Comparative Analysis of the of Management Practices and Behaviour of Small and Medium Information Technology Enterprises.docVIP

iBusiness, 2012, 4, 300-308 /10.4236/ib.2012.44038 Published Online December 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ib) Comparative Analysis of the Management Practices and Behaviour of Small and Medium Information Technology Enterprises Taciana de Barros Jer?nimo, Denise Dumke de Medeiros Department of Production Engineering, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil. Email: taciana.barros@ Received August 28 , 2012; revised September 28 , 2012; accepted October 22 , 2012 th th nd ABSTRACT This paper examines the role and influence of management practices and behaviour in successful small and medium sized information technology enterprises (SMET), based on the comprehensive concept of Mintzberg 5Ps of strategy (1992) [1]. The study employed a survey of 13 SMET with were examined on how closely they used best strategic practices in their management and how it is related to SMET performance. The discussion and conclusions highlight different ways of strategic thinking, the importance of the mutual trust and commitment between managers and em- ployees. Specifically, we determine three elements whose greater exploration can lead to a deeper understanding of how the strategic planning is influenced by the manager’s view, in order to encourage their competitiveness through market environmental uncertainties. Keywords: Small and Medium Business; Strategic Thinking; Information Technology 1. Introduction gic planning process, fear to deal with market risks and uncertainties. Small and medium businesses have become important in economic and social development [2], their main charac- teristics are: size, structure, culture and resource con- straints, entrepreneur types of behaviour or attitudes to- wards risk; tend to opt for informal practices, have an ad hoc entrepreneur