Why So Little Is Known about The Growth of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises – Subjectivity in Research (Dlaczego tak malo wiemy o wzroscie malych i srednich przedsiebiorstw – subiektywizm w badaniach)

The development of the company as a subject of study is explained in many works (see Birch, Storey, Davidsson, Demar, Wiklund, Coad, Matejun, Gutkova, Wasilczuk etc.), but still there are no answers to the question why small businesses grow and what factors influence this. The lack of knowledge on the subject is not due to the lack of willingness to conduct research, but rather is a result of an excess of the problems associated with such studies. Persons engaged in research on entrepreneurship, as well as one of its manifestations which is growth of the company, do not necessarily realize how much subjective decisions throughout the research process influence the results. The author has been studying the subject of growth / development of SMEs for many years; therefore, this paper is based on her own experience and describes these subjective choices, while demonstrating that they are one of the reasons for the lack of answers to many questions related to the growth of the company, but also to questions concerning entrepreneurship.