SMEs are important for economic and social reasons, given the sectors role in

employment. Due to their sizes, SME are heavily influenced by their Chief Executive
Officer, a.k.a. CEOs. The CEOs of SMEs often are the founders, owners, and manager
of the SMEs. The duties of the CEO in SME are difficult, and mirror those of the
CEO of a large company: the CEO needs to strategically allocate her/his time,
energy, and assets to direct the SMEs. Typically, the CEO is the strategist,
champion and leader for developing the SME or the prime reason for the business
failing[citation needed].

At the employee level, Petrakis and Kostis (2012) explore the role of interpersonal
trust and knowledge in the number of small and medium enterprises. They conclude
that knowledge positively affects the number of SMEs, which in turn, positively
affects interpersonal trust. Note that the empirical results indicate that
interpersonal trust does not affect the number of SMEs. Therefore, although
knowledge development can reinforce SMEs, trust becomes widespread in a society
when the number of SMEs is greater.[4]