Small firm success and the art of orienteering: the value of plans, planning, and strategic awareness in the competitive small firm

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate within the academic literature about the value of the business plan in the development of the small firm. On closer inspection of the research, there appear to be clear benefits in the use of business planning as a process within the smaller business. This is in contrast to the production of a business plan as an output focused predominantly on convincing and acquiring resources from other organisations and individuals.\ud \ud As a process, business planning can be both formal and informal. It is also focused on understanding and responding to the context within which the business operates. Strategic awareness capability, as both bundle of activities and a core competence, helps to make sense of this context, and serves as a means of managing interactions between the firm and its environment. It also allows for a more sensitive reading of the limitations and strengths of the planning process in markets that are, for the small business, generally unpredictable and complex.\ud \ud When combined, strategic awareness capability and planning effectiveness can be used to develop a typology of business types that provides insight into the process by which business development can be supported. In addition, strategic awareness capability can be considered a core competence of the small business and conceptualised in terms of different levels of experience, and expertise. As a result, small firms with varying levels of experience face different challenges and needs when using and developing strategic awareness and capability

Do We Need to Use an Accountant? The Sales Growth and Survival Benefits to Family SMEs

“…We measure the existence and extent of SP processes using a multiple variable scale. The Considering Response 1, the production of a formal statement of business objectives-such as plans and mission statements-is normally regarded as an essential feature of strategic planning (Campbell & Yeung, 1991;Hannon & Atherton, 1998). Such a statement could then be used to construct detailed objectives that shape and guide the operations of the firm; however, crucial to the strategic planning process are other planning practices that imply that a written strategic plan alone is a necessary but insufficient condition of strategic planning (Beaver & Ross, 2000;Hannon & Atherton, 1998).…”

CHOOSE: Towards a metamodel for enterprise architecture in small and medium-sized enterprises

“…Lybaert (1998) discovered that SME owners or managers with a greater strategic awareness use more information and that SMEs that use more information are generally more successful. Hannon and Atherton (1998) further revealed that for SMEs success is correlated with higher levels of strategic awareness and better planning of owners-managers. In addition, there is evidence to believe that companies that make strategic rather than just financial business plans perform significantly better financially than those that do not (O'Regan and Ghobadian 2004;Smith 1998).…”

Strategic Planning and Reality of External Environment of Organizations in Contemporary Business Environments

“…It is critical to both business management and planning process to understand the environment in which small business operates (Hannon & Atherton, 1997). By the external environment focus business firms can adapt market change and these enterprises have been recognized as prospector adaptive businesses (Wright, Kroll, Pray, & Lado, 1995).…”

“…The visionary under-achiever has difficulty in translating the opportunities generated by high strategic awareness capacity into business development activity and because of poor planning effectiveness (Hannon & Atherton, 1997). Strategic planning includes developing vision and mission statements, performing internal (looking at the strengths and weaknesses) and external (looking at the opportunities and threats) audit establishing long term objectives and then generate and select better strategies (David, 2013).…”