Growth Plans of Small Businesses in Turkey: Individual and Environmental Influences

Abstract

The intensity of small-business owners and the environmental difficulties they encountered were investigated as predictors of growth intentions in Turkey. Data were collected from 526 small businesses in 14 major cities using the Entrepreneurial Profile Questionnaire. Factor analysis showed environmental difficulties and growth intentions to be multifactor constructs, while intensity emerged as a single factor. A canonical correlation analysis found owner intensity to be significantly related to the three growth plan factors of technology improvement, resource aggregation, and market expansion. Among the difficulty factors, only lack of know-how and financing problems showed a significant relation to growth plans. Financing difficulties hindered technological improvement and resource aggregation, while know-how negatively affected market expansion. Other difficulty factors such as entry barriers, family-business role conflict, and ethnic prejudice were not among the predictors of growth plans. The article draws out the implications of these findings for government policy and for future research.