Impact of leadership on decision-making in start-up enterprises: qualitative perspectives to organisational performance

This study focuses on analysing decision-making process of entrepreneurial leaders to determine organisational performance in SUEs. Decision-making process of entrepreneurial leaders in reference to internal and external organisational performance, leadership patterns, work culture, and market competitiveness of SUEs have been critically examined in the study. This study has been conducted using qualitative research method, by applying in-depth interviews to the entrepreneurial leaders of 32 start-up enterprises within metropolitan area of Mexico City. Content analysis was done to summarise the open-ended questions using software NVivo version 11. The study revealed that collective decision-making is a good approach as compared to a leader-driven top-down decision-making practice. Most SUEs have individualistic decision-making process, which is largely power centred, that creates distance within inter- and intra-organisational players. This study contributes to the existing literature by analysing the impact of leadership patterns on decision-making for achieving organisational performance in the region.