Spatial variations in the hidden enterprise culture: Some lessons from England

Despite the growing recognition that many businesses start by trading on a partially or wholly off-the-books basis, there has been little investigation of whether the prevalence and character of this hidden enterprise culture varies spatially. The aim of this paper is to start to fill that gap. Reporting the results of face-to-face interviews conducted in affluent and deprived urban and rural English localities with 91 early-stage entrepreneurs and 81 established self-employed, it is shown that in all localities wholly legitimate businesses are just the tip of the iceberg and that beneath the surface is a large hidden enterprise culture. However, the preponderance of early-stage entrepreneurs and the established self-employed to trade off-the-books is greater in some locality-types than others. Not only do early-stage entrepreneurs and the established self-employed more commonly trade off-the-books in deprived and rural localities, but they are also more likely to trade wholly off-the-books and therefore not be even recognized as existing by official data sources. The implication is that deprived and rural communities are more enterprising and entrepreneurial than is currently recognized and, consequently, that legitimizing this hidden enterprise culture could be an important means of promoting enterprise and economic development in such communities. The paper concludes by briefly reviewing how this might be achieved.     

Reciprocated community support and small town - small business success

This paper presents an empirical test of the significance of reciprocated community support, in contrast with traditional economic factors and unilateral support, in the success of small businesses in small towns. The central hypothesis is that entrepreneurs who make non-market contributions to their community and whose community supports them, are more likely to consider their businesses to be successful. Logistic regression is used to analyse survey data from over 800 small businesses in 30 small towns of the state of Iowa (USA). The authors found that the interaction effect of an entrepreneur's service to the community, reciprocated by community support of the business, is the single most significant determinant of business success among dozens of indicators and characteristics of the respondent, the business, and the small towns in the sample. In addition, it was found that business people who feel successful expect to expand. These findings are relevant to rural development. The expansion of existing businesses is an important component of regional job growth.     

浅析大学生创业的战略危机诱因

当前经济危机席卷全球,世界各国遭受了相当程度的冲击,我国政府也采取了一系列措施来应对危机,如在就业方面鼓励大学生自主创业。创业的道路充满沼泽,一旦处理不好就会陷入危机,本文从危机管理的角度对大学生创业的战略危机诱因进行分析。     

Flexible Working Hours, Family Responsibilities, and Female Self-Employment

ABSTRACT Using cross-sectional data from the Contingent Work Survey of the February 1995 Current Population Survey, we present direct evidence that there are substantial gender differences in the reasons why individuals become self-employed. In particular, women–especially women with young children–are more likely than men to cite flexibility of schedule and family-related reasons for becoming self-employed. Men's reasons for becoming self-employed show little association with their parental status. Our findings suggest that employers should be encouraged to offer working conditions that are more friendly to workers whose family obligations conflict with traditional, forty-hour-per-week jobs.     

理性弃学给学校德育的启示

有人说,教育就是熬一窝粥,不管基础如何,不管个体特征的差异,都放到一起熬,希望把每个孩子都熬成名牌大学生,这已经成为学校、社会、家长评价教育的一个标志。但在瞬息万变的当今社会,面对有一群孩子我们能否考虑要因材施教,也要因材"不教"。我们总想把所有的学生教成我们心目中的样子,把所有的问题生都转化成优秀生,可是,这样的工程好巨大,而且不是有投入就有回报的,我们教师不是神,能力和精力及时间都不允许。既然如此,我们为什么不学会取舍,放这部分孩子自由,教他们学会取舍,让他们重新选择适合自己的路呢?这不就是成功的教育、创新的教育吗?或许也是教育的巨大成功啊!     

The influence of perceived management skills and perceived gender discrimination in launch decisions by women entrepreneurs

Our study answers the call for a better understanding of female entrepreneurs in Morocco and the role families play in launch decisions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of perceived management skills and perceived gender discrimination in obtaining funds on women entrepreneurs’ propensity to start their businesses with or without family members. Drawing upon the family embeddedness and institutional economics theoretical frameworks, perceived high management capabilities are found to increase the likelihood that a female entrepreneur will set up her business with family members. However, when the entrepreneur perceives gender discrimination in obtaining funds, this will negatively moderate this relationship and will make it more likely that a woman will start her business alone or with nonrelatives. This research contributes to the literature by advancing knowledge of the socio-cultural factors, embedded in the family-oriented contextual framework, that affect women entrepreneurs’ ways of starting their businesses. Implications affecting the success of women-owned start-up businesses and public policy implications are discussed.     

高校大学生职业生涯教育模式构建与实现途径分析

目前,大学生职业生涯教育越来越受到众多高校的重视,并做了大量的工作,但仍存在着许多大学生对自己职业生涯的认识模糊,规划不科学,急功近利等问题。为解决这些问题,本文提出对大学生开展职业生涯教育应根据不同年级学生的特点,实施不同的培训内容与培训方法。最后,本文对如何做好大学生职业生涯教育提出了相应的改进措施。     

Shedding light on technological development in Brazil

We try to shed some light on the question of why technology-intensive businesses often fail in less-developed countries and under what circumstances they are likely to be a success from the perspective of both domestic and export markets. The answers were drawn from a set of empirical evidences from Brazilian firms applying photonics technologies. Some of the issues faced by them are related to the question of state versus private initiative, entering traditional versus niche market, and technology transfer versus product development management. In overall, we concluded that weakness of the institutions and inadequacy of social and organizational demography play a key role in explaining to a large extent why countries differ in technological development and diffusion. In this context, we point out obstacles, which must be removed in order to make public policies and firm's achievements more efficient.     

Entrepreneurship and market size. The case of young college graduates in Italy

We analyse empirically the effects of urbanization on Italian college graduates' work possibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that doubling the province of work's population density reduces the chances of being an entrepreneur by 2–3 percentage points. This result holds after controlling for regional fixed effects and is robust to instrumenting urbanization. Provinces' competition, urban amenities and dis-amenities, cost of labour, earning differentials between employees and self-employed workers, unemployment rates and value added per capita account for more than half of the negative urbanization penalty. Our result cannot be entirely explained by the presence of negative differentials in returns to entrepreneurship between the most and the least densely populated areas. In fact, as long as they succeed in entering the most densely populated markets, young entrepreneurs are able to reap-off the benefits of urbanization externalities: the elasticity of entrepreneurs' net monthly earnings with respect to population density is 0.02–0.03.     

大学生公寓空间设计与研究

本论文探索学生公寓总体布局,功能空间的人性化设计,进一步掌握和了解大学生身心发展需求,以此为出发点,展开我们的具体实施方案。     

The demand for game day attendance in college football: an analysis of the 1997 Division 1‐A season

This paper develops a predictive model which includes game, team and university specific factors that are likely to influence game day demand for Division 1‐A college football. Attendance during the 1997 regular season is used as the dependent variable. Tobit estimates of two separate equations reveal that the quality of both teams, traditional rivalry and membership of specific conferences have a significant influence on demand. In addition, colleges with lower enrollments and a higher percentage of off‐campus students attract smaller crowds. The presence of a nearby professional football team also detracts from a college team's drawing power. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The self-employed without employees—autonomous or atypical?

The 1980s and early 1990s have witnessed a substantial growth in the self-employed component of the national labour-force. Of these, around two-thirds are one-person businesses without employees. This article identifies an occupational grouping which occupies a position at the extreme point on a continuum of small business independence, virtually indistinguishable from that of employees.     

Self-employment,educational attainment and employment protection legislation

We analyse how educational attainment and employment protection influence an individual's decision to become self-employed. By altering expected income from dependent employment, employment protection is likely to affect an individual's choice of occupation, although such a link has not been established in the literature so far. We argue that an interaction between an individual's educational attainment and the institution of employment protection exists when it comes to the decision regarding whether to become self-employed. Based on survey data from OECD countries, we find evidence for a negative interaction, and conclude that only after taking this interaction into account can the effect of employment protection and educational attainment on self-employment rates be assessed.     

Enticing the Stork: Can we Evaluate Pro‐Natal Policies Before Having Children?

Aside from immigration, the only meaningful demographic lever available to policymakers attempting to moderate the rate of ageing is the birth rate. This article departs from previous analyses of pro‐natal policies by studying determinants of pro‐natal options ex ante, which represents an advantage for policymakers looking to craft policies with prior knowledge of whether or not a demographic policy will have a significant effect. Our multinomial regression model for a US sample involving college students shows that the preferred choice of pro‐natal incentive is dependent on gender, economic class, number of planned children and migrant status. We find that females are more likely than males to choose any pro‐natal incentive over no incentive. The highest odds for increasing planned number of children are for maternity leave and parental leave options. Respondents associating themselves with the poorest economic class are more likely to choose daycare or government grant as pro‐natal options.     

对整合鸡西市物流市场资源的研究

鸡西市的物流企业大多是由以前的许多小型企业或个体经营者转型而来，在基础设施上，与现代物流企业差距大，市内也无立体现代仓库．货物包装存放没有实现标准化；在观念上，大多数企业对现代物流的认识还不成熟，很多小型企业经过简单包装就号称“物流”进入市场，距现代物流企业的标准化、规范化、信息化、机械化、规模化、网络化的要求还有较大距离．文章认为整合鸡西市物流市场资源、区域内的所有物流企业，为精心打造鸡西市物流“航母”，提升区域物流的“核心”能力．以增强市场竞争能力是十分有必要的。     

Survival and Failure of Small Businesses Arising Through Government Privatization: Insights from Two New Zealand Firms*

Redundancies of personnel arising from the corporatization and even subsequent privatization/closure of several federal departments have contributed to the number of small businesses in New Zealand, a phenomenon that will likely be mirrored at least partially as other nations progressively liberalize their economies. Small businesses with such origins would appear to be especially prone to failure in a progressively liberalized trading environment; their precursors in the parent government departments or agencies would have been cocooned from immediate market conditions through budgetary allocations and a lack of competition. However, the scholarly literature on the behaviour of such small businesses is scant. Accordingly, we report the findings from a comparative investigation of two businesses that arose in the wake of the failure/closure of a corporatized federal service agency in New Zealand; one of the two businesses was much more successful than the other. Our major finding is that a small firm with such origins is likely to survive to the extent it avoids becoming complacent and being ‘stuck in the mud’ of the legacy of the failed federal parent. A predictor of such ability is the timing of small business formation: a small business that is formed by members who depart from the dying federal parent organization when the latter's closure is apparent, is more likely to survive than a business whose formation is precipitated by the demise of the federal parent and whose members remain in the parent organization until its formal closure.     

试析贫困大学生就业难的深层社会因素

当前大学生就业难已经成了大学生、学生家长、高等学校及社会共同的感受和普遍关注的问题,而作为大学生中的弱势群体——贫困大学生的就业则更是得到了有关各方的高度重视。为进一步探明当前贫困大学生就业难的潜因,为今后解决贫困大学生就业问题打好前期基础,文章对贫困大学生就业困难的深层社会因素进行了初步分析,并提出了一些可操作性的对策和措施。     

Self-employment: the new solution for balancing family and career?

We examine the hypothesis that white married women, particularly more educated women, are increasingly choosing self-employment as a strategy to balance family and career. We test two models using data from the CPS, NLS and NLSY, to examine the determinants of self-employment for women in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Our findings suggest that married women with greater family responsibilities are more likely to be self-employed, and these impacts are stronger for more educated women. However, we find little support for the hypothesis that women are more likely in recent years to choose self-employment in response to family demands.     

浅谈如何提高高职生的挫折承受能力

高职学生作为大学生中的一类特殊的群体,在成长的过程中,承受了来自社会更多的压力。高职学生不仅要有迎接成功的准备,也要有面对挫折的勇气。可是我们的很多学生缺乏必要的挫折承受能力,遇到问题消极、逃避,有的甚至用极端的方式解脱自己。本文阐述了挫折是生活中所不能避免的问题,提出了几种提高高职生挫折承受能力的方法。