The SMEs Literature Review: Perspective of Studies

This chapter stands as a literature review for both parts of the book: financing and financial reporting for SMEs. This chapter aims to act like a uniting framework, providing coherent understanding not only to the present book, but also to give a greater sense of the SMEs literature. Positioning the present book into the literature is among the goals of the chapter. This is important, as SMEs are the driving force of the EU economy and multiple interactions of financial reporting with financing has to be understood. Examples from outside Europe will be provided as there is a tendency from the emerging economies to compare with and compete with European SMEs. The literature review is sectioned in three parts: academic, professional and political, with sections being divided further into articles, books and reports. Comparisons with the present research are performed. The findings of this chapter are that the SME world has changed almost beyond recognition in the last decades and the future may reserve us changes in paradigm on financing SMEs. Considering the link between financing and IFRS, this subject is not at the forefront and therefore not well researched in the literature, our publication being the most complex of its kind. This is because up until recently high quality data was decentralised and hard to collect and analyse. Conclusions show that there are different needs and ways of financing SMEs.