Strategic Partnership: How Important for Reputation of Small and Medium Enterprise?

The cooperative relationship with stakeholders has potential to increase the knowledge of business managers. It is hoped that it will affect the company's good reputation. However, so far, the empirical research on reputation and partnerships has been primarily seen from the customer side and carried out in large organizations. Organizational agility is still rarely studied in both large organizations and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, this study aims to examine the role of strategic partnership, professional knowledge, and organizational agility in improving the reputation of SMEs. The data of 135 managers obtained was analyzed by using structural equation modeling with AMOS software. The results showed that strategic partnership has a significant effect on professional knowledge, but not on organizational agility. Professional knowledge has a significant effect on organizational agility, not on organizational reputation. Then, the organizational agility has a significant effect on the organizational reputation. Therefore, it is important to support the transfer knowledge from the individual to the organizational level. Besides, it is also necessary to improve social capital to support the reputation of SMEs.