DECLINE IN SMALL BUSINESSES: APPROACHES AND SIGNIFICANT WORK

ABSTRACT

Small businesses for their socio-economic relevance have aroused growing interest from academia. High mortality rates associated with small businesses have been the subject of research delving causes and triggering factors of organizational decline, a phenomenon that precedes the death of the company. In this article it was performed a bibliometric study in nine top ranked journals in research over small businesses to get a general and structural view of the accumulated knowledge. It was obtained a sample of 449 articles related to the decline published between 1989 and 2014. The method allows the analysis of the most prolific authors, citations and work with greater impact, co-citations to understand the intellectual structure of the field and researched topics to understand the focus of search. Multivariate data analysis techniques were employed as exploratory factor analysis and multidimensional scaling (MDS). It was identified four main themes interweaving internal and external factors as the causes of the decline: entrepreneurship; strategic management and performance; innovation and evolution; liabilities (threats) and the environment. This study indicates that the decline is triggered by the interaction of internal and external causes to companies, making a counterpoint to existing research addressing that does not establish a relationship between them. It contributes to the academia with the basis on which new research can be developed and to management practice since identifies the causes of the decline and enables decision making to neutralize them.

Keywords:
Small Business; Organizational Decline; Strategy; Liability of Newness; Bibliometric