Abstract

Government support plays a vital role to push the firms to gain sustainable competitive performance and economic development of an economy. Nevertheless, from the last decades, lack of government subsidies and incentives, especially in emerging economies, cuts owners networking roots at international and national level. Therefore, the current study underlines how networking structure (density and centrality) effects on sustainable competitive performance (thereafter SCPs) in Pakistan’s SMEs. In addition, we conducted a mediating effect of government financial support on relation between networking structure and SCP. Hence, small enterprise is a major source of economic development, employment, and value creation. So, we developed hypothesis based on previous studies–related government financial support and network structure. The data was collected through structured questionnaires from top management of SMEs. The hypothesis was tested through Smart Partial Least Squares(PLS).The results indicated that density has a positive and significant effect on sustainable competitive performance, while centrality has an insignificant effect on SCP. Furthermore, government financial support strongly and significantly supports the relation between networking structure and SCP in Pakistan. This research has several recommendations for government to fully support small enterprises because owners have a networking system at national and international level but they have lack of environment.