The Impact of Strategic Planning Activities on Transylvanian SMEs - An Empirical Research

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of the strategic planning-performance relationship in the case of a sample of 200 SMEs from Transylvania, Romania. The aggregate indicator for strategic planning comprises seven indicators that represent each a component of the strategic planning process: mission, objectives, internal and external analysis, strategic alternative selection, implementation, control and evaluation. For overall performance aggregate indicator we considered the objectives achievement level, the perceived performance in 2008 compared to 2007, number of employees’ dynamics and turnover dynamics. For a in depth analysis of the influences of strategic planning activities on performance we tested forty hypotheses using Pearson Chi Square test. The results didn’t support a positive relationship between the overall strategic planning indicator and the overall performance indicator but several hypothesis regarding partial influences of the components of the two aggregate indicators were confirmed.