Abstract:
SME sector in Sri Lanka plays a vital role in the economy.
However, it confronts with so many barriers and ultimately it
leads to failure of majority of new ventures. Previous studies
have shown that strategic management concepts and tools are
adopted by the well-established organizations and less attention
has been paid by the SME sector. When it is discussed about
the growth and survival of the SME sector, it is important to
practice and adopt these concepts. With that view this study
attempts to examine the impact of Strategic Orientation (SO)
on venture performance. On the other hand small businesses
also should be competitive enough to face the competition
in order to survive in the market. Accordingly this study aims
to examine the impact of competitive strategies on venture
performance. Strategic management literature points out that
the culture is an important factor in implementing strategies and
to be strategically oriented. Accordingly organizational culture
has been identified as a moderating variable. In order to achieve
these objectives, a conceptual frame work has been proposed
by this study through a rigorous literature review.considering the persistence of such decisions over time,
particularly in the extractive industries. Drawing on imprinting
theory, this paper provides a theoretical link between the initial
natural resource characteristics surrounding a firm’s birth and
its choice of vertical integration. The main argument is that
initial natural resource conditions have an imprinting effect on
the vertical integration decisions made by firms in the extractive
industries. An imprinting process through which imprinting
happens is explained. This mechanism acts as the carrier of
initial influences as how firms lock-in a decision for their supply
chain management. We discuss the above mechanism and
several propositions concerning the kind of influence different
initial natural resource characteristics have on firm decisions. Our
main contribution is presenting a natural imprinting view that can
explain the enduring effect of natural environment characteristics
on firms’ ownership structures in the extractive industries.