Abstract
The growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is a key driver of economic development; however, the growth stage is often accompanied by persistent or recurring organisational and managerial stagnation. The existing literature primarily explains these growth-related difficulties through structural and leadership challenges, while the role of generational collaboration within organisations has received less explicit attention. The aim of this paper is to explore, based on the literature, how generational collaboration can be interpreted in relation to managerial stagnation occurring during the growth stage of SMEs, from a quality management perspective.
The study is based on a secondary, integrative literature review that connects theoretical frameworks of organisational life cycle models, organisational learning, and quality management. The analysis identifies different approaches to generational collaboration and highlights that the quality of collaboration between generations may constitute a critical factor for organisational adaptability and quality culture during the growth stage. The findings contribute to a quality management-oriented interpretation of growth stagnation and provide a conceptual foundation for future empirical research on the relationship between generational collaboration and growth-related challenges in Hungarian SMEs.
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