SME managers and Internet financial communication
This research focuses on studying the relations between internet financial communication of an SME and the arguments, favorable or not, to the financial disclosure, put forward by the manager. To reach this goal, ten managers of SMEs led interviews quoted on the Free Market of Brussels. This stock market is part of Euronext New York Stock Exchange. It is an unregulated market where the rules of admission to quotation and the obligations were eased to allow SMEs to raise capital. The web sites of ten companies of our corpus were also analyzed. Analyzing web sites highlights the SME managers’ voluntary effort of financial communication.Interviews with these managers show that several elements are put in the balance when deciding to communicate or not. The element which stands out in favor of internet financial communication is the respect for the investors. Indeed, we can clearly establish a link between the managers who make it a point of honor to respect their investors and the fact that their web sites contain more financial information than the sites of the other managers. However, it emerges that the fear of competitors is an element that slows down the internet financial communication. Indeed, the web sites of the managers talking about the fear of the competitors clearly contain less financial information than the other sites.A link is thus established between the reasons put forward by the managers and the internet financial communication of their SMEs.