Success SMB:Leadership And Multidimensional Management. An exploratory Study.

Some small and medium-sized businesses achieve incredible success: their financial
indicators increase and their employment rate rises for several years without failing. How are
these businesses lead? How is their leadership perceived? On which values do they rely? How
can their strategy be described? What is their human resources policy? These are among the
many questions we will attempt to examine. Indeed, one can be intrigued by the success of
such businesses, as keeping afloat is not always easy. The very competitive environment in
which these enterprises evolve can cause them to lose everything they had gathered in just a
single day. In our challenging socio-economical context, where financial success remains
fragile and larger companies are forced to lay off parts of their workforce, small and mediumsized
businesses are a significant source of employment. They are more and more involved in
the economic revival.
It is therefore not surprising that many studies have examined the questions of business
growth, performances or efficiency (Lescure, 1991 ; St Pierre, Janssen, Julien, Therrien,
2005 ; Colot, 2008 ; Witmeur, 2008a). The success of a company rests on many factors.
Among these, leadership seems fundamental but is actually far from alone; other elements
play their part, such as strategic orientation and partnerships. In order to understand these
exceptional cases, we must consider a whole series of factors.
Nowadays, when mention is made of a situation of growth, one can be tempted to visualize a
fierce race driven only by financial results. As we will observe, this theory needs to be
reviewed. Among the companies that have been interviewed, the ones which have the most
significant growth are those that grant much importance to the human and relational factors.
They organize the various facets of business management according to their specific situation.
Situations are complex and, to a certain extent, different from one another. Our purpose was
precisely to understand this complexity.