Small business strategy: German and Anglo-American evidence

Abstract

This article examines how and to which extent small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) apply strategic planning within their business activities. Specifically, the authors address the question of why SMEs seem to plan less than big companies, whether strategic planning and corporate success correlate with each other and whether strategic planning is a function of increasing company size. Along these lines, they conducted an analysis of the relevant literature based on a systematic review of articles on planning and strategy in SMEs over the last twenty years. These have been taken from the leading Entrepreneurship and Strategy journals as well as from other sources in the German as well as the English language science. SMEs seem to plan strategically in a less structured and more informal manner than bigger companies, while they might engage relatively more in (informal) visionary strategic management. The paper structures current research on strategic planning in SMEs and derives an agenda for future research, thereby extending our knowledge on strategic planning in SMEs. The authors close this paper with their own conceptualization of “strategic planning in SMEs”.