SME policy implementation as a relational challenge

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between actors, who implement the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policy, and entrepreneurs, who are the targets of the policy, by focusing on the question who is serving whose interests. The paper presents a case study conducted in one of the sub-regions in Finland. The data include individual interviews with 10 policy implementers and 19 small business entrepreneurs and two group discussions. The data are approached from the perspectives of discourse analysis and positioning theory. The results are further interpreted in terms of agent–principal relations. The results indicate that one relational challenge faced in the implementation of the SME policy is the proxy agency, in which both policy implementers and entrepreneurs position themselves as the principal and the other party as their agent. The proxy agency can be viewed as an interactional pitfall caused by the incompatible discourses of entrepreneurs and policy actors and the actor positions constructed with these discourses. Besides addressing the relational problems enabled by certain individual discourses, the paper also demonstrates how there is also a need to address the potential conflict that stems from the collision between discourses.