Businesses adjusting to an open economy: Heterogeneity of the responses of small and medium-sized businesses

The aim of this paper is to show common aspects developed by argentine industrial SME's in the last decades, this in part explains the hight proportion of firms that have been affected in the 90's. The paper discusses the effect of the commercial liberalization on SME's and presents a taxonomy on their microeconomic answers. The SME's can't be treated as an homogeneous group of agents, in fact they have inside a heterogeneity of answers. However, for many of them their competitive advantages built in their path are been erosed for the new macroeconomic conditions in the 90's. In this new context macroeconomic uncertainty has diminished, but at the same the strategic uncertainty about their market position has increased, especially due to the numbers of new competitors and the more amount of substitute products in the market. Their future evolution will depend on their path dependent the possibility of belonging to networks and develop strategies based on innovation activities, business cooperation and external sales.