Planering i små familjeföretag : En studie kring hur planeringar förändras i små familjeföretag när de upplever tillväxt

Sammanfattning: Family firms the most common form of business in the world and the academic interest around them has grown significantly over the past decades. When a company is experiencing financial growth their information needs increases and they are encouraged to draw up plans to cover the information need. Previous studies on the subject have pointed out that the research on formal plans in family firms is incomplete in many areas. The research that has been done indicates that planning is not a priority in small family firms for various reasons and that the planning carried out is largely informal. Whether family firms implement more planning practices as they increase in size is haven’t been tested in qualitative research. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of how small family firms in Skaraborg change their use of formal plans when they are experiencing a period of financial growth and if the growth of the family firm is affected by it being planned or not. To answer this, we have selected 13 formal planning practices that we have studied the presence of in our case companies and if there was any change in the use of these practices over their most recent growth period. The study was conducted with a qualitative research method where data collection has been in the form of semi-structured interviews. This is to increase our ability to create a deeper understanding of our selected area of research. The results of the study have shown that small growing family firms perform few changes in their planning practices. We have not been able to demonstrate in the context of this study that financial growth increased the use of formal planning practices in family firms in Skaraborg. Our conclusion of this study is that if small growing family firms are going to change their use of formal planning and benefit from it, it is not enough to rely on external help for this. Instead these companies should focus their resources on educating current management staff in the use of formal planning practices and the difficulties that arises along financial growth to see the connection between the two. Just because financial growth increases the need for information that doesn’t mean that any planning to cover the information need will be implemented. A leader in the enterprise must discover the need and choose to use a planning practice to cover it.