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This review aims to understand the interconnected barriers that hinder strategy implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Barriers to strategy implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises: a systematic review

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This review aims to understand the interconnected barriers that hinder strategy implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Systematic review following PRISMA 2020 guidelines.
Search of Scopus, Web of Science, and Business Source Complete identified 32 empirical studies from 2000 to 2025.
Inductive thematic synthesis uncovering four dimensions of barriers and twelve interrelated themes.
Identified four dimensions of barriers: managerial constraints, organizational barriers, resource limitations, and external challenges.
Proposed three interpretive vicious cycles to illustrate how these barriers interact: Resource–Cognition Trap, Informality–Volatility Loop, Centralization–Bottleneck Effect.
Contributed a coherent framework for understanding strategy implementation barriers in SMEs.

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Systematic review identifies interacting barriers to strategy implementation in SMEs, suggesting complex dynamics involved.

Khadang et al. (2026) studied this question.

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