor, lack of trust in the staff, the staff of the enterprise's identity is not strong, lack of cohesion, all because of the lack of this scientific concept support caused.

Three, China's small and medium-sized enterprises sustainable development of strategic initiatives

Small and medium-sized enterprises as one of the important foundations for the healthy and coordinated development of China's national economy, and its development is related to economic development, social stability and many other aspects. Moreover, with the strengthening of global economic integration and the rapid rise of knowledge-based economy, the market competition has become more intense and the development environment of SMEs has become increasingly severe. Therefore, SMEs should set up strategic thinking, improve the quality of managers, improve the corporate governance structure, build corporate culture and cultivate the core competence of the enterprise in order to improve the core competitiveness of the enterprise itself.

(I) Establish strategic thinking. Enterprise business strategy is the basis for decision-making in a complex environment, is to guide the long-term development of the enterprise's beacon. Establishment of strategic thinking is important for every enterprise, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. For SMEs, the environment they face is complex and changing, and the resources they can control are very limited, so it is difficult to change the environment, and the only choice is to adapt to the environment. The drastic changes in the environment have made SME operators unable to cope with the challenges of the future by relying on their past successes, and it is only by basing on the long-term development of the enterprise and objectively grasping the environment and its own resources that they can establish the goals and direction of development, make clear their strategic intentions, and actively carry out strategic changes in order to broaden the space for their survival and development.

(ii) Improve the quality of employees. Through training, improve the managers' own quality, lay a solid theoretical foundation for corporate decision-making and strategic planning. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the development and management of human resources to attract high-quality talents to serve small and medium-sized enterprises. First of all, we should update the concept of selecting talents, training talents and using talents, and establish a scientific mechanism for selecting and using talents. Secondly, increase the education and training of employees, as long as the enterprise can really pay attention to the talent, cherish the talent, so that the talent really have a place to use. Third, is committed to creating attracting talent, retaining talent of the enterprise culture atmosphere, find ways to stimulate the maximum mobility of talent. In short, small and medium-sized enterprises only to increase investment in human resources development, change the concept of attracting high-quality talent for small and medium-sized enterprises, improve the quality of staff, in order to form the basis of the core competitiveness of enterprises.

(C) the establishment of a rational governance structure. To improve the level of decision-making and decision-making efficiency of enterprises, SMEs must establish a sound and reasonable governance structure, improve the mechanism of checks and balances of power, standardize the rights and obligations between owners, operators and workers, and truly establish a business management mechanism that meets the requirements of market competition in the context of economic globalization. From basic planning to routine maintenance procedures, from the level of staff operation to the complete process, the establishment of the quality system and other system development to operation and assessment process to be refined and quantified. Work to put an end to rely on estimates and fuzzy concepts, the style of their own way; the need to actively cultivate our organizational structure, adapt to the requirements of the, good at collaboration, uncompromising executives. Improve the management level, scientific development of strategic planning to cultivate core competitiveness.

(IV) Building corporate culture. As we all know, the power of culture is enormous. Small and medium-sized enterprises to achieve sustainable development, but also rely on the penetration of corporate culture. The so-called enterprise culture means that the enterprise in the development process gradually formed by members of the enterprise *** with the values, moral code and other concepts of the sum. As a spiritual level of things, corporate culture is not abstract, it will be excellent long-term integration of the spirit of enterprise into the corporate organizational structure, organizational systems and procedures, corporate identity and other aspects of the enterprise's cultural concepts to become conscious of the behavior of each member of the community to recognize the enterprise's window, to become a source of consumer trust in the enterprise, such as the image of the enterprise, the enterprise system, and so on.

(E) build a cooperative enterprise alliance. Small and medium-sized enterprises are small and weak, and their individual competitiveness is not strong. SMEs should implement cooperative competition strategy, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, establish cooperative relationships, strengthen communication, form SME clusters, enhance cohesion and market competitiveness, reduce duplication of construction, reduce costs and ease internal competition. Realize resource ****sharing, complement each other's advantages, form cluster scale advantages, and enhance the market competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises.

(VI) Cultivate the core competence of enterprises. "Core competence is the accumulation of knowledge in the organization, especially on how to coordinate different production skills and organic combination of multiple streams of technology", the enterprise's core competence is the source of lasting competitive advantage, therefore, strengthen the learning ability and creativity of the core competitiveness of the development of small and medium-sized enterprises has become a pressing task. SMEs must "revitalize" the organizational structure level and stimulate organizational innovation, the business operation system and the idea of change into a whole, so as to provide continuous support for business development power.