THE PERSPECTIVE DIRECTIONS OF RESEARCHES IN THE FIELD OF SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Small and medium business plays an important role in the social and economic development of many countries. In spite of its importance, small business faces many problems. As a result, according to some estimates, about 30% of new small businesses stop running during two years, and about 50% - within five years; according to other estimates - about 60% of businesses get closed during three years. These circumstances cause growth interest in various aspects of the development of small and medium businesses from the scientific community. At present higher flow of information in all fields emphasizes the necessity to identify methods and approaches to optimize its structure and determine key researches. The purpose of this article is to set out perspective directions in reviewing the development of small and medium business based on the bibliometric analysis. The study used the following methods and tools: a) CiteSpaceV program, which allowed to define the perspective directions of researches on the basis of a co-citation method and to visualize research fronts; b) the semantic analysis methods, which allowed to define the directions of researches on the frequency of used terms. The scientific publications presented on Web of science and Russian Science Citation Index from 2010 to 2016 formed information base of a research. The study revealed the main directions in the area of entrepreneurship of small and medium businesses that include market orientation, international entrepreneurship, innovative knowledge, financial crisis, data quality factor, and social responsibility. The results show that there are considerable differences between the directions of researches of the Russian scientists and the world scientific community. Russian publications are more aimed at theoretical rather than practical research. A bid internal problem is the absence of feasible space of knowledge, uniting scientific schools, competence centers, scientific centers and working groups. The study investigates the causes of the gaps in the field of small and medium businesses studies. Comparison of research fronts on foreign publications with Russian subjects may form a basis of forecasting perspective research directions.