How did the crisis affect small and medium-seized enterprises? From a field study of the metal-working industry in Java

This paper focuses on the impact of Indonesia's economic crisis on small an d medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It shows how the performance of SMEs dur ing the industrial subsector, and found that the factors crisis varied wide ly even in the same market orientation and the linkages that the most affec ting performance have been SMEs have formed with the buyers oi their produc ts. Well-performing SMEs were found to have utilized putting-out linkages w ith wholesalers which enabled them to On the other hand, the SMEs which had subcontracting linkages with with assemblers or contracting linkages with user-factories (with the exception of SMEs having export-orientated linkage s) suffered badly in the crisis because of specificity of products with lit tle room for switching. The paper also found that exposure to debt due to b orrowing for investment has been another factor affecting performance, but that enterprise size has had no linear correlation with performance.