Instituonalization in smes and determining of the instituonalization level (field study on the 1st and 2nd organized industrial zone located in Sakarya

SMEs certainly weight in all countries and that are seen a barometer of the economies. Different characteristics of SMEs from growth firms, they have unique management styles, organizational structure, and approaches. By means of these characteristics, SMEs have advantages and drawbacks. Important organizational and managerial problems occur when traditional management approaches are applied directly to them. The main reason of this is changing of the management approaches. For this reason, SMEs should look for the new strategies in order to continue their existence. In our opinion, institutionalization is the important one. Institutionalization is more flexible, participant, far from detail and hierarchy and more professional approaches is existing according to traditional management. In other words, institutionalization is to set up effective mechanism in the organization structure. This study aims to explore the practice of institutionalization, defining of institutionalization level, and institutionalization perspectives in small and medium sized enterprises. For this purpose, field examination is done in the small and medium sized establishment in the 1st and the 2nd Organized Industrial Zone Located in Sakarya. To determine of the institutionalization level of companies; survey, interviews, and observations have done. According to results of the study, it is recognized that most of the companies have started to set up necessities of institutionalization. While some of them are going on institutionalization process slowly because of their own characteristics, some of them just choose criterions of institutionalization that is thought suitable for them, but this causes a problem. A few companies are located at high level of institutionalization because of their modern management styles that are parallel with institutionalization. To define the institutionalization of SMEs ?t and anova test? have done, and according to results; legal structures, types, sectors and growth of the companies have main roles to determine the institutionalization level of companies. Keywords: SMEs, Institutionalization, Instituonalization Level, Instituonalization Structure.