Obstacles of growth in SME´s -What do the obstacles consist of and how do the companies overcome them?

Abstract

Background and problem: Growth has recently been a subject of extensive discussions. The field of research in entrepreneurship and growth has had a rapid development during the last two decades, though fragmented and unconnected. In most small businesses the normal case is lack of willingness to grow. Therefore the question arise, what obstacles have the selected growth company’s experienced during the growth period, and how have the difficulties been solved? Purpose: The purpose with this paper is to make a descriptive study and thereby present the difficulties and obstacles a SME can meet during the years of growth. Furthermore an account is given for how the company has solved the experienced difficulties. Delimitations: The study is delimited to small and medium sized enterprises (SME´s) selected from the growth list Gaseller in “Dagens Industri” 2003. The questions are limited to four areas; organization, management accounting, financing and other difficulties mentioned by the respondents. Due to the small amount of participating respondents, the result will merely be an indication and can not provide general conclusions. Method: The primary data was collected by qualitative interviews with four respondents, managing directors for each company respectively. This data is summarized in the empirical part with a presentation of each company. The secondary data the authors have used was collected from the Internet and from a database called Gunda at Göteborg University as well as relevant literature to the subject area. Results and conclusions: The conclusion and the answer of the main question is that the major difficulties can be derived to the area organization. The most important issue is to unite the employees in the task of achieving the jointly formulated goals by creating motivation, delegation, involvement and also participation in decision-making. Finally growth companies are active in a constantly changing environment that demands a great amount of flexibility and incessant adjustments. Future areas of research: A study of former growth companies, which in spite of initial growth have gone bankrupt. Furthermore an interesting subject would be a deeper study of the unwillingness of growth and external financing i.e. pecking- order theory versus control and independence. Finally, a study focused only on the main problem area, the organization.