Financing the small firm

This study presents a framework to delineate financing the small firm. Special consideration is given to small firms' unique financing sources such as trade and bank credit, entrepreneur's own resources, informal investment, and venture capital. The small firm has limited or no access to many traditional debt and equity markets that supply long term financing to the corporate world, and therefore operates in segmented and imperfect financial markets. The links between small firms' financing opportunities and managerial goals are traced from the start-up stage through establishing a mature firm. As the small firm matures, it operates in a broader financial market. This study establishes the foundation for future empirical research.     

Small firm mutual funds: Additional evidence on the small firm effect

Returns generated with small firm mutual fund data are used to examine the extent to which identification of a small firm effect is due to the difficulty in measuring the direct and indirect transaction costs involved in investing in the common shares of small capitalization stocks. Little if any evidence of the excess risk-adjusted returns is obtained for either of the period 1978–1983, when the small firm effect was observed, or the period 1984–1989, when it was not. The small firm effect may therefore be attributed to (1) higher direct transaction costs including bid-ask spread and broker fees and (2) higher indirect transaction costs including portfolio management expenses and market impact costs.The authors thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and Brett Salazar for valuable assistance in data collection. Errors remain our own.     

Building an integrative model of small business growth

The purpose of this article is to develop an integrative model of small business growth that is both broad in scope and parsimonious in nature. Such a “big picture” model provides an opportunity (1) to gauge how much we really know about small business growth, when we simultaneously consider the constructs from the dominant perspectives, (2) to assess the contribution of each of these perspectives, (3) to examine the indirect effects that some constructs from one perspective might have on small business growth through constructs from another perspective, and (4) to consider different levels of analysis. Based on an analysis of data from 413 small businesses, we derive a set of propositions that suggest how entrepreneurial orientation, environmental characteristics, firm resources, and managers’ personal attitudes directly and/or indirectly influence the growth of small businesses.      

Sources of variation in firm profitability and growth

This article reports an analysis of the sources of variation in profitability and growth for manufacturing firms located in eleven European countries. A variance decomposition analysis determines the importance of the country, industry, corporate group and firm effects on profitability and growth. The analysis reveals evidence of differences between industries in the comparative advantage offered by different countries, reflecting a tendency for specialization and geographic concentration. However, as in several previous studies, the firm-level effects are the most important class of effect in explaining the variation in performance.     

Aligning strategic processes in pursuit of firm growth

Strategy formation mode refers to the way organizations devise their strategies. While some organizations do so through an explicit, formalized, and planned method, other organizations unintentionally create patterns in their strategic decisions—a strategy formation route that is more emergent in nature. This research explores the relationship between strategy formation mode and firm growth. Further, this article explores two strategic processes—forecasting and long-range objective setting—and their efficacy in association with particular strategy formation modes. Primary and secondary data collected from 103 manufacturing firms were used to test the hypotheses. Results indicate that the relationship between strategy formation mode and firm growth is curvilinear (inverted-U shape). Further, a three-way interactive effect is found between strategy formation mode, forecasting, and long-range objective setting on firm growth.     

International ambidexterity and firm performance in small emerging economies

Conventional IB theories stress the importance and implications of a firm's exploitative strategy. However, the unprecedented competitive nature of contemporary business necessitates firm “ambidexterity” — the simultaneous execution of exploitation and exploration activities. Using balanced panel data of 207 Taiwanese firms spanning six years, this research examines the effects of international ambidexterity on firm performance. Findings reveal that ambidexterity promotes a firm's performance. For firms from small emerging economies, international ambidexterity is highly vulnerable to environmental complexity and sensitive to previous international experience and the firm's capability to conduct international business. These factors significantly moderate firm performance.     

Resources of the firm, Russian high-technology startups, and firm growth

Russia possessed many world-class technologies prior to the break up of the Soviet Union. Entrepreneurial endeavors resulted from this technological ability as market forces encouraged individuals to leave the large state enterprises that produced those technologies. Founding characteristics of the firm impact the resources that are available to the startup firm. This study investigates the extent to which founding factors in Russia help high-technology firms to prosper. It was found that the team establishing the business mitigated the liability of newness. However, in contrast to the US, the culture of Russia does not produce negative results if the founding team grows very large. Additionally, it was shown that firms that pursued more technological products and enter the market later performed best.     

Process innovations and firm productivity growth

This article analyses the effect of process innovations on firm total factor productivity growth, explicitly considering the impact of firm size on the nature of this relationship. In particular, we analyse whether firm size affects the life span of the impact of process innovations on productivity growth. The data are drawn from a Spanish survey of manufacturing firms over the period 1991–1998. We use a fully non-parametric methodology based on the concept of stochastic dominance. Our results show that the implementation of process innovations produces an extra productivity growth both for large and small firms. However, this productivity growth is more persistent for large than for small firms.     

New firm growth and bank financing

This paper examines the extent to which Lucas' ideas on human capital and Jovanovic' theorising on learning can provide further insights into the development of small firms. It focuses exclusively upon newly established independent firms. Our evidence from two surveys is that bank lending to new firms is unrelated to many of the personal characteristics of founders which have been argued by other researchers to relate to small firm performance. Instead lending appears to be more related to whether or not the founder can or chooses to use personal savings, and the legal status of the business.     

Networks and small business growth: An explanatory model

To date, there has been limited empirical research related to network theory. With this article, we have tried to fill this gap by testing an explanatory model of the impact of networks on small business growth. To analyze this causal relationship, the log-linear technique was used. The results suggest that networks have an influence on the growth of a small business, especially through contacts with national and international entrepreneurs.     

The aftermarket performance of small firm initial public offerings

The dream of many entrepreneurs is to some day take his or her growing small firm public and, to thereby become the CEO of a publicly-traded corporation. Currently, entrepreneurs are continuing to utilize initial public offerings (IPOs), as a viable source of venture financing. IPOs also represent a viable mechanism for harvesting venture capital and entrepreneurial investments. The touted entrepreneurial benefits of taking a company public include the abilities to borrow additional funds; return to the public equity market; negotiate mergers without depleting cash; the potential for enhanced personal wealth and so forth. Investors in small firm public equity issues are often motivated by the potential for discovering another Apple Computer, or perhaps an IBM at the “ground floor.”This study empirically examines the aftermarket returns of small publicly-held firms that have issued initial public offerings. Aftermarket returns refers to stock returns immediately after a stock begins trading. The study specifically examines two questions. First, “Is there a positive risk-return relationship for small firm aftermarket returns, where higher firm risk will generate higher aftermarket return?” Second, “Will aftermarket returns show on industry effect, where certain industries will automatically generate higher returns?” Answers to these questions will affect the strategic financial alternatives available to entrepreneurs both before and after going public and, will also affect the decisions of investors interested in financing small public corporations.The research findings indicate that entrepreneurs planning to take younger firms public will probably not have available to them numerous subsequent financial alternatives, utilizing corporate stock, if the true aftermarket performance of their stock is taken into consideration. Likewise, investors in small firm public issues may also be disappointed in the aftermarket performance of younger firms. A positive risk-return relationship, where age was a proxy measure of risk, did not exist. This was true even though the initially quoted returns of these same younger firms may have been substantial. On the other hand, the aftermarket performance of older firms is typically favorable.Finally, the study suggests that neither entrepreneurs nor investors should bet solely on a particular industry categorization to “carry” their aftermarket stock performance. While certain industries indicated significant positive initial returns, aftermarket returns based on industry classification were generally not statistically significant. Investors should therefore always exercise firmspecific due diligence and research before investing in small firm public equity issues, since the variance of their aftermarket market returns tends to be large.     

The effect of institutional quality on firm export performance in emerging economies: a contingency model of firm age and size

It is widely accepted that countries with sound formal and informal institutions create more robust environments for firm performance. However, due to the liabilities faced by firms without available slack and/or market power, we contend that institutions are especially important for new and small firms. Unfortunately, there is little research examining the potential moderating effect of firm size or age on the relationship between institutional quality and export performance. In response, we hypothesize that institutional quality will be more important to increasing the export performance of new and small firms compared with their large, established counterparts. We test our hypotheses using data from the World Bank’s World Business Environment Survey. The results of our analyses offer support for our model, although some institutional variables appear to be more important to export performance than others. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results.     

Succession and firm growth: results from a non-parametric matching approach

The article analyses the relationship between succession and firm performance. Applying a non-parametric matching approach on a panel of roughly 4,000 Austrian family firms we evaluate the impact of actual (past) succession as well as planned (future) successions on employment growth. Analysing succession plans, we do not find a significant difference in employment growth between firms that plan to transfer the firm in the next 10 years and those who do not. In contrast, past succession exerts a significant and positive employment growth effect, which becomes stronger over time.

Bundling governance mechanisms to efficiently organize small firm loans

Bank loans are a common source of financing for small firms. While scholars have examined specific conditions that affect small firm loan approval and interest rates, practical questions remain about how these loans are structured to address characteristically acute challenges from asymmetric information. This paper suggests collateral, reputation, and relationship banking each perform unique exchange-organizing tasks, and that small firms systematically use them in predictable combinations. A multiple discriminant analysis of 796 small firm loans suggests four governance bundles are commonly employed in this setting. The implications for managers focus on how loan governance mechanisms are most efficiently bundled together.     

The role of employees for post-entry firm growth

While the majority of existing studies on the determinants of post-entry firm growth focus on the role of the founders or on the impact of firm-specific characteristics, possible effects of the characteristics of a start-up’s workforce have been widely neglected to date. In this paper we examine the role of initial worker and job characteristics (e.g., qualification, age, workload, marginal employment) of start-ups for their post‐entry employment growth. The analyses are based upon a capacious panel dataset comprising a representative 50 % sample of establishments in Germany. Our empirical results show that, inter alia, high-skilled and young workers are conducive to growth in terms of both the number of employees and full-time equivalents. With respect to flexible work forms, however, establishments using part-time employment show higher post‐entry growth only in terms of total hours worked, but a significantly lower growth with respect to the number of employees.     

Older consumer opportunities: small firm response in a selected group of UK service sector markets

Socio-demographic trends mean that the 50+ age group are wealthier and now enjoy high per capita incomes. Some large firms are now exploiting the opportunities within this market. This study aims to assess whether small UK service firms are also revising their marketing practices in response to socio-demographic change. A survey suggests most small firms have not yet recognised the opportunities available. The exceptions are the more entrepreneurially orientated small firms. Discussion is provided on the need for further research to small firm behaviour in the 50+ market.     

The roles of R&;D in new firm growth

Innovative start-ups are an important driver of economic growth. This article presents empirical evidence on the effects of research and development (R&D) on new product development, interfirm alliances and employment growth during the early life course of firms. We use a dataset that contains a sample of new firms that is representative of the whole population of start-ups. This dataset covers the first 6 years of the life course of firms. It is revealed that R&D plays several roles during the early life course of high-tech as well as high-growth firms. The effect of initial R&D on high-tech firm growth is through increasing levels of interfirm alliances in the first post-entry years. R&D efforts enable the exploitation of external knowledge. Initial R&D also stimulates new product development later on in the life course of high-tech firms, but this does not seem to affect firm growth. R&D does not affect the growth rate of new low-tech firms, which seem to be driven mainly by the growth ambitions of the founding entrepreneur. The results show that R&D matters for a limited but important set of new high-tech and high-growth firms, which are key in innovation and entrepreneurship policies.

The relationship between firm growth and labor demand

Gibrat's Law is tested on a sample of Italian firms. The results are similar to those recently obtained on various sets of U.S. data and confirm that departures from Gibrat's Law are modest, also when firms' age is accounted for.     

Market delimitation,firm survival and growth in service industries

This article focuses on the effect of both firm survival and market delimitation on stochastic growth behaviour in the realm of service industries. Two samples of firms were selected for the study, one of them representing the surviving firm population in the tourism industry and the other one representing the firm total. The activity of firms was used for measuring the influence of market delimitation. Stochastic growth behaviour is found to hold for the sector as a whole, whereas it does not do so for the population of surviving firms. Market delimitation is also observed to influence growth behaviour, but only when combined with firm survival.     

Exports,investment and production growth: A dynamic heterogeneous firm model with learning and entry costs

We analyze a firm’s joint decision to export and invest using a model that incorporates the essential features of self-selection and learning-by-exporting theories of firm-level dynamics. We calibrate the model to 2002–2007 Chilean manufacturing plant data and simulate it under different assumptions, finding that neither self-selection nor learning-by-exporting alone can adequately explain the observed cross-sectional relationship between firm level exports and capital, favoring instead a model that allows both mechanisms to work in tandem.