The Strategy Of Small Firms

The majority of businesses throughout the world are small firms and they play a crucial role in the economic growth of the world's economies. The authors offer a conceptual framework supported by their own original case study data to explain how and why a small firm should approach strategic planning.

Companies operating in countries with volatile economies face an environment subject to turbulence. It is important to understand how these companies can overcome adversity, establish competitive advantage, and achieve superior performance. The selection of competitive drivers can help to improve the ability to capture, process, and manage information that can generate knowledge and innovation in products and processes, as well as increase strategic capacity and organizational performance. Strategy and Superior Performance of Micro and Small Businesses in Volatile Economies focuses on the ways that organizations capture information and disseminate it in their work teams, transforming this knowledge into innovative products and services that establish competitive advantage. It will improve the understanding of the role of strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the effort to reduce poverty levels in societies with volatile economies and which are subject to serious social disparities. Highlighting topics such as economic development, market performance, and network economy, this publication is designed for managers, entrepreneurs, business professionals, academicians, researchers, and students.

Running a small business provides opportunity for greater success, increased growth, and potentially the chance to move to the global business arena, yet also much more risk. Small businesses not only have less employment, but also less annual revenue than a regular-sized business. With the growth of large corporations and chain businesses, it has become harder to maintain the survival of a small business. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought more pressure onto the already unsteady survival of small businesses, due to forced closures, decreased agility, fewer technological innovations, and smaller customer bases. The Research Anthology on Small Business Strategies for Success and Survival offers current strategies for small businesses that can be utilized in order to maintain equal footing during challenging times. With the proper strategies available to small business owners, small businesses could not only survive, but also excel despite the environment that surrounds them. Covering topics including decision management, new supportive technologies, sustainable development, and micro-financing, this text is ideal for small business owners, entrepreneurs, startup companies, family-owned and operated businesses, restaurateurs, local retailers, managers, executives, academicians, researchers, and students.

As the global economy continues to develop and new entrepreneurs take advantage of emerging markets, the small business sector plays a greater role of economic development in the international arena. The Handbook of Research on Strategic Management in Small and Medium Enterprises contributes new research to the current array of literature on small business management under diverse geographic, economic, and socio-cultural conditions. By exploring existing theories in tandem with fresh viewpoints, this book will serve as a valuable reference to students, lecturers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and policy makers investigating the use of strategic management in various scenarios and situations.

First textbook to relate closely to the NVQ4 and IM Certificate course First textbook to relate closely to the NVQ4 and IM Certificate course

This textbook familiarises students with the theory and practice of small business management and challenges assumptions that may be held about the way small business management can or should adopt the management practices of larger firms. For students interested in establishing and managing their own small firm, this book helps them to focus their thinking on the realities of life as a small business owner-manager – both its challenges and its rewards. For postgraduate students that are keen to ‘make a difference’, this text enables them to understand how they might consult to small firms and assist owner-managers to establish and grow their ventures. In addition to students, this book is also useful to small business owner-managers as a general guide on how they might better manage their operations. Managers in large corporations and financial institutions who deal with small businesses as clients or suppliers, and professionals such as accountants, lawyers and consultants who provide advice and other services to small businesses will also find the book of interest.

This paper investigates the economic rationale for intervention in support of small and medium scale enterprises, on both theoretical and empirical grounds. It argues that the justification for SME interventions lies in market and institutional failures that bias the size distribution of firms, rather than on any inherent economic benefits provided by small firms. The role of the state is mainly to provide an enabling business environment that opens access to markets and reduces policy-induced biases against small firms. Governments can accelerate the development of markets for financial and non-financial services suited to SMEs by promoting innovation in products and delivery mechanisms, and by building institutional capacity. Improving the development impact of SME strategies will require much more attention to the monitoring and evaluation of intervention outcomes.

A new analytical approach to small firms' cases, which * Uses rich primary source data on modern small businesses * Combines business strategy and industrial organization * Presents detailed Profiles on diverse small businesses * Shows how successful small businesses achieve competitive advantage * Considers both extended rivalry and financial structure * Shows how to `ground' small business theory in reality Profiles in Small Businesses has a companion volume Small Business Enterprise by Gavin Reid (also published by Routledge, Hb: 0-415-05681-0: £45.00) which contains a full analysis (ranging from econometrics to the ethics of competition) of the larger sample of small businesses from which the Profiles are drawn.