Capital social et vision stratégique du dirigeant : comment parvenir à l’hypercroissance dans un contexte défavorable ?

In the last few years, research on high-growth SMEs has increased and it is now fascinating more and more researchers. Accordingly, many recent studies have shed light on the characteristics and profiles of the directors of SMEs and have demonstrated the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on the ability to identify growth opportunities and on the hypergrowth of these firms. However, to our knowledge, few studies on high-growth SMEs have made the link between the director?s social capital and their strategic vision in hypergrowth SMEs. For this framework, we have adopted a qualitative comparative study based on eight case studies of Tunisian SMEs in high-growth IT companies, called ?gazelles,? to provide new insights into the role of the director?s social capital and vision and its impact on the growth of the firm. The results of our study show a paradoxical situation characterized by an unfavorable local context and an over-optimism of the directors of selected Tunisian SMEs. Despite an uncertain economic environment and a social and political crisis, the empirical study conducted paves the way for a deeper understanding of how the directors of Tunisian SMEs managed to seize or even create new entrepreneurial opportunities on the local and/or international market. Their ability to find and exploit new market opportunities and their agility to avoid investment barriers testify to the crucial role played by their social capital on strategic proactivity and the continued hypergrowth of their firms. Our contributions open up research avenues on the transfer of social capital between management teams and encourage future research to study the extent to which governance impacts the trajectory of hypergrowth SMEs. From an empirical point of view, it would be interesting to conduct an intersectoral comparative study that should consolidate our results or provide new insights into the phenomenon under study.