The Role and Moderating Effect of Community on SMEs? Innovation and Performance: An Empirical Study in Indonesia

The most crucial elements of SME growth and development are performance and innovation. In actuality, SMEs find it challenging to enhance their performance and innovation due to limited access to resources. Collaboration with other SMEs in the form of local communities can be an alternative solution to gaining access to external resources. Unfortunately, not many studies have explored the role of the local SME community in the development of innovation and performance of SMEs. This study tries to fill this gap by examining the role of local communities in expanding SMEs' access to resources, in their efforts to improve innovation and performance. Data was collected using an online questionnaire distributed to food and beverage SMEs in Malang Regency. As many as 150 questionnaires were received and considered valid for statistical data analysis using the WarpPLS program. The results show that the SME community plays an important role in improving the innovation and performance of food and beverage SMEs. It is also found that innovation can be a good mediator of community relations with the performance of SMEs. Furthermore, it is also confirmed that the SME community moderates the relationship between innovation and the performance of food and beverage SMEs.