Financial Performance of Founder-Managed and Professionally-Managed SMEs : An Empirical Investigation of Lao Trading Firms <Article>

We examined a sample of 146 trading SMEs in Lao PDR, to address two important research hypotheses: (1) there is a direct relationship between managerial types and firm's financial performance; and (2) the relationship between managerial types and firm's financial performance also depends on size of firm. Using MANOVA method to prove defined evidence, we find that there is no distinction between founder-CEO and professional-CEO on the financial performance. Instead, we argue that the relationship between these variables depend upon the firm size. In addition, we provide the threshold point of financial performance according with firm size change for founder-managed trading SMEs in Lao PDR.