Marion Polge, Université de Montpellier

Isabelle Calmé, Université de Tours

Colette Fourcade, Université de Montpellier

For a long time considered as the "small scale" of SMEs, Very Small Enterprises (SMEs) remain marginalized as an autonomous object of study in management research. Yet the foundational work of P.-A. Julien and M. Marchesnay laid essential foundations: the first by highlighting the constitutive heterogeneity of the SME population, the second by identifying the characteristics specific to the management system of the "hypofirm." This special issue follows in their footsteps, reinterrogating their contributions to SME research without, however, leading to an in-depth exploration of their most reduced segment, particularly SMEs. Beyond the size effect, can SMEs be distinguished from SMEs by their nature?

If we move away from the purely dimensional question, SMEs appear as singular organizational forms, capable of functioning in environments marked by uncertainty. Their light structuring, the high intensity of interactions they mobilize daily, and their proximity to their local ecosystem give them rapid and often innovative adjustment modes. They do not merely reproduce the SME model in miniature: they develop specific ways of coping with constraints, managing resources and envisioning the future, giving rise to original entrepreneurial dynamics, sometimes more sober, more resilient or more iterative than those observed in more established organizations.

Their theoretical discretion contrasts with their statistical and social reality: enterprises with fewer than 10 employees represent more than 90% of enterprises in most European economies. They play an essential role in local ecosystems and embody entrepreneurial projects in their own right: their leaders do not aspire to become SME leaders, they choose the SME through strategic will. This specificity invites us to reconsider the SME as an object of study in itself, endowed with organizational logics and a capacity for continuous evolution that merit closer analysis.

Since 2020, several systemic mutations – health crises, ecological disruptions, resource depletion, inflation, rising inequalities, massive digitization – have fundamentally questioned the foundations of the dominant socio-economic model that tends towards productivity and competitiveness. In this context of chronic instability, SMEs appear as a central heuristic object for thinking differently about the enterprise from an economic, social and even societal point of view. Far from being simple "small enterprises," they constitute a place of experimentation for new models, to be differentiated from models focused on growth or rationalization of processes. Halfway between the micro-entrepreneur and SMEs, does it not prefigure an (or) SME-ist model(s) in its own right?

New forms of projects are developing, oriented towards chosen subsistence, societal contribution, or the search for ethical coherence. These forms are driven by post-materialist aspirations: creating an activity to live differently, to anchor oneself in a territory, to make society differently.

From a socio-economic point of view, the relationship to performance is being reconfigured. For many SMEs, it is no longer a matter of growing at all costs, but of aiming for balance, sustainability, or local impact. Performance becomes multiform: relational, ecological, existential. This choice reflects not opposition to a model, but rather an aspiration to flourish in a proxemic activity, in the space that surrounds the individual, "within reach" (here, of the manager).

The scarcity of resources, no longer perceived as a constraint, becomes a source of innovative strategic behaviors. SMEs engage in processes of resourcefulness, combining frugality, bricolage, mutualization, and reasoned resource management. In a world facing the depletion of natural resources, their ability to make do with little, to invent bold solutions, becomes a strategic competence, even a source of inspiration for other economic models.

The social aspect guides the action of SMEs: the link to material constraint is not limited to economics. From a perspective involving cooperative logics and social and solidarity economy, some SMEs reconfigure their action through a renewed relationship with the living. They integrate natural ecosystems into their governance, relying on participatory and territorialized organizational modes, characteristics of cooperative dynamics. This repositioning leads to practices sometimes informal, but profoundly innovative, that put tension on classical categories of performance and innovation, while reaffirming the role of the enterprise in the preservation and care of environments.

Societal developments, and more specifically the massive arrival of new technologies – digital platforms, automation, AI – profoundly transform the conditions of existence of SMEs, which occupy a particular position between individual entrepreneurship and structured SMEs, that is, organizations that are both very small, flexible, but subject to growing professional and economic demands. Some seize these technologies to create new forms of activity; others are fragile due to processes of uberization and algorithmic dependency; still others develop thanks to the emergence of new needs related to digitization. These transformations also raise social, ethical and political issues concerning the future of self-employment, digital sovereignty and control of tools.

From a micro-economic point of view, the profound renewal of leadership figures: post-salaried career changes, women entrepreneurs, neo-rural residents, young graduates seeking meaning, engaged entrepreneurs. This diversity produces new forms of relationship to work, to growth, and to risk, which merit specific attention. They do not hesitate to question the performance criteria that sit at the center of managerial concerns.

From a meso-economic point of view, the SME is not merely inserted into a local environment: it participates fully in the configuration and evolution of the territorial entrepreneurial system. If some work on entrepreneurial ecosystems has proposed relatively disembodied models, sometimes disconnected from concrete socio-territorial anchors, recent research instead invites us to reaffirm the territorial depth of these dynamics. In the lineage of local productive systems and industrial districts developed by the Italian school, the territory must be understood not as a simple physical support, but as a socio-economic space endowed with identities, resources and specific practices that shape entrepreneurial trajectories. This perspective aligns with the conclusions of the Terram Institute report (2024), according to which SMEs structure the vitality and cohesion of territories. Yet this finding reveals a paradox: dependent on social resources and local networks, they simultaneously contribute to transforming them. Therefore, how can we understand their impact when they are both shaped by the territory and actors in its recomposition?

In total, SMEs can no longer be thought of as reduced versions of SMEs, but as original and pertinent forms of organizations, adapted to an era marked by complexity, uncertainty and planetary limits. They constitute laboratories of resilience, sobriety and entrepreneurial reinvention, often ignored by classical analytical frameworks. They express the essence of robustness, characterized by a high density of interactions. This dynamic creates fertile ground for the development of a continuous evolution capability.

Potential topics

• Atypical strategic trajectories and diversification of SME leader profiles: profiles, motivations, relationship to work and risk, career bifurcations
• Redefining performance in SMEs: alternative indicators, rejection of growth, work-life balance, territorial anchoring, relationship to living systems
• SMEs, ecology and resource scarcity: frugal business models, circular economy, chosen degrowth, regenerative enterprise, ecological impact
• SMEs and technologies: appropriation, marginalization or resistance to digitization, artificial intelligence, uberization or platform economy
• Alternative forms of organization and innovation: bricolage, mutualization, cooperation, hybridization of statuses, informal or hybrid practices
• Role of SMEs in social and territorial transitions: local resilience, inclusion dynamics, responses to systemic crises, economic justice
• Research methodologies and epistemologies adapted to SMEs: partnership research, critical approaches, life narratives, entrepreneurial ethnography

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Launch webinar for call for contributions
• October 30, 2026: Submission of complete articles, meeting the journal's standards, on the RIPME digital platform
• November 13, 2026: Decision of rejection or sending for evaluation
• January 15, 2027: First evaluation decision transmitted to authors
• March 26, 2027: Return of 2nd version and sending for evaluation if necessary
• June 1, 2027: Decision transmitted to authors
• September 20, 2027: Return of 3rd version and final evaluation by editorial committee
• November 20, 2027: Receipt of final versions