Improving Small Firm Performance Through Collaborative Change Management and Outside Learning: Trends in Singapore

This empirical-exploratory article sheds light on the change management approaches used by Chinese owner-managers of small firms in Singapore and their openness toward strategic learning. The paper examines widespread common-sense assumptions that ethnic Chinese adopt mostly directive-coercive (autocratic) change management approaches, which may stifle innovation. Great diversity exists amongst small firm owners in Asia with regard to their change leadership practices, and respective change implementation approaches are contingent on both demographic variables and situational forces like the urgency of change, the degree of resistance to change, and/or the dynamics of the environment in which the firms operate. Data from a SME survey in Singapore (n = 101) serves to substantiate several propositions about change management of Chinese owner-managers of SMEs in Singapore. Three hypotheses about the openness of SME owner-managers to outside sources of learning are presented to ascertain the prediction that such knowledge can give SMEs a performance headstart by helping them to work smarter.