Business Planning Involvement in New Ventures.

Background - Planning occupies an important position in business literature. It is a well-investigated area with a long and extensive research tradition. However, the findings of the research are not consistent. In the planning literature there is a strong debate among researchers which results in two opposing points of view. On the one hand, proponents of planning in business, also known as the planning school, claim that planning plays an important role and has a positive impact on companies. On the other hand, opponents challenge these claims and suggest that a company should instead focus on flexibility, learning and resource utilization. These claims may be of particular interest in new ventures. The environment in which new ventures usually operate may be turbulent with a high degree of uncertainty and a lack of resources. This setting may create problems for the application of planning procedures and can contradict suggestions in existing literature. In addition, the entrepreneur plays a crucial role in every new venture. He or she is the one who founds the new venture and is the main decision-maker. Planning activities compete for resources and time, which are scarce commodities in new ventures and can cause entrepreneurs to allocate less time to the business itself. Purpose - The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the changes in business planning in new ventures. In addition, we endeavored to explain the reasons why these changes occur and what sparks them. Our aim was to gain in-depth understanding of the business planning change phenomenon in new small-sized firms and add additional knowledge to the existing planning literature. Method & Theory - Semi-structured interviews with six entrepreneurs in the Jonkoping region were conducted to collect the empirical data on business planning within the service industry. The collected data was analyzed together by applying the theoretical frame of references. Conclusion - The thesis concluded that three main business planning situations occur in new ventures. These were at first a smooth or volatile increase during the beginning period of new ventures and resulted in the presence of the stabilised business planning pattern in the later stage of new ventures. This study also observed three main drivers behind those changes: business planning experience, economical factors and customers