Management Practice Insights
DOI: 10.59571/mpi.v4i1.4
Year: 2026, Volume: 4, Issue: 1, Pages: 21-26
Original Article
Ashish Desaii*
iS.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
Received Date:08 January 2025, Accepted Date:25 March 2026, Published Date:31 March 2026
Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are essential to the global economy, playing a key role in employment, income creation and local economic stability. Despite their significance, MSMEs face persistent structural barriers that hinder their access to markets, thereby restricting their ability to grow and compete. Although financial inclusion has improved through microfinance and formal banking services, non-financial barriers, especially limited access to a wider and more diverse range of markets, remain inadequately addressed. Consequently, many MSMEs operate within geographically limited, socially homogeneous networks, relying on trustbased, informal exchanges to sustain their businesses. These localised networks support survival through trust, reciprocity and resource sharing; yet the same embeddedness restricts exposure to new information, customers, and opportunities, thereby limiting growth. MSMEs often lack the ability to connect with diverse actors, expand into new markets and integrate into broader economic ecosystems. This creates a paradox where the very networks that enable survival also constrain expansion. Research by Arkangel M. Cordero and Alexander C. Lewis highlights the importance of these factors, including the diversity of social networks and social capital.1 Our essay illustrates this insight to help MSMEs understand whether digital social media platforms offer opportunities and, if so, how to leverage them not merely as communication tools but as mechanisms to build bridging social capital and enable inclusive, scalable market access
1 Arkangel M. Cordero and Alexander C. Lewis, “How Does Regional Social Capital Structure the Relationship Between Entrepreneurship, Ethnic Diversity, and Residential Segregation?,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 48, no. 3 (2024): 788–825, https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587231198450.
2 Khondoker Haider et al., Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Economic Indicators MSME Economic Indicators Analysis Note (World Bank, 2019), https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/873301627470308 867/pdf/Micro-Small-and-Medium-Enterprises-EconomicIndicators-MSME-EI-Analysis-Note.pdf.
3 Ashish Dattaram Desai et al., “Roles of Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Economic Empowerment of Rural Women Entrepreneurs,” Oxford Development Studies 52, no. 3 (2024): 243–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/13600818.2024.2403066.
4 Remya Tressa Jacob et al., “Is Rural Household Debt Sustainable in a Financially Included Region? Evidence from Three Districts of Kerala, India,” Oxford Development Studies 50, no. 4 (2022): 389–405, https://doi.org/10.1080/13600818.2022.2088718.
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11 Barrios and Blocker, “The Contextual Value of Social Capital for Subsistence Entrepreneur Mobility.”
12 Barrios and Blocker, “The Contextual Value of Social Capital for Subsistence Entrepreneur Mobility.”
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20 Gautam Ganesh et al., ONDC - McKinsey Joint Industry Report: Democratising Digital Commerce in India.
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23 Camacho and Barrios, “Social Commerce Affordances for Female Entrepreneurship,” 2022.
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© 2026 Published by SPJIMR. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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