Much has been said on the peculiarities of strategic management in micro and small companies, however, little has been done regarding empirical, quantitative work, when compared with the amount of research that addresses large companies. The present work explores the process of strategy formation in these companies and describes their main aspects. A verification is carried out to ascertain if there are characteristics of this process that can be associated to performance levels. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to better understand the existing relationships between variables of the same process of strategy formation considered in the study and the performance; the discriminating analysis was used to determine the indicators that distinguish the groups of companies with performance above and below the average. The results pointed a trend to the utilization of deliberate and formal processes of strategy formation. On the other hand, we also recognize a tendency of innovation and change. The performance above average of the micro and small companies, what it seems, is resulted of a balanced prescription of these two ingredients.
Strategy formation; performance; micro and small companies; process; innovation