Enhancing SME Performance Through Vision-based Leadership: An Empirical Study

Surprisingly little research has been conducted on what characterizes “effective” visions, and yet leaders, particularly in the entrepreneurship literature, are widely exhorted to employ visions. A research model was tested in retail SMEs to investigate relationships between seven literature-derived vision attributes (of brevity, clarity, future orientation, stability, challenge, abstractness, and desirability or ability to inspire) and content (of customer and staff satisfaction imageries), and performance, as measured by customer and staff satisfaction, in Sydney, Australia. In testing the model, literature-derived Store Manager, Staff and Organizational Factors were simultaneously taken into account, making the measurement model comprehensive. Findings endorse the importance of espousing a vision characterized by the seven attributes, while vision content was not found to be significant. The Store Manager and Staff Factors were also found to significantly impact retail SME performance. The Organizational Factor was not found to have any significant relationship with retail SME performance. 16 Annual Conference, 2003 Small Enterprise Association of Australia & New Zealand