Impact of Strategic Planning on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises’ (SMEs)Performance: The Role of Employee Participation, Implementation Incentives and Evaluation and Control

The importance of strategic planning to small-and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) iswidely acknowledged by many practitioners and academiciansin SouthAfrica and the world over, yet there seems to be a paucity of research in thisfield. To address this dearth of published studies, the current study attempts to examine the influence of strategic planning aspects, namely employee participation, implementation incentives, and evaluation and control on business performance. The conceptualised modeland three hypotheses areempirically validated using a sample of 200 SMEs in Gauteng, South Africa. The findings indicate that strategic planning, in the form of employee participation, implementation incentives, and its evaluation and control, influences business performance in a significant way. In addition, managerial implications of the research findings and avenues for future research are provided.