Abstract :
[en] After an in-depth review of the scientific literature dedicated to (small) business failure causes (Crutzen et Van Caillie, 2008), it comes out that mismanagement is, by far, the failure cause which is the most commonly evoked by previous researchers (Argenti, 1976; Wichman, 1983; Newton, 1985; O'Neill and Duker, 1986; Thornhill and Amit, 2003). Nevertheless, the concept of « mismanagement » is relatively vague and large (Bruno et al., 1987; Sheldon, 1994). It is thus now necessary to clarify it if one wants to better understand the causes of small business failure and, in fine, to better prevent this phenomenon (Argenti, 1976). In particular, it is essential to distinguish between the main categories of managerial problems small businesses can be faced to in order to be able to better anticipate their failure (thanks to adequate trainings, for example) and in order to propose adequate remedies to specific managerial problems small distressed firms are confronted to.
In this context, the current article identifies, on the basis of two complementary statistical analyses, three specific patterns for badly-managed firms, amongst a sample of 91 small distressed firms.
