Business Environment and Survival of Small-scale Businesses in Nigeria: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Small scale businesses have been adjudge as the major contributors to the gross domestic product (GDP) of any economy be it developed or developing economy, but the survival and performance of these small scale business have been threaten by the environment which these businesses operates, thereby influencing the SMEs performance, survival and their contribution to nationals GDP. Employing the Systematic Quantitative Assessment Technique (SQAT) propounded by Catherine Pickering and Pickering and Jason Antony Byrne, this paper identified and analyzed 302 peer-reviewed Business Environment (BE) articles from six high quality academic databases published over the last decade (2011-2020) to give an insight into the influence of business environment on the performance and survival of Small Scale Business across the world. This article reviewed the time distribution, geographic distribution, types and data collection methods of this Business environment papers. The year 2017 and 2018 recorded the highest number of articles published on Business Environment while 2012 recorded the least article published on BE. Most of the studies took place in Asia and Europe while South America has the least number of studies in this area of interest. A significant number of BE articles were empirical in nature, with survey being the most favoured means of data collection method used, meaning that there is a need for more conceptual studies to aid understanding of the influence of BE on the Small Scale Business performance and survival, and this represent a gap for future research interest.