How Small Business Managers’ Age and Focus on Opportunities Affect Business Growth: A Mediated Moderation Growth Model

Research on business growth has been criticized for methodological weaknesses. We present a mediated moderation growth model as a new methodological approach. We hypothesized that small business managers’ age negatively affects business growth through focus on opportunities. We sampled 201 small business managers and obtained firm performance data over 5 years, resulting in 836 observations. Growth modeling showed systematic differences in firm performance trajectories. These differences could be explained by modeling focus on opportunities as a mediator of the relationship between small business managers’ age and business growth. The study illustrates how mediation models can be tested using growth modeling.     

Influence of family ownership on small business growth. Evidence from French SMEs

The performance implications of family ownership have been studied extensively. However, studies that investigate the influence of family ownership on small business growth remain scarce and suffer from several shortcomings. To remedy these shortcomings, this paper uses a very large sample of French SMEs to explore the relationship between family ownership and small business growth. First, this study shows that there is a negative, although non-monotonic, relationship between family ownership and small business economic growth. Second, it explores the channel through which family ownership affects firm growth. Results suggest that firms with greater family ownership are prone to below-potential rates of economic growth, given their internal financing resources. Overall, the results suggest that small family businesses have a propensity to deliberately limit their growth (i.e., they adopt conservative growth behavior).     

Learning Opportunities and Learning Behaviours of Small Business Starters: Relations with Goal Achievement,Skill Development and Satisfaction

Learning is a vital issue for small business starters, contributing to short- and long-term business performance, as well as to personal development. This study investigates when and how small business starters learn. It specifies the situations that offer learning opportunities, as well as the learning behaviours that small business starters can employ in order to learn from these opportunities. In a cross-sectional, quantitative study of recently started small business founders, learning opportunities and learning behaviours are related to three outcome measures: a performance outcome (goal achievement), a personal growth outcome (skill development), and an affective evaluation outcome (satisfaction). The results show the importance of learning opportunities and learning behaviours in influencing these outcome variables, albeit not always in the directions we hypothesized.     

Small business growth through geographic expansion: A comparative case study

Although the small business sector as a whole is achieving phenomenal growth, an important concern in the field has been identifying the problems, challenges, and success characteristics associated with the prudent growth of individual firms. A strategy utilized by many small firms to achieve their growth objectives is one of geographic expansion. This approach involves expanding a firm’s business from its original location to one or more additional geographic sites, and is particularly well suited for firms that cannot expand in their present location but believe that their products or services may be appealing to consumers in other markets.Surprisingly, despite the prevalence of geographic expansion as a means of small firm growth, this is a neglected area of small business research. Although researchers have examined the common challenges associated with small firm growth, a small business that expands from one location to several locations is subject to a number of potentially unique challenges. For example, during the course of opening a new geographic site, a small business manager will be confronted with the task of managing an existing business and a start-up at the same time. The challenge created by this undertaking, along with the other challenges associated with geographic expansion, have not been specifically identified. An improved understanding of these challenges may help small firm managers maximize their changes of leading successful expansion efforts.As a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology to develop a theoretical model of the antecedents of effective small business geographic expansion. The model was developed in two steps. First, a preliminary model of the antecedents of effective small business geographic expansion was developed from the existing small business growth literature. Second, using analytic induction, the preliminary model was compared with the experiences of five small businesses that have engaged in a growth strategy of geographic expansion for the purpose of developing a more thorough and more valid theoretical model. A unique attribute of the sample is that not all of the businesses have been successful in their expansion efforts. Two of the five small businesses included in the study have had failed expansions, providing us the rare opportunity to contrast failed expansion efforts against successful ones.The model that emerged from this approach supports the notion that geographic expansion involves a unique set of managerial challenges. The consistent evidence across the five case studies indicated that effective small business geographic expansion involves the following six major areas of concern: planning for growth, managing growth, reasons for growth, expansion site characteristics, a set of moderator variables, and expansion performance.Among the implications of the study is that the unique nature of the geographic expansion process adds a layer of complexity to firm growth that exacerbates the need for planning. Along with the normal challenges involved with adding structure to accommodate growth, a firm that engages in geographic expansion must do this in an unfamiliar location, where the market potential and legitimacy of the firm’s business concept is untested. The consistent evidence that emerged from the cases is that planning helps attenuate these challenges. In addition, the recruitment and selection of qualified personnel to staff expansion sites is a critical activity, along with networking in the expansion site locations to establish organizational legitimacy. Three variables were found to moderate the relationship between managing growth and expansion performance. Learning and flexibility were found to have a positive influence on the managing growth expansion performance relationship, whereas environmental turbulence was found to have the opposite impact. Finally, a complex set of relationships emerged from the study pertaining to expansion site characteristics. For instance, the evidence generated across the cases suggested that planning helps a firm develop a set of heuristics for expansion site selection, which helps a firm avoid placing a site in an undesirable location.     

A theoretical overview and extension of research on sex,gender, and entrepreneurship

With the rising number of women-owned businesses has come a considerable amount of research, and even more speculation, on differences between male and female entrepreneurs and their businesses. To date, these findings and speculations have been largely atheoretical, and little progress has been made in understanding whether such differences are pervasive, let alone why they might exist. Thus public policy-makers have had little guidance on such difficult issues as whether or not unique training and support programs should be designed for women versus men. Moreover, lenders who finance new and growing firms have little to go on but their own “gut instinct” in assessing whether women's and men's businesses are likely to run in similar ways, or whether they might be run in different but equally effective ways.The lack of integrative frameworks for understanding the nature and implications of issues related to sex, gender, and entrepreneurship has been a major obstacle. Two perspectives that help to organize and interpret past research, and highlight avenues for future research, are liberal feminism and social feminism.Liberal feminist theory suggests that women are disadvantaged relative to men due to overt discrimination and/or to systemic factors that deprive them of vital resources like business education and experience. Previous studies that have investigated whether or not women are discriminated against by lenders and consultants, and whether or not women actually do have less relevant education and experience, are consistent with a liberal feminist perspective. Those empirical studies that have been conducted provide modest evidence that overt discrimination, or any systematic lack of access to resources that women may experience, impedes their ability to succeed in business.Social feminist theory suggests that, due to differences in early and ongoing socialization, women and men do differ inherently. However, it also suggests that this does not mean women are inferior to men, as women and men may develop different but equally effective traits. Previous entrepreneurship studies that have compared men and women on socialized traits and values are consistent with a social feminist perspective. These studies have documented few consistent gender differences, and have suggested that those differences that do exist may have little impact on business performance.While this interpretation of past findings is relevant to the question of if and how female and male entrepreneurs differ, there are still large gaps in our knowledge. In particular, only one study (Kalleberg and Leicht 1991) has systematically explored whether or not potential differences related to discrimination or socialization affect business performance; the study used limited measures of business performance, and assessed only a restricted range of male I female differences. This article reports on a study that explored other potential differences related to discrimination and to socialization (which are hypothesized based on liberal and social feminism) and looked at their relationship to a more comprehensive set of business performance measures.The study indicates that for a large, randomly selected sample of entrepreneurs in the manufacturing, retail, and service sectors, there were few differences in the education obtained by males and females, or in their business motivations. Women entrepreneurs were, however, found to have less experience in managing employees, in working in similar firms, or in helping to start-up new businesses. Women's firms also were found to be smaller than men's, to have lower growth in income over two years, and to have lower sales per employee. Regressions undertaken to examine predictors of a range of business performance indicators suggest that women's lesser experience in working in similar firms and in helping to start-up businesses may help to explain the smaller size, slower income growth, and lesser sales per employee of their firms.For policy-makers, this article suggests that systemic factors that afford women less access to experience must be addressed. Support for classroom training or related advisory activities may not be warranted; there is little evidence that women lack access to relevant classroom education. However, programs that help increase women's access to hands-on experience in starting firms or in working in the industry in which they hope to set up business does seem advisable. In-class education or counseling would not seem to compensate for lack of real-world experience, which suggests that any available funds should be directed more toward initiatives centered on apprenticeship programs than toward those centered on classroom teaching.Implications for lenders and investors are less clear cut, but suggest that whatever innate differences may exist between men and women are irrelevant to entrepreneurship. While women's businesses do not perform as well as men's on measures of size, they show fewer differences on other, arguably more critical business effectiveness measures-growth and productivity—and no differences on returns. Discrimination against women-owned businesses based on these findings would clearly be both unethical and unwarranted. The fact that women appear to obtain similar growth, productivity, and returns, in fact, suggests that they may be compensating for experience deficits in ways that current research does not illuminate. While more systematic inquiry is required to assist in understanding why men's and women's firms may differ in some predictable ways, this study would suggest that lenders and investors wishing to assist small businesses should focus on evaluating the amount and quality of the business and non-business experience of entrepreneurs, and consider sex an irrelevant variable.For entrepreneurs, this research reinforces the notion that acquiring relevant industry and entrepreneurial experience is of considerable importance if they seek to establish large firms and/or to achieve substantial firm productivity and returns. In particular, helping in the start-up of firms and spending extended periods of time in the industry of choice appear to yield subsequent rewards in the performance of any individual's firm. Future research is needed to investigate whether or not other types of business experience or non-business experience might bring additional benefits in terms of positive impact on future business performance, but the indication of the current work is that one's sex per se is neither a liability nor an asset.     

Linking family-to-business enrichment and support to entrepreneurial success: Do female and male entrepreneurs experience different outcomes?

This study used survey data from 253 entrepreneurs who founded small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to examine how experiences in their family domain may benefit their experiences in their business domain. Specifically, it hypothesized that affective family-to-business enrichment, instrumental family-to-business enrichment, and family-to-business support would be positively related to entrepreneurial success and that each relationship would be more positive for female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial success was assessed by economic measures (business performance, growth in employment) and measures of satisfaction with the entrepreneurial experience (satisfaction with status, satisfaction with employee relationships). Results offered substantial support for the notion that female entrepreneurs benefit from the linkages of family-to-business enrichment and support to entrepreneurial success, whereas they offered no support for the notion that male entrepreneurs benefit from these linkages. Female entrepreneurs may experience such benefits because of their relative lack of access to other resources such as human, social, and financial capital and because the female gender role encourages them to pursue work–family synergies. In contrast, male entrepreneurs may fail to experience such benefits because of the relative abundance of other resources available to them and because the male gender role discourages them from pursuing work–family synergies.     

Market Orientation in the Chilean Small Business Context

Abstract

Market orientation has been considered a key factor in successful business operations across different markets. To test this assertion, the authors examine the influence of a firm's market orientation on small business performance in the Chilean retail environment. They go on to report empirical information about the characteristics of the market-oriented retailers in Chile. The Kohli, Jaworski, and Kumar (1993) MARKOR scale is used in the study to assess the market orientation in the context of a developing country environment. Data for the study were collected from small retailers in Chile through self-administered questionnaires using a drop-off/pick-up method. The results show a significant correlation between market orientation and small business performance. Path analyses found that the best structure among the Market Orientation dimensions is: Intelligence Generation→ Intelligence Dissemination → Responsiveness. Moreover, these performance measures differed significantly among the three different partitions obtained using a k-means cluster analysis. The findings indicate that the MARKOR scale is both valid and reliable in a diverse Chilean small business environment.     

THE BENEFITS OF USING E‐BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY: THE SUPPLIER PERSPECTIVE

The use of e‐business technologies between supply chain organizations has primarily been examined from the viewpoint of buying firms or retailers, with little attention given to the benefits accrued to suppliers. Further, previous studies have been limited to either financial or marketing performance measures, or a narrow range of operational measures. This study builds on research in this area by testing a model of the relationship between supplier use of e‐business technologies in communication with their primary buyer, degree of buyer‐supplier coordination, and a complete set of benefits that include strategic and operational performance measures. Using data from 241 first‐tier OEM suppliers in the computer industry, the findings show that supplier use of e‐business technologies positively impacts organizational benefits both directly and indirectly by promoting buyer‐supplier coordination.     

Illegal entrepreneurship experience: Does it make a difference for business performance and motivation?

Existing studies show a positive relationship between entrepreneurs' business performance and their conventional human capital as measured by previous business experience and formal education. In this paper, we explore whether illegal entrepreneurship experience (IEE), an unconventional form of human capital, is related to the performance and motivation of entrepreneurs operating legal businesses in a transition context. Using regression techniques on a sample of 399 private business owners in Lithuania, we find that, in general, IEE is significantly and positively associated with subjective measures of business motivation. Moreover, younger entrepreneurs benefit from their IEE in terms of business performance, indicating that they have been more successful than older entrepreneurs in transferring their IEE to a market oriented setting. In addition, IEE and business performance are positively related for entrepreneurs who started completely new legal businesses. Thus, our research partially supports the notion that prior experience in the black or gray market may signal and provide valuable human capital for legal enterprising.     

Same Boundary Management Preference,Different Outcome: Toward a Gendered Perspective of Boundary Theory Among Entrepreneurs

Work‐family boundary research debates whether family demands should be integrated or separated from work demands. Our thesis is that the impact of boundary management preferences on business performance depends on the entrepreneur's gender. We also investigate how family‐to‐business support and business location alter the gender and boundary management preference interaction. Results show that an integration preference enhances business performance for men regardless of family‐to‐business support or business location. A segmentation preference aids women's business performance, especially among those with high family‐to‐business support and an independent business. An integration preference yields greater business performance for women with an at‐home business.     

Gender Comparisons in Strategic Decision-Making: An Empirical Analysis of the Entrepreneurial Strategy Matrix

The strategic decision-making of male and female small businesspersons and entrepreneurs has been investigated in prior research, but the findings are mixed. This article reports on a gender comparison testing of the Entrepreneurial Strategy Matrix, a situational model which suggests strategies for new and ongoing ventures in response to the identification of different levels of venture innovation and risk. A national sample of 184 small firm owers (59 percent male/41 percent female) was tested. Results indicate that there are no significant gender differences in venture innovation/risk situation or in strategies chosen by business owners. Male respondents did indicate a higher overall satisfaction with venture performance than did females.     

Under the AEGIS of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship: employment growth and gender of founders among European firms

An increasing number of theoretical and empirical analyses address the role of innovation as one of the main sources of firm growth. More recently, studies have looked at the role of gender diversity as a possible determinant of innovation and entrepreneurial performance. However, the relationship between gender and employment growth—a dimension of entrepreneurial performance—still remains unexplored to a large degree. This paper contributes to the empirical literature on gender and entrepreneurial performance in several ways. First, it examines the role played by both innovation and gender ownership as determinants of employment growth rates of young, knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial (KIE) firms. Second, it investigates the indirect impact of contributing factors—such as the characteristics of the market, knowledge-based capital, and human capital—on employment growth. And third, it relies on a rich new cross-sectional data set on young, KIE firms across European Union (EU) countries. The data set contains information not only on the gender of the firm’s founders but also on the market environment, business strategy, and innovative and economic performance of firms.     

Long-term Decline of Small and Medium Size Enterprise Share

There exist few studies of long-term small and medium size enterprise (SME) share in developing countries. This paper presents and examines evidence that SME share in Venezuelan manufacturing has experienced serious decline from 1961 to present times. Evidence is given of this decline in terms of key performance measures: numbers of firms, employment numbers and manufacturing value added. An absolute decline of this stratum has also occurred from 1979 onwards. Economic modelling suggests that efficiency and innovation variables are significantly correlated with this decline while a structural variable explains movement around this trend. This broadly concurs with studies in other select economies where these groups of variables have also been found to be significant. However, unlike Venezuela, these variables often explain a recent revival in these economies' SME share. In particular, we find evidence that the decline in Venezuelan SMEs' relative efficiency and innovation performance along with the prejudicial business environment cause this decline in SME share.     

Revealing Entrepreneurial Talent

A society’s allocation of working time to entrepreneurial, organizational and learning activities is the main factor behind technical change and economic growth. Building on Lucas (1978) and Kihlstrom and Laffont (1979), in this paper I offer evidence that the amount of working time spent by small business owners in entrepreneurial activities affects the performance of the business and reveals their entrepreneurial talent. The intuition is that it is reasonable to allocate more of our time to those activities where we realize we are more productive. As actual consumption choices reveal consumer preferences, the varying entrepreneurial content of the activities performed is a signal of an individual’s ability as entrepreneur. The results obtained suggest that the allocation of working time by small business owners: (a) throws light on their behavioral patterns; (b) is related to the owner’s human capital and to firm size; and (c) has a significant correlation with business performance. The main finding of my analysis, confirming previous studies on this topic, is that education is an important part of entrepreneurial human capital. Moreover, the latter is the main factor that can sustain small firms’ competitiveness in a globalizing economy. The entrepreneur is at the same time one of the most intriguing and one of the most elusive characters in the cast that constitutes the subject of economic analysis (Baumol, 1965, p. 64). I would like to acknowledge valuable comments from T. Cameron, G. Gagliani and two anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies.     

The gender composition of corporate boards and firm performance: Evidence from Russia

This paper studies economic effects of the gender composition of corporate boards, employing a novel longitudinal dataset of publicly traded Russian companies over 1998–2014. Using multiple identification approaches, alternative measures of gender diversity, and several performance indicators, we find some evidence that companies with gender-diverse boards have higher market values and better profitability. These effects are particularly pronounced when firms appoint several women directors, which is consistent with the critical mass theory. The effects appear to be stronger in bad economic times. Overall, we find some support to “the business case” for more women on corporate boards.     

Does gender influence managers’ ethics? A cross‐cultural analysis

The relationship between gender and ethics has been extensively researched. However, previous studies have assumed that the gender–ethics association is constant; hence, scholars have seldom investigated factors potentially affecting the gender–ethics association. Thus, using managers as the research target, this study examined the relationship between gender and ethics and analyzed the moderating effect of cultural values on the gender–ethics association. The results showed that, compared with female managers, their male counterparts are more willing to justify business‐related unethical behaviors such as bribery and tax evasion, and that the gender difference in ethics becomes more pronounced under the cultural dimensions of collectivism, humane orientation, performance orientation, and gender egalitarianism. This study used data obtained through surveying 2,754 managers in 27 nations.     

Does market orientation pay off without brand orientation? A study of small business entrepreneurs

Market orientation and brand orientation are usually modelled as distinct antecedents of business performance, and the simultaneous performance effects of these orientations are empirically under-explored. Moreover, studies of market orientation and branding tend to focus on large corporations and the views of managers rather than the views of small business entrepreneurs. Addressing these research gaps, the current study explores market orientation and brand orientation by empirically testing their simultaneous effects on the business performance of small firms. Using primary data from 328 effective responses gathered from small business entrepreneurs, the study finds that market orientation improves the financial performance of a small firm only if it is implemented through brand orientation and eventually translated into brand performance. The results further indicate that older firms benefit more than younger firms from investing in branding, while younger firms benefit from paying attention to the actions of their rivals.     

Small Firm Finance, Credit Rationing, and the Impact of SBA-Guaranteed Lending on Local Economic Growth

Increasingly, policymakers look to the small business sector as a potential engine of economic growth. Policies to promote small businesses include tax relief, direct subsidies, and indirect subsidies through government lending programs. Encouraging lending to small business is the primary policy objective of the Small Business Administration (SBA) loan-guarantee program. Using a panel data set of SBA-guaranteed loans, we assess whether or not SBA-guaranteed lending has an observable impact on local economic performance. We find a positive and significant (although economically small) relationship between the relative levels of SBA-guaranteed lending in a local market and the future per capita income growth in that market.     

The Effect of Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility on Environmental Performance and Business Competitiveness: The Mediation of Green Information Technology Capital

With the emergence of environmental sustainability and green business management, increasing demands have been made on businesses in the areas of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR). Furthermore, the influence of ECSR on green capital investment, environmental performance, and business competitiveness has also been the subject of attention from enterprises. However, in previous studies, the mediating role of green information technology (IT) capital in the relationship between ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness, has not been investigated by researchers. In order to bridge this gap in the ECSR literature, this study aims to examine the influence of ECSR on green IT capital, and the consequent effect of green IT capital on environmental performance and business competitiveness. Data were collected from 358 companies from the top 1000 manufacturers in Taiwan. The results confirmed that ECSR has significant positive effects on green IT human capital, green IT structural capital, and green IT relational capital. Green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have positive effects on environmental performance and business competitiveness, and environmental performance has a positive effect on business competitiveness. In addition, green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have partial mediating effects on ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness. The implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Effects of Nationality,Gender, and Religiosity on Business-Related Ethicality

Cross-national studies of business-related ethicality frequently have concluded that Americans possess higher ethical standards than non-Americans. These conclusions have generally been based on survey responses of relatively small convenience samples of individuals in a very limited number of countries. This article reports a study of the relationship between nationality and business-related ethicality based on survey responses from more than 6300 business students attending 120 colleges and universities in 36 countries. Two well-documented determinants of business ethics (gender and religiosity) were investigated as moderators of the nationality–business ethicality relationship. The major research finding is that, while statistically significant differences were found between the business-related ethicality of American survey participants and the business-related ethicality of the non-American survey participants, the magnitudes of the differences were not substantial. The results of the study suggest that (i) more empirical cross-cultural/national research is required on business-related ethicality and (ii) previous explanations for cross-cultural/national differences in ethics need to be reconsidered before further generalizations are warranted.