Sailing through the Storms towards Treasure Island: the Relationships between Strategies, Obstacles and Firm Performance

Companies devise strategies to successfully navigate an uncertain business environment. They need to tackle regulatory or market obstacles in order to succeed. This study focuses on the complex relationship between strategies, obstacles and firm performance. It uses regression techniques on a cross-national sample of 37,150 European companies in 14 Member States to study the correlation between: i) firms’ perceptions about the importance of strategies and obstacles, and ii) firms’ innovation and economic performance. The findings indicate that firms pursuing cost reduction strategies and perceiving the lack of demand and adequate finance as obstacles experience poor performances. By contrast, those pursuing adaptability strategies and perceiving the lack of qualified personnel as an obstacle grow faster, and those with explicit product innovation strategies innovate more. High-growth enterprises appear less sensitive about financial constraints, more interested in the availability of skilled labour and benefiting more from cooperation than the others.