Abstract:

Even though they individually employ a small number of employees, small and medium enterprises represent the most important category of enterprises in the European Union, being considered the economic engine of Europe. Leadership manifest itself differently in a SME compared to a large enterprise, mainly due a tighter relationship between the management and the workforce. Our work aims to develop a leadership model based on the performance of small and medium enterprises in Romania. The model, developed based on the results of our research, is linked with the level of performance and employee satisfaction registered in our 200 SMEs sample. Our findings consist in developing a profile of the leader of small and medium enterprises in Romania, corresponding to the previous researches in this field.