7.3 Lack of inter-country research
All research articles were reviewed except Belt and Smith (1991), and Khoury et al.
(1999) used a sample of single country for the analysis. Only Belt and Smith (1991) made
an attempt to compare working capital practices of the USA and Australia. Khoury et al.
(1999) expand this survey for Canadian small firms.
8. Conclusion
The primary aim of this review was to identify and analyze the main characteristics of
WCMliterature to contribute more in-depth understanding of the research domain. This
has been carried out by adopting SLR methodology. A set of 126 research articles were
published during 1980-2012, pertaining to WCM, were identified and analyzed. It was
observed that the number of research articles in WCM is increasing but the quality of
articles can be questioned due to the replications of one or two original ideas and low
citation count. Major focus ofWCMresearch is on studying the relationship between the
WCM and profitability of firm. Literature on WCM has concluded that profitability of
firm can increase by reducing the amount invested in working capital. Researchers were
reluctant in adopting methods like case study and primary survey to study the WCM
practices of firms. From the complete discussion, it can be concluded that future
researcher should break the monotony in their research purpose for systematic theory
building to set more insight of WCM practices and determinants in a company
(Table IX).
9. Scope for future research
Our review of WCM literature has highlighted conceptual and methodological issues
which by themselves, properly addressed, hopefully serve as guidance for future
Table IX.
Research question Main conclusion
How articles are placed in time? Publication of articles has peaked in 2011 and
2012. This could be caused by recent economical
slow down which boost the importance of
working capital management
What has been studied about working capital
management?
Major attention of researchers is directed toward
studying the relation between WCM and
profitability
What research methods and data have been
used?
The most common research method is statistical
analyses performed with correlation and
regression analyses. Data have been used both
from small- and big-sized firms, but big-sized
firms dominate the literature
What are the most important articles about the
topic?
It seems that Deloof (2003) and García-Teruel and
Martinez-Salano (2007) are the most important
articles according to number of citations.
However, their popularity is largely caused by the
fact that they are early articles that
studied the relation between profitability and
WCM, a topic that has been studied a lot