The relationship between organisational structure and performance has received little attention over the past few decades, especially in regards to firms with less than 100 employees. All too often, the stereotype of SMEs as unstructured, informal 'adhocracies' is heard. Based on the study of a stratified sample of more than 1400 Dutch SMEs (in three size classes and nine economic sectors) we show that this stereotype is false. We derive a set of typical organisational structures. We further investigated the circumstances under which these structures seem to perform well, and the circumstances under which they appear to perform poorly.

Un update of this report is made on Januari 2005 (N200420).