Is Strategic Management Practice Important For Small Business Enterprises? Evidence from Saudi Arabia

Given the challenges in the global world, being creative and innovative in approach and concurrently adopting best strategic management practices is crucial for success. Attaining and sustaining competitive advantage is central to strategic management and it becomes imperative to sustain the competitive advantage for small enterprises (because of their short life cycle) operating in developing countries. The paper aims to review the approach and practices towards strategic management of few selected small business enterprises located in the capital city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The assessment is based on aspects such as the extent of strategy analysis applied, the strategic tools and techniques utilized, the approach towards strategic control, corporate social responsibility, perceived competitive advantage, the role of strategic leadership and performance. In particular, the research analyse the influence of these practices on firm's performance. The study emphasizes the important significance of strategic management for small business enterprises. This exploratory research used survey-based approach through random sampling technique using questionnaire and interviews. In addition to literature analysis, data were analysed with SPSS 22 software applying descriptive statistics to analyse the sampled opinion of respondents. The results established that many small enterprises are rapidly growing and developing but only few are proactive in their approach to strategic management. Further performance was found to be positively related to the strategic management practices, strategic tools and competitive advantage. Therefore adopting various strategic management practices certainly provides a competitive advantage to small businesses. However, the findings also indicate that 37 percent of small business enterprises in the study are yet to formalize the strategic process. Implications: The study provides a greater comprehension of the strategic management practices in small enterprises of Saudi and offers the ground picture of the utilization of the concept and its impact.. Contribution- As the number of researches in strategic management for small businesses and in Saudi Arabia is limited; this study will be valuable and unique as its findings contribute to the better understanding and application of strategic management in small business enterprises.