Strategic and financial planning in growth and survival oriented small firms

Business planning plays a crucial role in small firm’s growth and survival. Small firms need a formal, sophisticated financial and strategic planning. Past studies that examined successful small firms have also pointed out, that well-developed, soundly implemented, and properly controlled planning processes contribute to a firm’s success and to sales growth in particular. This paper aims to contribute to the existing knowledge of small business management in the following ways: firstly, we show how owner-managers growth and survival orientation affects to the length of planning horizon, budgeting and management accounting practices. Secondly, we examine the relationships between the contexts of firm’s financial performance to these managerial practices.