Organizational structure as moderator of the relationship between strategic management and global performance: case of tunisian sme's involved in the upgrading program

This paper focuses on the reality of strategic management in Tunisian companies. It is suggested that the organizational structure has an effect not only on the choice of the adoption of strategic management, but also on the contribution of strategic management to global performance. It performs an empirical investigation into the moderating effect of organizational structure on the relationship between strategic management and global performance. Data from representative survey of 276 Tunisian SMEs involved in the upgrading program revealed no direct effect of organizational structure on the strategic management. Organizational structure is not married to strategic management. Each of the dimensions of organizational structure (formalization, standardization, and centralization) does not explain the adoption of strategic management. It revealed also the absence of moderating effect of organizational structure on the relationship between strategic management and global performance. Strategic management does not explain the variation of the global performance for given organizational structure attributes (formalization, standardization, and centralization). However, results show that only strategic management has a direct effect on the global performance, which means that only the strategies defined by strategic management lead to high performance whatever the organizational structure.