Entrepreneurship, resistance to change and growth in small firms

The focus of this paper is on existing small firms, with fewer than 50 employees, and their attitudes to change, using data from regular quarterly small firm surveys conducted by the Small Business Research Trust, especially from the 1,212 respondents to the fourth quarter of 1999 (15:4, motivation, objectives and targets) and the 812 respondents to the first quarter 2000 survey (16:1, changes). The overlap between the respondents to these successive surveys allows their responses to be cross‐tabulated. It was expected that there would be strong positive links between growth‐orientation, the setting of financial objectives (as opposed to lifestyle goals), propensity to introduce changes and actual growth, and that age and size of firm effects will also be present and likely, as intervening variables, to influence these relationships. The findings confirm these expectations (and the mirror image of resistance to change linked to non‐entrepreneurial performance).

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