BUSINESS STRATEGY IN INNOVATIVE AND NON-INNOVATIVE COMPANIES OF VARIOUS SIZES

The influence of innovation upon the competitive advantage of companies seems to be an actual issue worth examining. That's why it is interesting to investigate the various aspects of the strategies pursued by companies classified as innovative or non-innovative. The aim of the research was to check whether the differences between enterprises can be traced back to their sizes or should rather be derived from their unique characteristics. In order to test the hypotheses, the correlations (established on the basis of the Kendall's tau-b correlation coefficient) between specified research areas and the size of the company were calculated for the two groups of companies (innovative and non-innovative). The study was conducted using the PAPI technique and the 5-point Likert scale. The research sample included two groups of companies – innovative (88 companies) and non-innovative (34 enterprises). The respondents in the survey included company managing staff. Presenting the findings of the research, it can be pointed out that in a group of innovative companies no distinctness regarding the primary objectives of strategy could be demonstrated. Only the correlations between the size and risk of the business and the implementation of global expansion strategy can be considered. Companies that are not oriented to innovation, however, significantly differ only regarding to strategy formalisation, which increases with the organisation's growth. The main research findings proved that there is a lack of noticeable differences in the strategies of innovative and non-innovative companies analysed in terms of their size.