Studying strategic behaviour of small industrial enterprises in the context of the organizational and industry life cycle concepts

Unlike large corporations whose business patterns have been extensively studied and categorized, there is a lack of research on small business strategies, leaving them largely unexplored. The article explores the strategic behaviour of small industrial enterprises in Russia within the organizational and industry life cycle concept. The research methodology is based on strategic management theory and the concept of the life cycle. The research methods include panel data analysis, the Beta coef f icient calculation, and the matrix method. The information base is the reporting data of 134 small enterprises from industries at different stages of the life cycle: metal casting (growth) and newspaper printing (maturity). Statistics for analysis were obtained from the SPARK Interfax database for the period of 1999–2021. We identified three types of strategic behaviour (‘aggressive’, ‘de fender’, and ‘counterstrategy’) and assessed their prevalence among small enterprises in the two industries under consideration. The results showed that mature small enterprises with an ‘aggressive’ intuitively strategic behaviour are the predominant type of business in a mature industry, while for small enterprises in a growing industry ‘defender’ and ‘counterstrategy’ are the prevalent strategies at all the life cycle stages. This paradox additionally proves the validity of our idea of the intuitively strategic behaviour of small businesses. Our findings contribute to the development of the SME life cycle theory and strategic management, can be used to adjust industry policy and government support measures, and can also be of interest to managers of small enterprises.