Governments in developed and developing economies have increasingly turned to entrepreneurship and small businesses for economic growth, dynamism and economic and social inclusion. Policies seeking ...to encourage, support or otherwise influence these forms of economic activity are varied but virtually omnipresent, recommended by organisations such as the OECD and World Bank and implemented by governments of many political ideologies. With a range of activities across government labelled as enterprise policy, it is vital to unpick the different policies, initiatives and interventions and to understand their development in order to subject them to scrutiny and evaluate the actions taken in the name of enterprise.
This book provides the first in-depth, historical analysis of enterprise policy in the UK. Successive UK governments have been particularly active, with the number of initiatives estimated recently at 3000 and expenditure reaching as high as £12bn, yet facing continuous criticisms for its use, value or relevance. This historical study of UK enterprise policy represents a case study of different forms of enterprise policy and how they have developed, or failed to develop, over time, contributing to understanding of government, small business and entrepreneurship. It will be of value to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students interested in the history of small business and entrepreneurship as well as standing as a history of a specific policy area and the ways in which policies involving many different areas of government develop over time.
We show that most small business owners are very different from the entrepreneurs that economic models and policymakers often have in mind. Using new data that sample entrepreneurs just before they ...start their businesses, we show that few small businesses intend to bring a new idea to market or to enter an unserved market. Instead, most intend to provide an existing service to an existing market. Further, we find that most small businesses have little desire to grow big or to innovate in any observable way. We show that such behavior is consistent with the industry characteristics of the majority of small businesses, which are concentrated among skilled craftspeople, lawyers, real estate agents, health care providers, small shopkeepers, and restaurateurs.Lastly, we show that nonpecuniary benefits (being one's own boss, having flexibility of hours, and the like) play a first-order role in the business formation decision. Our findings suggest that the importance of entrepreneurial talent, entrepreneurial luck, and financial frictions in explaining the firm size distribution may be overstated. We conclude by discussing the potential policy implications of our findings.
Corporate Governance, Responsibility and Sustainability investigates various dimensions of corporate governance issues in key emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia. ...The book explores a number of issues in the areas of corporate governance framework, market discipline and building an efficient, competitive market.
High-growth firms (HCF) represent a highly desirable subset of firms, which provide disproportionate economic gains, and greater insight into their determinants which is of interest to policymakers, ...scholars and business owners. We contribute to the literature on HGFs, which is largely absent of cross-national institutional studies, by examining the institutional conditions driving HGFs in 26 transition countries over a long period comprising three panels between 1998 and 2009. Using an institutional hierarchy approach, we test for the influence of formal and informal institutions on HGF prevalence in countries. Our analysis relies first on a principal component analysis to identify institutional factors. Second, we use GLS estimation to test the influence of these three factors on HGF prevalence in a country, followed by a robustness check. Our results show that interaction effects, rather than direct effects, are useful in explaining systematic variations in HGFs prevalence in transition economies. We find that the interaction between formal and informal institutions positively influences HGFs. Further, we find that in fast-reforming transition economies, more burdensome formal institutions discourage HGFs but in slow-reforming transition economies, informal institutions encourage HGFs.
The authors use empirical research into the environmental practices of 31 manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to show that 'business performance' and 'regulation' considerations ...drive behaviour. They suggest that this is inevitable, given the market-based decision-making frames that permeate and dominate the industry in which manufacturing SMEs operate. Since the environment is a pillar of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the findings have important implications for CSR policy, which promotes voluntary actions predicated on a business case. It is argued that this approach will not alter the behaviour of manufacturing SMEs significantly because CSR practice will be regarded as an optional and costly 'extra' affecting core business activity. Consequently, the use and development of existing regulatory structures, providing minimum standards for many activities covered by CSR, remains the most effective means through which the behaviour of manufacturing SMEs will be changed in the short to medium-term. Another feature of the paper is the distinction made between 'business performance' and the 'business case' argument. Business performance emphasises cost reductions and efficiency whereas the business case accentuates the benefits to shareholders of good practices as their firms become more attractive to stakeholders and society. Manufacturing SMEs try to improve business performance because of the pressures placed on them by market-dominated decision-making frames. These frames do not encourage manufacturing SMEs to undertake voluntary actions for the benefit of wider stakeholders and society.
Recent research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggests the need for further exploration into the relationship between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and CSR. SMEs rarely use the ...language of CSR to describe their activities, but informal CSR strategies play a large part in them. The goal of this article is to investigate whether differences exist between the formal and informal CSR strategies through which firms manage relations with and the claims of their stakeholders. In this context, formal CSR strategies seem to characterize large firms while informal CSR strategies prevail among micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. We use a sample of 3,626 Italian firms to investigate our research questions. Based on a multistakeholder framework, the analysis provides evidence that small businesses* use of CSR, involving strategies with an important impact on the bottom line, reflects an attempt to secure their license to operate in the communities; while large firms rarely make attempts to integrate their CSR strategies into explicit management systems.
The impact of smaller firm size on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ambiguous. Some contend that small businesses are socially responsible by nature, while others argue that a smaller firm ...size imposes barriers on small firms that constrain their ability to take responsible action. This paper critically analyses recent theoretical and empirical contributions on the size-social responsibility relationship among small businesses. More specifically, it reviews the impact of firm size on four antecedents of business behaviour: issue characteristics, personal characteristics, organizational characteristics and context characteristics. It concludes that the small business context does impose barriers on social responsibility taking, but that the impact of the smaller firm size on social responsibility should be nuanced depending on a number of conditions. From a critical analysis of these conditions, opportunities for small businesses and their constituents to overcome the constraining barriers are suggested.
Firm growth and innovation Audretsch, David B.; Coad, Alex; Segarra, Agustí
Small business economics,
12/2014, Volume:
43, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In recent years, there has been an increase in empirical and theoretical work that addresses the role of innovation as one of the main sources of firm growth. The purpose of this special issue is to ...strengthen the role played by innovation as a determinant of firm growth. Despite the emergence of a vast empirical literature on whether innovative firms grow more quickly in terms of sales and employees, a number of crucial questions and answers remain. While a large number of applied papers observe a positive link between innovation and firm growth, the complexity of R&D activities, together with the diversity of innovation strategies and the multiplicity of growth modes, requires a multidimensional approach to examine the contribution of innovations on firm growth. To shed light on the link between firm' growth and innovation sources, we organized a meeting of leading scholars of firm' growth and innovation. The papers of this special issue were presented at the workshop on 'Firm growth and innovation' held on 28 and 29 June, 2012, in Tarragona, Spain. The papers that compose this special issue deal in depth with innovation activity, firm growth and the interaction between firm growth and innovation.
Risk management practices are multiplying and developing in firms, especially due to the existence of new international standards and guidelines that put risk management at the centre of their ...concerns (e.g., the International Standards Organization's ISO on Risk Management; or the COSO Enterprise Risk Management Framework). While large firms are more likely to adopt an extensive risk management system, SMEs are also concerned. Rather than a constraint, risk management in SMEs has to be henceforth studied as part of an organizational and entrepreneurial dynamic, providing a real opportunity for these firms to change their practices and improve their performance.
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