Business incomes in rural Nicaragua: the role of household resources,location, experience and trust

This paper analyses the determinants of business income for rural households in Nicaragua. A sample of 1030 households was studied in order to assess the importance of material and behavioural factors that influence income from business activity. The households are involved in manufacturing, trade, services or have a mixture of businesses. They generally have a low income and asset value. Households supplement their income from wages and agricultural activities. To estimate non-farm business income per employed person we analyse the impact of resources, location, entrepreneurial experience and trust. Our results show that household resources and entrepreneurial experience are significant determinants for business income in all sectors. Trust is also important, particularly generalized trust. The contribution of other forms of trust, such as institutional trust, depends on the sector in which households participate.     

Kinship and business: how entrepreneurial households facilitate business growth

Building on studies that have stressed the importance of context and the role of the family in business growth, this study explores the role of the entrepreneurial household in the process of business development and growth. We seek to understand how household strategy influences the development of new businesses, the ways in which household characteristics and dynamics influence business growth strategy decisions and how business portfolios are managed and developed by the household. To examine these questions, comparative case studies were undertaken drawing data from four entrepreneurial households located in remote rural regions of Norway and Scotland. The data reveal the role of the entrepreneurial household in the evolution of business creation and growth, examining the processual aspects of entrepreneurial growth, the interactions between business activities and entrepreneurial households and how business portfolios are developed in practice. Three analytical themes emerged from the analyses: the tightly interwoven connections between the business and the household, the use of family and kinship relations as a business resource base and how households mitigate risk and uncertainty through self-imposed growth controls. Although previous studies have viewed entrepreneurial growth largely as an outcome of personal ambition and business strategy, these results reveal the importance of the entrepreneurial household and the household strategy in determining business growth activities.     

Business students’ attitudes toward innovation and intentions to start their own businesses

This research integrates perspectives from models of entrepreneurial intentions and attitude theory to examine the nature of the relationship between business students’ attitudes toward innovation and their intentions to start their own businesses. Multiple regression analysis revealed a positive association between attitude toward the distal and broad object of innovation and intentions of US business students to engage in the specific behavior of starting a business. Multiple mediation analysis revealed this association is partially mediated by attitudes toward the proximal and specific object of starting a business, operationalized as perceived desirability and feasibility of starting a business. As attitudes are open to change, opportunities exist for educators and practitioners to affect entrepreneurial intentions by affecting attitudes toward relevant, broad objects, such as innovation.     

商业银行多元化经营对绩效和风险的影响研究--基于53家银行的面板分析

本文运用2003-2013年间我国53家商业银行的面板数据,通过建立多元化风险模型,对商业银行收入结构多元化、经营绩效以及风险的关系进行了系统分析。得出结论：规模较大的银行在专业型多元化经营业务成熟的基础上,转而发展综合型多元化经营业务,有利于银行绩效提升,但必须注重对风险的把控;而规模较小的商业银行因受地域、规模等因素的限制并不适合开展综合型多元化经营业务,应在主营业务发展充分的基础上,以发展专业型多元化经营业务为主。最后,根据实证结果提出相关的对策建议。     

业务外包风险分析及其识别研究

业务外包在当今全球化的背景下发展十分迅猛。各个机构通过确定自己的产业边界将非核心业务外包给服务供应商,以此来达到节约成本,聚集资源,发展核心业务,增加核心竞争力的目的。但各机构在享受外包带来好处的同时也承受着风险。本文在文献调研和自身研究积累的基础上对外包中存在的风险进行了分析和识别,为企业在外包过程中做出正确的决策提供借鉴。     

Recruiting outside board members in the small family business: an ideological challenge

The focus of this paper is to explore how contrasting ideologies influence the selection process of outside directors in the small family business. Small family businesses donot just represent smallscale economic activity but they are the outcome of entrepreneurial ambition and family involvement. This means that willpower and emotional commitment blend with calculative considerations. As emotional as well as cognitive constructs the family, management and entrepreneurship each represent an ideology: paternalism, managerialism and entrepreneurialism. The proposed ideological framework is positioned against alternative approaches to the study of board selection processes. Two sets of data are presented. A piloting survey of 12 family businesses is used to substantiate the theoretical assumption that entrepreneurial firms avoid having outside directors and managerial firms welcome outside directors, leaving paternalistically-run family businesses ambivalent. Repeated in-depth interviews in two family businesses, one founder-managed and entrepreneurial, the other established and traditional, reveal how the professionalization of the board enforces managerialism, challenging thus far dominating ideologies, entrepreneurialism and paternalism. The outcome of this ideological contest, if properly orchestrated, is an energized and more competitive family business.     

经济转轨中企业多元化战略的约束与前景展望

我国经济转轨过程中的环境和制度安排特殊,企业多元化行为特点鲜明。经济转轨中企业在实施多元化经营战略过程中,受到收益与成本、经营者自利和政府干预等因素的约束和影响。不同产权类型企业的投资前景不同,应根据自身特点进行多元化投资。     

Gender Differences in Entrepreneurial Propensity*

Using data from representative population surveys in 17 countries, we find that the lower rate of female business ownership is primarily due to women's lower propensity to start businesses rather than to differences in survival rates across genders. We show that women are less confident in their entrepreneurial skills, have different social networks and exhibit higher fear of failure than men. After controlling for endogeneity, we find that these variables explain a substantial part of the gender gap in entrepreneurial activity. Although, of course, their relative importance varies significantly across countries, these factors appear to have a universal effect.     

Disassembling the influences of perceived family relational conflict on business family offspring’s intrapreneurial intentions

Entrepreneurial business family offspring are key figures in helping family businesses achieve transgenerational entrepreneurship. However, a global survey reveals that entrepreneurial offspring avoid the family business when conducting entrepreneurial activities. Our study makes the first effort to explore what reduces business family offspring’s intrapreneurial intentions in the family business context. Applying a mixed-method approach, we conduct 18 explorative interviews, a pretest of 124 Chinese business family offspring, and a formal survey of 131 Chinese business family offspring approaching their career decision point. We realize that growing up in family businesses often exposes offspring to two types of perceived family relational conflicts that their parents’ entrepreneurial endeavors incur, which we define as “big-family” and “parent-offspring” relational conflicts. Our empirical results suggest that the relationship between perceived family (i.e., parent-offspring and big-family) relational conflict and family business intrapreneurial intentions were serially mediated by family relational outcome expectation and family relational self-efficacy. Contributions to family business research and social cognitive career theory are discussed.

     

International entrepreneurship and the small business

The topic of ‘international entrepreneurship’ is becoming increasingly popular with researchers concerned with examining how international and entrepreneurial activities intersect when people in organizations engage in pro-active brokering and risk-taking behaviour in cross-border contexts. Some caution is needed in over-generalizing the meaning and significance of international entrepreneurship – especially in relation to small businesses. Not all entrepreneurial risk-taking, brokering and opportunity-seeking activities lead to internationalization (as the statistics on small business international activities indicate). This might suggest then that the only truly internationally entrepreneurial firms are those that are ‘born global’. However, their entrepreneurial activities are more ‘spatial’, concerned with what can be constructed again in relation to global markets rather than in relation to the local/regional context in which the business is located. For small firms that internationalize a few years after start-up (late starters), processes of international entrepreneurship are different. For ‘later starters’, international entrepreneurship is distinctive in that it is characterized by extending and modifying entrepreneurial understandings and practices that have been socially constructed in relation to the local and regional context in which the small firm is located.     

Marketing in SMEs: the role of entrepreneurial sensemaking

Marketing literature has emphasized the factors hampering marketing planning and strategizing in small firms, in particular resource scarcity, lack of specialized structures and competences. Recent streams of literature in entrepreneurial marketing have nonetheless shown that small firms do engage in peculiar marketing strategies and activities that do not necessarily reflect codified processes observed in large organizations. Within this line of research, the article aims at contributing to extant theory in entrepreneurial marketing placing under scrutiny the generative moments of marketing strategies in small firms. Through the integration of literature in entrepreneurial marketing and in entrepreneurship and through the analysis of four case studies, the article proposes a conceptual framework that emphasizes the centrality of entrepreneurial sensemaking in small and medium-sized enterprises?? marketing strategies. We posit that entrepreneurs are engaged in the construction of interpretive frameworks that, when explicated and made accessible to consumers and stakeholders, legitimate novel business ideas and logics. These interpretive frameworks structure the content and processes of marketing activities. Theoretically, the article aims at contributing to the debate on marketing in small businesses shedding light on the processes underlying the formation of marketing strategies. Propositions are offered to guide future empirical research based on the proposed conceptual framework.     

Identifying some major determinants of entrepreneurial partnership, using a confounded factorial conjoint choice experiment

Many small businesses fail before their fifth anniversary, with proportionally more minority owned businesses failing than others. The bulk of these failing entities is often organized in the form of sole proprietorship, while sound business partnerships could potentially be conducive to better prospective entrepreneurships. The objective of this study was to evaluate the importance of prospective partners’ characteristics, on the willingness of business respondents to become business partners. In the process, we used a confounded factorial conjoint choice experimental design. We found “Values sharing”, “Term orientation”, and “Community membership” to be among the most influential factors for the determination of entrepreneurial partnership. The effect direction of “shared-attributes” suggested a central need for complementary diversity in the process of sound business partnership formation. Respondents were more likely to partner with technically skilled prospective partners, than with managerially skilled ones. White respondents displayed more of a preference for business partners who did not share their values, compared to their Black counterparts. The confounded factorial conjoint choice experiment approach used in this study proved to be a helpful tool for investigating factors that influence sound business partnership formation.     

Open process and open-source enterprise systems

Enterprise systems have become pervasive, especially at the high end of the market where SAP and Oracle service large organisations. There is a great deal of value in enterprise systems offered to all organisations, but many small and medium businesses (SMBs) cannot afford the excessive software costs of established ERP systems. There have been a number of alternative forms of enterprise systems developed, to include open-source software. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) allows vendors to efficiently adopt new processes within their products. Organisations (and open-source ERP systems) can use SOA in customising or improving their systems. Web 2.0 helps collaborative development of knowledge which can be invaluable in identifying better business processes. The Web 2.0 era makes innovative access to enterprise systems possible for many SMBs. This paper reviews the role of SOA and Web 2.0 in making ERP systems more open, and classifies open enterprise systems on the dimension of process. We propose that organisations should conduct knowledge development for business processes through Web 2.0 prior to implementing external to enterprise systems. Once better processes are developed, they can be implemented to improve enterprise systems.     

Leadership in the Context of Corporate Entrepreneurship

Established companies rely on innovation to maintain their competitiveness in the rapidly changing economic environment. These companies must perpetually develop new products and services, and create new businesses and new business models. To do so, entrepreneurial leaders within established companies need to understand and align their projects with the corporate vision and business goals. The entrepreneurial leaders must also lead by influence to obtain necessary resources to fulfill these goals. Creating an environment that encourages innovation and engenders trust is necessary for the success of entrepreneurial leaders. Skills relating to perspective taking and influence as well as the need for agility are also crucial.     

Revisiting the Emergence of the Modern Business Enterprise: Entrepreneurship and the Singer Global Distribution System

abstract    This paper approaches the question of why entrepreneurial firms exist from a broad business historical perspective. It observes that the original development of the modern business enterprise was very strongly associated with entrepreneurial innovation rather than an extension of managerial routine. The widely-used theory of the entrepreneur as a specialist in judgmental decision making is applied to the particular point in time when entrepreneurs had to develop novel organizational designs in what Chandler described as the prelude to the 'managerial revolution'. The paper illustrates how the theory of entrepreneurship then best explains the rise of the modern corporation by focusing on the case study of vertical integration par excellence , Singer.     

Social Interactions and Entrepreneurial Activity

We show that individuals residing in highly entrepreneurial neighborhoods are more likely to become entrepreneurs and invest more into their own businesses, even though their entrepreneurial profits are lower and their alternative job opportunities more attractive. Our results suggest that peer effects create nonpecuniary benefits from entrepreneurial activity and play an important role in the decision to become an entrepreneur. Alternative explanations, such as entry costs, social learning, and informal credit markets, are not supported by the data.     

IMPLEMENTING PRIVATISATON : SOCIAL CHANGE AS A DISCOVERY PROCESS

Philanthropists and social change practitioners have successfully advanced privatisation worldwide over the last three decades. Social change can be thought of as a discovery process in which measures of effectiveness are an invaluable tool for creating transparency and accountability for results. These processes organise knowledge and lead to the invention of better ways of doing things. Examining privatisation as a case study opens a broader consideration of the philanthropic enterprise, including barriers to change, diffusion of innovation, and the use of products to lead change. An examination of the processes which led to privatisation also shows how entrepreneurial philanthropy has promoted privatisation.     

Entrepreneurship and being: the case of the Shaws

Our paper takes the case of John and Elizabeth Shaw, early nineteenth-century English hardware factors. The sources are almost 200 hundred letters written by the Shaws and their circle. Using these, two readings of the Shaws' experiences of creating a business are presented. The first is couched within a narrative structure of plotted stages and finds the Shaws starting, struggling to, and ultimately succeeding in creating a successful business. Here, their actions within a nascent industrialized economy can be described as entrepreneurial – they successfully pursued opportunity through founding an enterprise within economically and technologically auspicious environments. The second, more phenomenological reading, opens up for consideration the questionableness of their experience of ‘being in business’. Here the Shaws' understanding of themselves (as conveyed in personal letters) brings into question the academic tendency to emplot their story as one of the staged growth and profitability. Specifically, it resists attempts to ascribe to their experience entrepreneurial status, not simply because they did not think of themselves as entrepreneurs, but because the appearance of the business for the Shaws was woven with their lives in ways that belie the narrative direction and coherence that concepts like entrepreneurship give to it.     

Special issue on “The role of networks in entrepreneurial performance: new answers to old questions?”

The nature and extent of relationships between entrepreneurial networks and entrepreneurial performance are old questions. Scholars have explored the nature of entrepreneurial networks and have focused on their relationship with, and effects on, performance, which is viewed in this special issue in terms of the strategic development of established businesses and new ventures. However, while much is now known about the origins and effects of social networks there continues to a paucity of research on how social networks are used in various organizations, and when one or more networks are drawn upon for what specific purpose. Each article in this special issue addresses one or more of these questions in a range of industries and environments, namely poor village entrepreneurs who have to work in a highly challenging financial and social environment in Bangladesh, “early internationalizing small firms” in South Africa, high technology “early-stage ventures” in Hong Kong, 3-D technology ventures that operate with an “open” business model, and the “multi-rational” nature of networks in family businesses in and beyond the UK. In all, this collection of papers comprises a body of scholarship with fine-grained studies on how and when specific social networks are drawn on in various forms of organization. The subsequent discussion of these issues extends knowledge of the various ways in which entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial businesses advance their interests by leveraging familiar business and social networks.     

企业社会责任与城市社区建设

通过对企业的社区责任水平与企业特征之间的关系进行统计分析表明,经济效益与企业的社区责任水平呈正相关关系。在社区责任水平上,小型企业与大型企业不存在差异;服务型企业与生产型企业、外资企业与民营企业和国有控股企业存在显著差异。我国企业参与社区建设的行为具有明显的经济取向,受制度环境的影响,整体参与水平较低。转变政府职能,培养社会自组织能力,加强制度建设,提高企业的社区意识将是社区建设政策目标实现的重要路径。