‘Relationships Mean Everything’; A Typology of Small-Business Relationship Strategies in a Reflexive Context*

The overall approach of this research is guided by a principle that the trajectory of a small business is caused by the interrelationship between the business and its external environment. This interaction is manifest in the firm’s actual everyday business relationships. Our proposition is that understanding what these relationships mean to the firm (and specifically the owner-manager as the decision taker) explains subsequent behaviour. In other words, an owner-manager’s reflexivity in a relational context is a causal mechanism of the subsequent actions of the firm. The centrality of the business owner to the outcomes of a particular small business has been extensively delineated (Carland, Hoy et al., 1984, p. 356; Hornaday, 1990), both empirically and normatively. Explanations of differences in the outcome of any particular small business include differences in owner-manager motivation (e.g. McClelland, 1987), personality (e.g. Chell, Haworth et al., 1991), capability (e.g. Penrose, 1959) and intentionality (e.g. Bird, 1988). Some analyses have produced typologies indicating differentiating general patterns of owner manager characteristics, backgrounds and dispositions (e.g. Dunkelberg and Cooper, 1982; Miner 1997; Scase and Goffee, 1987; Smith 1967). The instrumental purpose of such work is anticipating and British Journal of Management, Vol. 13, 317–336 (2002)