OUTSIDE BASED STRATEGIC PLANNING AND SMALL FIRMS' PERFORMANCE

There is a general agreement in the strategic planning literature that some small firms, due to their lack of adequate in‐house resources, often rely on outside‐based assistance as surrogate for strategic planning practices. This study reports the findings of an empirical investigation of the effectiveness of outside‐based strategic planning on a group of small firms’ performance. The results indicate that firms which utilized outside experts did not outperform firms which did not use outsiders. Implications for managers of small firms are then discussed.