Business experience or Financial Literacy? Which one is better for opportunity recognition and superior performance?

AbstractRecognition of useful opportunities is very crucial for small and medium‐sized enterprises' (SMEs') survival and growth in the competitive environment. However, the majority of SMEs cannot easily recognize new opportunities in the turbulent markets due to a lack of managerial competencies and knowledge. Several studies have been carried out to unleash the determinants of opportunity recognition that configure SMEs' success, but the results are disjointed. In particular, the mediating role of opportunity recognition between business experience, financial literacy, and SME performance has been missed. This study aims to test if either financially literate or experienced managers can recognize new opportunities that result in high performance. For testing the hypotheses, we surveyed 232 Pakistani SMEs from the manufacturing, trading, and service sectors. After performing the structural equation modeling, we found that financial literacy and business experience are the substantial prognosticators of opportunity recognition and SMEs' performance. Opportunity recognition shows a partial mediating role between financial literacy and SMEs performance as well as between business experience and SMEs performance. However, this research endorses that business experience is more vital for high performance as compared to financial literacy whereas in terms of opportunity recognition financial literacy is more crucial as compared to experience. This study recommends the enterprises to hire the financially literate and experienced managers as both display a prominent role in the identification of opportunities and high performance. Further implications are discussed.