Purpose: To show that the inability to adapt to a series of crises caused by business development is one of the principal causes of failure for all organisations and that one of the primary components in small business success must be the managerial competence of the principal actors, inevitably...

The majority of existing studies of small business failure tend to focus upon either the symptoms arising from problems within the firm or upon the reasons cited for failure. Comparatively little analysis of the root cause has been undertaken. Failure and success are usually defined in rational...