Towards an ecological technology for global growth in a North-South trade model

In a world of rapid and cheap communication, where countries are not isolated, ideas and information spread quickly across international borders. Technological progress, leading to more efficient productive processes, in terms of the required amount of natural resources, seems to be the key to overcoming the conflict between environmental concerns and economic growth. This paper investigates the relationship between natural resources and sustainable economic growth in a North-South trade model. We assume that a process of capital transfer from North to South is performed in two different scenarios depending on the effect of this transfer upon the Southern economy. Within a game theory framework, we characterize the optimal paths of global economic growth which respects the sustainable use of natural resources.     

Reconstructing entrepreneurial intentions to identify predisposition for growth

The entrepreneurial-intentions literature implicitly assumes that all intending entrepreneurs have similar growth aspirations, despite the observed dichotomy of growth- and independence-oriented new ventures. We integrate the ‘individual-opportunity nexus’ with heterogeneous opportunities into the entrepreneurial intentions model such that intending entrepreneurs may exhibit different growth intentions which drives their choice between growth- or independence-oriented new ventures. The individual's predisposition for growth (or not) will depend on the interaction of the salient outcomes offered by the opportunity with the attitudes of the individual towards those outcomes, and by differences in entrepreneurial self-efficacy. We find that the attitudinal antecedents differ for growth compared to independence intentions, and suggest a way to identify intending entrepreneurs who are predisposed to growth.     

Swinging a double-edged sword: The effect of slack on entrepreneurial management and growth

Resource slack represents a double-edged sword, simultaneously fueling and hindering growth. Drawing on Penrose's growth theory and Stevenson's entrepreneurial management theory, we have developed and tested a conceptual model that provides a more nuanced account of the resource slack-growth relationship. Using a large dataset spanning six years, we have found that slack has a positive direct effect on growth but a negative effect on entrepreneurial management, and that entrepreneurial management has a positive effect on growth. Our empirical and conceptual findings are important to the development of firm growth theory and explicate causal mechanisms transforming slack into firm-level outcomes.     

The influence of sustainability orientation on entrepreneurial intentions — Investigating the role of business experience

Do individuals who are concerned by issues of sustainability also exhibit stronger entrepreneurial intentions? Given that existing imperfections in the market create numerous opportunities for entrepreneurship connected with sustainable development, adding individual sustainability orientation to models of entrepreneurial intention could increase their explanatory power. Based on survey data collected from engineering and business students and alumni of three universities, we provide evidence that entering sustainability orientation into the equation is actually meaningful. However, our findings suggest that the positive impact of sustainability orientation vanishes with business experience. Consequently, we suggest measures to nourish an evidently existing potential for sustainable entrepreneurship.     

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.     

Organizational and competitive influences of exploration and exploitation activities in small firms

This study explores organizational and competitive factors affecting exploration/exploitation activities in SMEs by examining the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), market orientation (MO) and perceived competitive intensity. We test the relationships among these variables using data collected from 55 manufacturing SMEs operating in the southern part of U. S. The findings provide a strong support for a positive association between EO, MO and exploration/exploitation activities. Perceived competitive intensity was only a significant moderator for the relationship between MO and the degree of exploratory activities. Our findings, hence, suggest the significant role organizational predictors play in enhancing exploration/exploitation activities in SMEs. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Efficiency and effectiveness of small retailers: The role of customer and entrepreneurial orientation

While it is generally agreed that a customer and entrepreneurial orientation enhance company performance in large multi-national organizations, relatively little is known about how these variables influence the small retailers that form a substantial part of national economic well-being. This study investigates the potential influences of these factors on the performance of small retailers in Switzerland, because this nation has long had a reputation for creativity, innovation and a customer focus. Performance is viewed as a two dimensional concept including an effectiveness and an efficiency perspective. Data for this study were collected through personal interviews from 261 SMEs. While customer orientation is found to be positively related to both efficiency and effectiveness, results only show a positive impact from entrepreneurial orientation on effectiveness. At the same time, entrepreneurial orientation is found to be a driver of customer orientation, and thus having an indirect impact also on efficiency for the small retail firms. All in all, the study shows that small retailers do indeed put an emphasis on both customer and entrepreneurial orientation in spite of their limited resources. It also stresses that this will increase their competitive advantage. In the light of existing literature, limitations and future research directions are subsequently addressed.     

Performance expectations of small firms considering radical product innovation

Performance expectations influence business decisions such as investment decisions and demand for supplies, particularly in small firms with limited strategic planning. Despite widespread use of performance expectations by firms and governments when making sales forecasts and economic outlooks, surprisingly little research exists about how small firms form performance expectations. This paper contributes to reduce this knowledge gap by analyzing performance expectations of small firm managers operating in markets with radical product innovations. This paper proposes a model and hypotheses, which explain performance expectations of small firm managers based on firms' current success, radical product innovation, and variables that indicate firms' ability to respond to customer needs for radical product innovation. Data from 200 decision-makers in a real decision-making context support the model. The results show that performance expectations in small firms are only to a limited extent a naïve extrapolation of current success: radical product innovation and small firm's ability to respond to customer needs for radical product innovation influence performance expectations.     

SMEs international growth: The moderating role of experience on entrepreneurial and learning orientations

New and small firms operating in the high-tech environments need strong entrepreneurial (EO) and learning (LO) orientations to enhance international growth. Yet, the relationship between these two key strategic dimensions and foreign growth can be contingent to the entrepreneur’s individual characteristics. Bringing together elements from strategic management, organization and entrepreneurship literatures, we employ a dynamic temporal perspective considering two levels of analysis, the firm and the entrepreneur, and we apply a fixed effects pooled time-series regression on a sample of 170 firms in two periods of time (2005 and 2015). Our findings indicate that SMEs that possess greater EO and LO have higher international growth. However, previous entrepreneurial and industry-specific managerial experience of the founder/CEO positively exert their effect on these relationships. Our results have important theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurs and policy makers operating in highly innovative sectors.     

An exploration of entrepreneurs' identities and business growth

The purpose of this study is to determine whether certain types of identities are more likely than others to be present before and during business growth. We collect data from six entrepreneurs and adopt an interpretivist approach, using Van Gennep's theory of transitions, to explore the challenges faced by entrepreneurs after startup and during business growth. We find that business growth challenges entrepreneurs' identities as they aspire to achieve their personal goals and reach self-fulfillment. These identities consist of entrepreneurial, manager, personal, and social identities, and each has distinct roles within the business. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for entrepreneurs and policy makers. We recommend that entrepreneurs receive a combination of personal and business support, especially during more uncertain, high-pressure, and complex times.     

Role of customer orientation in an integrative model of brand loyalty in services

This study attempts to model the development of brand loyalty by examining the simultaneous effects of customer orientation, perceived quality, brand associations, and satisfaction on brand loyalty. Data are used from retail banking and discount store retailing services to examine the direct and indirect effects of customer perceptions of customer orientation and quality on brand loyalty. It was found that customer orientation has a direct effect on brand loyalty and indirect effects through customer satisfaction, perceived quality, and brand associations as mediators. Further, perceived quality has a direct effect on brand loyalty as well as an indirect effect with satisfaction as a mediator. The results suggest that effective management of brand loyalty would require tracking of customer perceptions of a firm's customer orientation, quality and brand, in addition to measuring customer satisfaction.     

A theoretical grounding and test of the GEM model

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor model combines insights on the allocation of effort into entrepreneurship at the national (adult working-age population) level with literature in the Austrian tradition. The model suggests that the relationship between national-level new business activity and the institutional environment, or Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions, is mediated by opportunity perception and the perception of start-up skills in the population. We provide a theory-grounded examination of this model and test the effect of one EFC, education and training for entrepreneurship, on the allocation of effort into new business activity. We find that in high-income countries, opportunity perception mediates fully the relationship between the level of post-secondary entrepreneurship education and training in a country and its rate of new business activity, including high-growth expectation new business activity. The mediating effect of skills perception is weaker. This result accords with the Kirznerian concept of alertness to opportunity stimulating action.

Pathways to entrepreneurial growth: The influence of management, marketing, and money

Business growth is considered a worthy goal for firms and a measure of entrepreneurial success, as well as important for economic development. Why some firms grow and others do not, though, remains a subject of debate. Of the small proportion of firms that do grow, it is often assumed that they follow a similar growth trajectory and/or encounter certain stage thresholds; however, the evidence base on this is wanting. The new study of business growth presented here provides an in-depth analysis of 19 New England-based firms. Our findings reveal that fast-growing companies exhibit different rates and patterns of growth: some display rapid growth trajectories (Rapid Growth Pattern); some, slower, more measured rates (Incremental Growth Pattern); others, episodic periods of quick growth followed by sharp retrenchment (Episodic Growth Pattern); and, while no firm actively chose to stop growing, some reached points of stagnation (Plateau Growth Pattern). We found that three key factors—management, marketing, and money—affected company growth across these patterns. While not every factor was critical at each moment of growth for each firm, every entrepreneur cited the relative importance of each factor at some time during the growth of their firm. Thus, fast-growing firms do not grow in the same manner, at the same rate, or with the same outcomes. This article has implications for those seeking to understand the processes of development and patterns of fast-growth businesses.     

Government guaranteed small business loans and regional growth

This paper examines the impact of government guaranteed small business loans on regional growth. I construct a metro-level panel of the Small Business Administration's guaranteed loans and examine economic growth between 1993 and 2002, across 316 metro areas in the US. A simple OLS regression finds a significant positive relationship between small business loans and regional growth. However, first-difference and instrumental variable regressions that mitigate endogeneity find no significant employment or income growth effects from small business loans. At least from an efficiency perspective, there seems to be no net gains to the regional economy from guaranteed small business loans.     

Liabilities and benefits: Examining the two sides of the foreignness coin from entrepreneurial perspective

This paper provides an in-depth examination of foreignness at the individual level by studying it in the context of entrepreneurs. Based on data collected from 470 domestic and foreign entrepreneurs operating in the U.S., it was concluded that foreignness has a curvilinear relationship with entrepreneurial performance. There was also evidence of moderating effects of entrepreneurial orientation on the relationship between foreignness and performance. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Financial repression and external openness in an endogenous growth model

An endogenous growth model has been developed that extends Sidrauski (1967), Roubini and Sala-i-Martin (1992,1995) and Lucas (1988) by combining financial development, human capital investment, and external openness. Financial development and trade liberalization are shown to increase the economic growth rate by increasing the marginal benefits of human capital investment. Expansionary governments are, however, provided with an incentive to increase the money supply growth rate, to repress the financial sector, to close its economy, and to impose a high proportional income tax rate.     

论循环经济条件下的资源环境价格形成

循环经济条件下的资源环境价格形成与传统市场经济条件下的商品价格形成有所不同,它作为一种广义的价格形态,需要政府强力的干预和参与甚至跨国际的集体行动。资源环境价格的形成要充分考虑循环经济视角下的资源环境价值和成本,以资源环境累积成本为依据,可通过试错方法或市场方法求得。要根据循环经济诸环节发生的替代关系,按照四项原则安排资源环境价格,使循环经济产业链与价值链相匹配。     

The influence of firm age and intangible resources on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm growth among Japanese SMEs

With the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance having broad scholarly acceptance, researchers are now delving with increased focus into the contextual factors that change the nature of the relationship between EO and various manifestations of organizational performance. In this vein, this study adopts the resource based view and investigates the moderating influence of firm age and intangible resources on the EO-firm growth relationship among small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan. Further, we propose a three-way interactive model between EO, firm age, and intangible resources to better identify entrepreneurial configurations that promote superior SME growth.     

A relational performance model for developing innovation and long-term orientation in retail franchise organizations

A relational performance model is developed to show how innovation and long-term orientation can be evaluated and monitored within franchised retail service organizations. Using principles of justice from social exchange theory as a guide, our performance model measures how franchisee entrepreneurial passion (EP) and perceptions of fairness help to promote innovation and long-term commitment across retail franchise organizations. We test our model using data collected from one large U. S. retail service organization ($5B+ annual revenue) and its independent franchise operators. We discover that targeting distributive justice (or fairness) helps to leverage the EP of the independent operators for promoting innovation, while both procedural and distributive elements of the organizational justice climate help to enhance franchisee's long-term commitment. Moreover, we find that retail franchise operators perceive organizational justice differently than do corporate district managers, which suggests several important implications for both research and practice.     

中小企业电子商务平台的研究

探讨中小企业电子商务平台建立的问题。分析中小企业电子商务的安全平台和实施策略 ,运用中小企业电子商务的模式。为中小企业电子商务网站的建立与市场竞争创造良好的环境 ,并为中小企业电子商务平台的建立奠定坚实的基础。