Efficient functioning small businesses and their continuance over time, independent of the owner(s), carry high significance for remote regions' long term social and economic sustainability. This empirical investigation of exit planning practices among regional small businesses in the New England region of New South Wales, Australia, provides evidence that the particular environment in which these businesses operate determine and drive owners' strategic exit planning initiatives. Regional SMEs are prone to peculiar internal and external variables with inertial forces that continuously impact on the owners' decision to exit or continue into the business. Resorting to Schatzki's (2002) 'site of the social' theoretical construct, this paper argues that the 'exit planning' social practice among regional SMEs can be efficiently developed and institutionalized at a wider level on their peculiar 'site' of being regional and small. Thus, a borrow from the 'specialised clusters' technique on the part of State government is the best way forward to effectively tackle the phenomenon.

Current literature on organizational change advocates the significance of 'strategy facilitation' on the part of the parent organization in the process of change imposed on the subordinate organization. Through this conceptual paper, resorting to the recent strategic changes Australian tertiary sector's constituents underwent in response to the Australian government's funding-specific policy changes for the sector, we argue that while 'strategy facilitation' by a 'power source' works to the advantage of subordinate organizations, 'strategy imposition' may work the opposite way. Externally dictated conditions for a change that leave an organization with no option but to submit passively to the pressure and adapt its core organizational elements for the sake of its survival, may result in the organization's demise in its real essence, as the organization sacrifices its true identity in an attempt to placate the external demand. Accountability dictates that such a change needs to be scrupulously checked and subjected to an independent enquiry before considered for implementation. We aim to develop theory- and logic-deduced propositions to help guide future empirical research into the area.