Environmental Factors and Sustainability of Small and Medium Businesses in Lagos Metropolitan Area, Lagos State, Nigeria

Bansal and DesJardine(2014, p. 71) define business sustainability as '…the ability of firms to respond to their shortterm financial needs without compromising their (or others') ability to meet their future needs.Thus, time is central to the notion of sustainability'.In explaining the concept, the duo authors opine that most managers would like their firm's profits to be at least as good as the past, and that it continues to grow.In addition, just as most people want to live as well as their parents, so do they want their children to enjoy similar opportunities.In essence, Bansal and DesJardine(2014) are of the opinion that time is central to the concept of sustainability.Incentives abound in extant literature for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to optimise their sustainability for the businesses' long term existence; for instance, Moore and Manring (2009) contend that, among other incentives, SMEs may: become valuable investment targets for larger firms, be able to create a highly competitive network of sustainable SMEs in existing market spaces where larger firms may be unsuccessful, and become highly efficient suppliers within the global supply chains.Given these benefits among others, it is expected that businesses would attempt to focus on areas that are deemed core to their continued existence and performance.Adopting the definition of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN, 2015), SMEs in this paper are defined based on the number of people they employ.A small business is one that employs between 10 and 49 people, while that which employs between 50 and 199 is regarded as medium sized.SMEDAN is the agency of the Nigerian government with the key mandate of developing the SME sector in Nigeria.A number of factors have been identified in extant literature as crucial to the sustenance of firms, irrespective of whether the SMEs are in developed,emerging or developing nations.For example, in Yu and Bell's (2007) study of Chinese manufacturing and non-manufacturing SMEs, the authors report that factors such as corporate image, governmental legislation, owner/managers' awareness, perception, education, financial issues, external support, communication and cooperation serve either as motivators or hindrances for the businesses' sustainability practices.Yu and Bell (2007) suggest that while the businesses' corporate image and governmental legislation motivate the businesses to pursue sustainability agenda, other factors like lack of owner/managers' awareness, perception and education, coupled with deficient financial resources, and ill-suited external support hinder the businesses.Furthermore, the authors conclude that improved owner/manager education, communication and cooperation are ways to better Chinese SMEs' sustainability.In the research on construction SMEs in South East Queensland, Australia by Thorpe, Ryan and Charles (2008), they observe that globalisation, change in demography, environmental sustainability, climate change, technologies, ICT, governance and regulation impact the organisations they studied.Again, as reflected in the study by Yu and Bell (2007) discussed in the last paragraph, the research by the trio of Thorpe, Ryan and Charles (2008) have some common factors such as governance, regulation and legislation.In a similar study of UK SMEs in selected Local Government areas of England, UK, Walker and Preuss (2008) report that the dictate and pressure from customers to manufacturers on the need