Journal of Competitiveness | 2026
Authors: Bilyay-Erdoğan S.; Demir E.; Cevheroğlu Acar M.G.; Ozkan I.
DOI: 10.7441/joc.2026.01.08
Journal: Journal of Competitiveness
Year: 2026
Publisher: Tomas Bata University in Zlín
Document Type: Article
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access
Cited by: 0
SMEs play a vital role in employment, innovation, and competitiveness worldwide, yet their governance structures remain underexplored in academic research. Existing studies on corporate governance predominantly focus on large publicly traded firms, leaving a gap in our understanding of how governance mechanisms operate in SMEs. To fill this gap, the primary purpose of this study is to introduce a novel and comprehensive corporate governance index tailored specifically to SMEs. Using stratified sampling, we conducted a structured survey of 469 SMEs across diverse sectors and firm sizes in Türkiye. This index comprises six subdimensions: board structure, family involvement, female participation, digitalization, corporate accountability, and succession, and its internal validity is confirmed with Cronbach's alpha values above 0.70 for the overall index and most subindices. The second purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between access to finance and SME performance, emphasizing the mediating role of corporate governance. Using cross-sectional regression analysis, our results show that access to finance significantly improves SME performance. We also find that corporate governance not only enhances performance directly but also mediates this positive association. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that access to finance influences SME performance through both direct and indirect channels. Overall, our findings highlight that effective governance structures are essential to maximize the benefits of access to finance. This finding underscores the role of institutional and managerial factors in enhancing firm-level competitiveness by enabling SMEs to leverage access to finance and governance practices to achieve sustainable growth. © 2026, Tomas Bata University in Zlín. All rights reserved.
access to finance; corporate governance; Emerging markets; SME performance