Abstract:

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. It becomes all the more important 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 in terms of marketing, product reputation, growth in sales, profitability, market share and customer satisfaction. The practice of strategic management can largely determine firm 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, where fifty two small business firms were studied 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 and but few are proactive in their approach to strategic management. Further performance was 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.