Social Capital or Ethnic Enclave Location? A Multilevel Explanation of Immigrant Business Growth

The rapid increase in migration into host countries and the growth of immigrant‐owned business enterprises has revitalized research on ethnic business. Does micro (individual)‐level social capital, or meso (group)‐level location within the ethnic enclave lead to immigrant business growth? Or do you need both? We analyze quantitative data collected from 110 Chinese restaurants in Australia, a major host country. At the micro level we find that coethnic (same ethnic group) networks are critical to the growth of an immigrant entrepreneur's business, particularly in the early years. But non‐coethnic (different ethnic group) social capital only has a positive impact on business growth for immigrant businesses outside the ethnic enclave. Our findings are relevant, not only to host‐country policymakers, but also for future immigrant business owners and ethnic community leaders trying to better understand how to promote healthy communities and sustainable economic growth. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Socially Responsible Processes of Small Family Business Owners: Exploratory Evidence from the National Family Business Survey

The purpose of this exploratory study is to ascertain the impact of family, business, and community factors on the socially responsible processes of small family businesses, and investigate the influence of financial success and attitudes toward community on these processes. The research is grounded in the Sustainable Family Business Theory, which has been enhanced to include the interactive and collaborative action, both economically and socially, of family businesses and their communities. Data are from the National Family Business Survey, 2000 panel. The processes studied include interpersonal transactions in the form of community leadership and holding an elected or appointed office, and resource transactions in the form of providing financial or technical assistance in community development, and providing donations to local programs. Models assessed the probability and intensity of assistance provided by family businesses. The findings indicate that the social and economic climate of the community may contribute to the performance of responsible actions by businesses because human, social and financial capital resources from both the family and the business can be used to solve problems in the community. The most robust result was that individuals with very positive attitudes about their local communities were more likely to serve in leadership positions and make financial and technical contributions to the community. Business owners in economically vulnerable communities were willing to assume more responsibility to fill leadership positions in the community and make substantial contributions of financial and technical assistance than those in less vulnerable communities. Policymakers must recognize the many contributions of family businesses and forge rural developmentpolicies that not only help sustain existing businesses and fuel the engine of economic growth, but encourage human capital development, and, in turn, enhance the contributions of the family and the business to their community.     

National culture, networks and ethnic entrepreneurship: A comparison of the Indian and Chinese immigrants in the US

This paper uses a combination of national cultural frameworks and social capital theory to explain the formation and management of entrepreneurial ventures among immigrant communities. The varying rates of venture formation and performance among different ethnic groups points to the role that the different dimensions of culture play in how immigrants use their social networks to start such firms. We use the specific example of the Indian and Chinese communities in the US to demonstrate this effect and explain how businesses created by members of these communities could have potentially different ways of starting and operating that can be directly traced to the differences in cultural orientation of their owners. What emerges can be summarized as: (a) different immigrant communities have different ways of accumulating and using social capital in starting and managing their ethnic ventures; (b) these dissimilarities manifest themselves in variations in the motives for forming these ventures, human resource practices and termination rates; and (c) that these variations can partly be explained by the differences in their respective national cultures.     

What does it mean to “shop local”? Examining the experiences of shoppers and store owners within the framework of downtown revitalization

The purpose of this study was to explore what it means to “shop local” and to investigate the extent to which store owners and their customers support the broader community by participating in the revitalization of a downtown area through their efforts. An interpretive design was used for this study, more precisely ethnographic methods. Specifically, participant observation, field notes, in-depth and field interviews, photography and online data collection were employed. 30 in-depth interviews and 49 field interviews were conducted with shoppers, store owners, and downtown development representatives. Findings highlight the complex nature of local shopping through the functional, social, economic, aesthetic and communal factors involved with the practice. Local shopping and local retail business ownership create positive changes within the community that contribute to downtown revitalization. Considered via practice theory, these factors provide a measure of activism and empowerment in the ways that they contribute to economic and social support for the area. This study is limited to a single city which has been in the process of revitalization for more than a decade, therefore findings may not be generalizable to cities at different stages in the revitalization process. This study provides valuable contributions concerning local retail businesses who operate within revitalizing downtown areas. For example, locallyowned retailers should consider the practical needs of the community while providing the more unique products typically offered in such stores. Further, shoppers are willing to support locally-owned businesses because they view them as integral to the community. Existing research has not addressed the reasons shoppers support locally-owned retail businesses and why store owners choose to operate in a revitalizing downtown. This paper attempts to fill that research gap.     

The Diffusion of Voluntary Environmental Programs: The Case of ISO 14001 in Korea, 1996–2011

Small family businesses have generally been shown to exhibit significant concern for social responsibility, especially at the community level. Despite the reported heterogeneity of family firms in their preferences for and participation in social responsibility, the drivers of such differences are not agreed upon in the literature. We draw from enlightened self-interest and social capital theories by exploring their complementary and competing implications for the effect of duration and community satisfaction on participation in community-oriented social responsibility (CSR). Additionally, drawing on the association between gender and self-construal and evidence that gender shapes helping and giving behaviors, we assess the moderating role of the gender of the firm manager in these relationships. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 279 family businesses and find support that gender moderates the relationship between community duration and satisfaction and measures of CSR.     

Human capital and structural upheaval: A study of manufacturing firms in the west bank

Firms in various worldwide locations are repeatedly subjected to radical political, economic, and social upheavals, including changes in administrative governance, new economic paradigms, natural disasters, and warfare. Perhaps because of the difficulty of conducting research in these environments, little is known regarding the unique requirements of entrepreneurs and their business organizations in such troubled locations. Reliable research and information is necessary in order to design and assess methods of providing institutional support both during, and after, such turmoil.Based on data collected from field interviews over a six-month period, this article examines the characteristics of the owners of 64 small manufacturing businesses that have undergone or were experiencing radical political and economic upheaval in the West Bank town of Ramallah in the Palestinian Territories. The objective of the study is to examine characteristics that influence and assist an entrepreneur's resource allocation decision-making processes. This was done by comparatively assessing the effects on profitability of both firm and individual assets in a highly constrained rapidly changing environment. Understanding this allocation process will lead to more effective targeted assistance in regions experiencing or exiting environmental transitions and upheavals.Human capital theory is utilized in this study as a framework for understanding the comparative response of owners to reallocate resources under the stressful environment of the pre- and post-intifada West Bank territories. While human capital has been well studied in literature examining resource allocation in “typical” competitive environments, our understanding of the influence of human capital in transitional environments is quite limited.This study provides some useful, and perhaps surprising results, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Owner's human capital (coded from formal education) was found to impact profitability only with the micro firms studied (those with three or fewer employees), however, it is possible that this finding reflects dilution of human capital in comparatively larger small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One interesting departure from similar studies is that experience was not found to affect the profitability of the firm. Plant capital, on the other hand, was found to be associated with the profitability of only larger SMEs, controlling for business age and experience of the owner. This finding is significant because, presently, institutions such as the World Bank, NGOs and national development agencies focus their efforts primarily on providing credit to small businesses, whereas training and education currently are somewhat out of favor.A model is proposed in this study comparing resource requirements according to both the size and the productivity/technological level of the firm. The object is to explain the reduced importance of human capital and experience in environments of radical transition, specifically the arbitrary nature and lack of predictability of transitional governance, and the increased importance of financial capital only with large SMEs. It is argued that skills acquired in functional expertise do not necessarily prepare an entrepreneur for the abrupt environmental transformations characteristic of tumultuous political events. This research suggests that owners are in a better position to maximize their cognitive skills in decision making within smaller organizations. However, these skills are naturally diffused and so less effective at influencing the outcomes of somewhat larger organizations. Larger SMEs are necessarily more capital intensive and more bureaucratic, and so the cumulative human capital at the organizational level may be more important to allocative efficiency than the human capital of the individual firm owner. Further, larger SMEs require organizational expertise that may not be captured in the individual level characteristics of entrepreneurs.This research suggests that efforts to support such environments should carefully consider the size of the firms in question before designing and implementing programs of assistance, differentiating microenterprises from small businesses. In particular, the findings of this study suggest that smaller firms experiencing rapid environmental upheaval will benefit most from formal education, training and advice. Larger firms, in contrast, appear to benefit most from loans providing traditional capital support, and from advice across the entire firm's human capital base, particularly regarding organizational management and delegation skills.     

Community Social Responsibility and Its Consequences for Family Business Performance*

Family‐centered businesses may have unique perspectives of socially responsible behavior due to family involvement and ties to the community. This research explored the antecedents and consequences of community social responsibility (CSR) for family firms operating in small and rural markets. Using a national sample from the 2000 wave of the National Family Business Survey (NFBS), researchers profiled family business operators' (n = 221) to determine if their CSR orientation contributed to family business performance. Enlightened self interest and social capital perspectives provide a framework for elaborating the role of CSR in sustaining family businesses in changing small communities. Results indicate that three dimensions, commitment to the community, community support, and sense of community, account for 43 percent of the variation in family business operators' CSR. Size of the business was significantly related to family firms' ability to give and receive community support. Further, commitment to the community was found to significantly explain perceived family business performance while community support explained financial performance. Findings suggest that socially responsible business behaviors can indeed contribute to the sustainability of family businesses in small rural communities.     

Intergenerational aspects of government policy under changing demographic and economic conditions.

Changing demographic and economic conditions in the US require that attention be given to some of the intergenerational equity features of government policy. In particular, social insurance programs and public debt leave public liabilities to future generations. Taken in the aggregate, the effects of rapidly rising public debt and especially social insurance programs are transferring substantial amounts of resources from younger working generations to the expanding generation of retirees. The most crucial element in evaluating the desirability of intergenerational wealth distribution in the long run is the rate of economic growth. A society's monetary, fiscal, tax, and regulatory policies can be more or less conducive to the generation of capital formation, technical change, and economic growth. Policies that influence growth and interest rates will combine with the national deficit to determine how rapidly the debt grows or shrinks. Present accounting procedures are insufficient to provide quantitative answers to the question of what is the impact of a given program on the age-specific distributions of resources. It is important to reconsider the desirability and efficiency of intergenerational redistributions of wealth in the US. It is likely that current policies are not in line with the principles of efficiency, equity, target effectiveness, and cost effectiveness.     

Sustainable Supply Chain Design in Social Businesses: Advancing the Theory of Supply Chain

A significant conceptual and practical challenge for companies is how to integrate triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability into their global supply chains. In supply chain research, the classic economic perspective—the business of business is to be profitable—still dominates, followed by coverage of the environmental dimension; the social dimension is underrepresented. Stakeholders, however, are calling for a TBL perspective that simultaneously includes environmental, social, and economic gains. While there have been recent theoretical advances on how to characterize supply chains in terms of their structure, how to connect these insights into supply chain design for TBL sustainability has not been studied. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to move the theory of supply chain forward into the sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research agenda. Toward that purpose, the paper analyzes the sustainable supply chain design (SSCD) at social businesses, incorporating the physical chain and the information and financial support chains. Four social businesses located in Haiti are used as cases of innovative supply chain structures for TBL sustainability. By analyzing the supply chain structures and boundaries of these social businesses, three supply chain configurations combining physical and support chains are presented.     

Service-driven social community and its relation to well-being

This study aims to develop a conceptual framework pertaining to a service-driven social community and its relation to customer well-being. This paper draws on motivations and self-determination theory to expand an existing empowerment framework for a better understanding of how a service provider, which aims at transforming its service offerings to achieve business sustainability, supports for his/her customers’ needs in value co-creation in the beginning and over the course of time, which subsequently drive their active engagement in co-creation. The framework reinforces the transformative role of a service to establish a social community to satisfy customers’ psychological needs for competence, autonomy and a sense of relatedness. The satisfaction will drive the community to form a collective commitment to shared goals and intercustomer support, which subsequently perpetuates community members’ positive experiences of living well. This is accomplished through a case study drawn from the cTaipei platform, where service providers interact with their networks and customers to co-create values in developing a creative Taipei city. This paper contributes to this practice by providing a roadmap for services and customers to be benefited from the proposed service-driven social community framework.     

A Model of Community–Based Venture Capital Formation To Fund Early–Stage Technology–Based Firms

This paper suggests a model of capital formation that concurrently establishes a mechanism to fund early–stage technology–based firms and meets the economic development needs of rural communities. Investors in a community capital investment fund can gain high rates of return on investment while firms realize all of the benefits associated with the investment, community support, and expanded network. The model includes factors associated with the community environment (community–based factors that impact community members' participation) and external support environment (factors that facilitate the accumulation of investment capital within a community). The result of a community effort can be an environment in which members of the community contribute to an investment fund, cooperate in attracting firms, and provide networking assistance to new business owners. Communities benefit through job creation and economic stability. Community members benefit through wealth creation.     

Supporting Social Enterprises to Support Vulnerable Consumers: The Example of Community Development Finance Institutions and Financial Exclusion

This article examines the role of social enterprises in providing fair services to vulnerable consumers, focusing on the vulnerability of low-income consumers to high-cost exploitative credit as a result of a lack of access to mainstream financial services. It will be argued that both the state and the corporate sector have a role to play in providing the means with which vulnerable consumers can overcome financial exclusion, through access to fair services. However, this cannot and should not be achieved through increased welfare provision or through reliance on corporate social responsibility initiatives alone. In rejecting solutions focused on increased welfare or voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives, this article suggests that regulatory support for the development and growth of social enterprises, such as community development finance institutions, will most effectively give rise to a social framework in which vulnerability and unequal opportunity with respect to financial services is addressed.     

The Day After Grant-Aid: Business Development Schemes for Small Rural Firms in Lagging Areas of Greece

This paper investigates the need for providing follow up business development instruments to small rural businesses that have benefited from grant aid assistance schemes. A sample of 76 small rural businesses in lagging areas of insular Greece is included in the present survey, and ranks thirteen possible business growth instruments. It is found that business development instruments are ranked according to each firm's economic and human capital characteristics. Furthermore, most firms need the concurrent provision of more than one instrument. Likewise, a mixture of business specific schemes, regulatory interventions and infrastructure projects, better serves their business development needs. Results from the present survey indicate that an integrated business development strategy in lagging areas of Greece should be supported by modern, flexibly tailored combinations of assistance, using complex, multi-instrument sets of support to development efforts.     

The consequences of social responsibility for small business owners in small towns

This paper focuses on three under‐researched subjects in the corporate social responsibility literature: small businesses, small towns, and consequences of social responsibility for the business owner personally. Small businesses are the vast majority of businesses and make a significant contribution to national economic vitality. Their value to the survival of small towns, where they are often the only businesses, is even more important. Research indicates that the social performance of big and small businesses alike is dependent upon the values and disposition of the top decision maker. Therefore, insight into the owner's motivations for contributing to community betterment and the consequences of that behavior for the business and the owner will add to this literature. Equally important, this knowledge can inform policies aimed at increasing good citizenship for all sizes of businesses regardless of location.     

Teaching the Linkages Between the International Credit and Foreign Exchange Markets

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a teaching model which provides an analytical framework that encourages students to think about economic events in a global context. It ties the international credit and foreign exchange markets together and shows how international capital flows represent the crucial linkage between them. This model is primarily a teaching tool which illustrates how changes in monetary and fiscal policies in one country, say Japan, impact world interest rates, exchange rates, and trade and capital imbalances for other countries. This approach can also be used to illustrate the impacts of changes in savings and investment behavior by businesses and households, as well as central bank interventions.     

Exploring the mediating role of utilitarian value and hedonic value in the formation of oppositional loyalty in online communities

Our research expands the scope of the research on oppositional loyalty from brands to online communities. Online communities allow members to freely express their opinions and promote the occurrence of oppositional loyalty behaviours towards the communities. Oppositional loyalty is defined in this article that, for the purpose of strengthening the market position of their preferred community, members of the online community may express negative views or even show oppositional behaviour towards adversarial communities. In view of social capital theory, the study examines the effect of hedonic value and utilitarian value on oppositional loyalty in online communities. The results show that only hedonic value significantly affects oppositional loyalty; hedonic value mediates the effect of the three dimensions of social capital (network ties, identification, and common language) on oppositional loyalty. The study identifies that community type moderates the impact of social capital (identification and common language) on hedonic value but does not moderate the effect of social capital on utilitarian value. Finally, we find that members' oppositional loyalty towards their community can promote their community participation. This research provides recommendations for online community managers to manage and benefit from members' oppositional loyalty.     

Research note: How a small business enters the international market

As the rate of economic globalization becomes faster and faster, small businesses in the United States can no longer afford to ignore the challenge of international commerce. Small businesses are a key factor in the economies of all nations. Small businesses must develop a global culture, challenge the attitude of key decision makers, gain crucial international experience, and overcome the size barrier. This requires successful entry‐wedge strategies if the company hopes to have any chance of success. Many will need external support in finding ways to access foreign customers. This article provides information that can help small businesses with this venture. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Lessons from the COVID19 pandemic: The case of retail and consumer service firms

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted business operations in every industry and sector around the world. Scholars, practitioners and policymakers continue to engage in understanding the effects of lockdowns, social distancing measures and other restrictions on trade; the impact of government stimulus and support measures, and how businesses have adapted their operations. The dynamic nature of the virus, and the changing socio-political and economic landscape, provide the opportunity for empirical scholarly research examining how retail and service firms have responded to the challenges and potential opportunities presented by the pandemic, and how owner/managers have pivoted in an (often) uncertain trading environment. This paper presents the findings of an applied study involving business owners (N = 268) of SME retail and service firms in the island state of Tasmania, in Australia, during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. Findings show: (1) despite over 65 per cent of respondents reporting a downturn in revenue during 2020, almost 80 per cent indicated they had confidence in business survival heading into 2021; (2) whilst on average, businesses did not rate the level of environmental hostility as being particularly high, there was a significant correlation between perceived environmental hostility and assessment of business performance and with the level of confidence of business survival; (3) Australian federal government support and other stimulus measures were deemed crucial for business survival during 2020 with three quarters of businesses accessing the ‘JobKeeper’ scheme, and (4) businesses adapted their operations during the pandemic in terms of new products and services, increased marketing, pivoting their use of technology and promoting ‘localness’.     

浅议个体工商户向微型企业转型

近两年,随着"微型企业"成为独立的企业类型及其政策倾斜力度的持续加大,个体工商户的转型升级迎来了更优的政策空间。作为我国特殊经济体制下的个体工商户,在适当条件下稳步向企业转型,将会对个人、企业及国家带来积极的推动作用和深刻的社会意义。发展成熟的个体工商户应该把握机遇,积极进行微型企业转型,不断增强自身素质以及规范化运营体系,从而保持其长久生存与发展能力,更好地发挥在经济、社会中的重大作用。     

Community and managerial predictors of performance in small rural US retail and service firms

Conducting business in today's rural community environment offers social and economic promise along with uncertainty in facing the phenomenon of having fewer customers, who make fewer visits, and spend less per visit. This research highlights the importance of both community and managerial factors to performance evaluations of small rural retail and service firm owners. Using path analysis, direct and indirect effects on perceptual and financial performance were identified for a national US sample of 275 rural small-sized retail and service businesses. This study provides information from largely successful firms for developing marketing strategies and product/service offerings as a crucial step in assisting businesses in rural communities.