Business Failure

SMEs have become very important for all nations so much so that they could be described as a safe haven. Entities of stability of a nation both economically and socially. Unfortunately these small and medium-sized enterprises are the most exposed to bankruptcy and or failure among businesses (Julien (1997). As a result all communities (states researchers and practitioners) must mobilize to safeguard them. The objective of this work is to identify the causes at the origin of the failure of Ivorian SMEs and to model one or more typical processes of failure of these SMEs. A review of the literature on the subject led us to note the very high number of failures in this segment of businesses (60% in Côte d''Ivoire). This literature also indicates that several factors contribute to this failure. Among these factors the literature highlights two essential ones: external factors (theory of the Ecology of the Population of Organizations (Hannan and Freeman 1977)) and external factors linked to the resources of the enterprise (Barney 1991).