The objective of this paper was to identify competitive strategies adopted by small firms. Miles and Snow's (1978) model of competitive strategies was used to classify reported strategic choices. Data were collected with 107 enterprises in the city of Londrina, PR, Brazil, belonging to 8 different business sectors. Results indicated that 4 types of competitive strategies were found in accordance with Miles and Snow's (1978) model. Companies' performance differed according to competitive strategies, that is, reactors were less effective in terms of growth, thus confirming one of the main model's propositions. The most frequent strategy was analytical. No differences were found that could be attributed to manager's gender.
competitive strategy; small firm; manager's gender
