Julia Korosteleva, Tomasz Mickiewicz, Mario Davide Parrilli
{"title":"Ethnic diversity in SME business teams: generating employment growth through digitalisation, innovation, and exporting","authors":"Julia Korosteleva, Tomasz Mickiewicz, Mario Davide Parrilli","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00985-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00985-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines how the ethnic composition of SMEs’ business teams, also in conjunction with their strategic behaviour (including digitalisation, innovation and exporting), affect their employment growth. The study conceptualises different forms and aspects of social capital to develop the theoretical framework and hypotheses. We utilise the UK Office for National Statistics’ Longitudinal Small Business Survey data for the period of 2018–2020 to test our hypotheses. Our study shows that ethnically diverse business teams achieve relatively higher employment growth as compared to more homogeneous teams. Moreover, ethnically diverse business teams that embrace innovation, international expansion, and digitalisation translate these strategies more effectively into increased employment compared to their more homogenous counterparts.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142820679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Timothy E. Dore, Tetsuji Okazaki, Ken Onishi, Naoki Wakamori
{"title":"Firm growth and financial constraints: evidence from a policy-based loan program","authors":"Timothy E. Dore, Tetsuji Okazaki, Ken Onishi, Naoki Wakamori","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00986-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00986-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Credit supply to small businesses may ease financial frictions, helping them grow faster and re-optimize the factor inputs for production, particularly when lumpy and/or long-term investment is required. We study how government loan programs address these two issues by combining the loan-level data with firms’ financial statements. We find that, with additional credit supplied by government, (i) small businesses are able to grow faster than similar firms, (ii) financially constrained firms invest relatively more on capital, and (iii) firms invest in long-term projects. We also find that differences in debt levels are persistent over time, suggesting that private credit supply does not substitute for the government-provided credit.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142810073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is sustainable entrepreneurship profitable? ESG disclosure and the financial performance of SMEs","authors":"Paul P. Momtaz, Isabel M. Parra","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00981-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00981-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sustainability practices have a positive effect on the financial performance of SMEs. We extract ESG-related information for a sample of Spanish SMEs over the period 2012–2022 using tools provided by the Internet Archive to estimate a staggered difference-in-differences model of how the release of new ESG-related information impacts the financial performance of SMEs. ESG-related information can be delivered as an endogenous signal or as an exogenous certification. We show that both types of ESG-related information have a positive effect on SMEs’ financial performance and that both are informational substitutes. We also show that institutional change in the form of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change moderated the sustainability–performance relation. Specifically, post-Paris, the value-creating impact of exogenous ESG certification increased, while endogenous ESG signals without external certification became ineffective or detrimental. Finally, in line with CSR-as-insurance theory, we show that SMEs with higher performance variability benefit more from sustainability orientation.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142789923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Undocumented immigrants and the growth of Hispanic entrepreneurship","authors":"Chunbei Wang, Le Wang","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00987-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00987-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Over the last two decades, there has been a significant surge in the self-employment rate among Hispanics, especially among Hispanic immigrants. However, the reasons behind this increase remain underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by examining the role of undocumented immigrants, a substantial part of the Hispanic immigrant population, by discerning immigrants’ legal status in the Current Population Survey–Annual Social and Economic data (1994–2018). The findings reveal that the nearly doubled self-employment rate among Hispanic immigrants is primarily driven by undocumented individuals, especially those of Mexican origin. A key factor is the post-9/11 tightening of immigration enforcement, which worsened job prospects for undocumented immigrants, pushing many into self-employment. This event triggered a distinct pattern in Hispanic self-employment, setting it apart from other demographic groups. Other factors, such as business cycles, state-level immigration policies, the gig economy, and the growth of the Hispanic community, also contribute but play a lesser role.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142789920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Evan J. Douglas, Helen E. Salavou, Xenia J. Mamakou
{"title":"A social milieu perspective of parental influence on adolescents’ entrepreneurial and employment intentions","authors":"Evan J. Douglas, Helen E. Salavou, Xenia J. Mamakou","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00982-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00982-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper extends discussion of parental influence on adolescent’s occupational intentions by including parents’ socioeconomic status and by arguing that entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) as instrumental to both entrepreneurial intention and employment intention. The adolescents’ social milieu is proxied by their parents’ occupational type and formal education and income levels, which adds their social and business networks, schoolteachers and fellow students to the adolescents’ process of forming either entrepreneurial or employment intention. We ask whether adolescents’ occupational intentions depend on the interaction of their social context and specific personal cognitions (namely ESE, psychological capital, hubris, academic performance, and gender). Using fsQCA and 203 adolescent-parent dyads, we find that employed parents, rather than entrepreneur parents, are more consistently associated with adolescents’ entrepreneurial intention. The cognitive conditions interact synergistically and substitutively as core conditions to influence entrepreneurial intention (or inversely employment intention). Low self-assessment of academic performance is a core condition for high entrepreneurial intention, and both sexes select their occupational type according to bespoke configurations of their causal conditions, with implications for educational policy, and further research.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142776314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lucio Fuentelsaz, Consuelo González, Minerva González
{"title":"Speed of pro-market reforms and entrepreneurial innovation","authors":"Lucio Fuentelsaz, Consuelo González, Minerva González","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00980-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00980-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines how pro-market reforms affect entrepreneurial innovation through the lens of the dynamic institution-based view of the firm. We propose that the speed at which changes occur has a positive influence on entrepreneurial innovation. Additionally, we hypothesize that, in highly uncertain environments, entrepreneurs with higher levels of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and those who have recently entered the market are better equipped to respond in terms of innovation. To test our hypotheses, we conduct a multilevel, cross-country analysis using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for the period 2009–2018, focusing on individual-level measures of entrepreneurial behavior. Our findings largely support our hypotheses, indicating that a high speed of pro-market reforms has a positive effect on entrepreneurial innovation. Furthermore, this relationship is partially mediated by entrepreneurial self-efficacy and is more pronounced among new entrepreneurs compared to established ones.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142753738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lean on me, firm: evidence from a management consulting program","authors":"André A. Castro, Philipp Ehrl","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00983-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00983-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper evaluates the effects of the More Productive Brazil Program (BMP) which provided subsidized on-site management consultancies about lean manufacturing techniques to 3000 establishments between 2016 and 2018. The BMP was restricted to four manufacturing sectors but included large, medium, and small-sized establishments. We apply two-way fixed effects regressions and event study specifications to estimate the impact of the treatment on participants’ employment size and export performance. Using administrative data from the universe of Brazilian establishments shows evidence of self-selection into the program because the participants have above-average growth rates before the treatment. When compared to different control groups for which the parallel trends assumption holds, we find that the 120-h management consulting tends to boost employment, with increases ranging from 4 to 17% depending on the sample matching approach. These positive employment effects are decreasing with establishment size. Furthermore, export volume, the number of export products, and destination countries grow by about 10%. Our findings support the notion that short-term, low-cost management consulting can be an effective development for exporters and small companies in a real, non-experimental setting.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142673876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jacob Rubæk Holm, Kristian Nielsen, Bram Timmermans
{"title":"Bureaucracy, work organization, and the transition to entrepreneurship","authors":"Jacob Rubæk Holm, Kristian Nielsen, Bram Timmermans","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00979-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00979-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Empirical studies have often established a negative relationship between the size of a firm where an individual is employed and the probability of that individual subsequently founding a business. This literature suggests that size captures work organization—particularly bureaucracy—and that bureaucracy affects the transition to entrepreneurship. However, many studies find that firm size is a poor proxy of work organization and, therefore, calls for empirical research exploring the link between specific measures of work organization and the transition to entrepreneurship. We create a measure of work organization from survey data—ranging from bureaucracy to adhocracy. We then combine this with longitudinal matched employer–employee register data and investigate different types of entrepreneurial transitions for individuals triggered by a mass worker displacement event. We find that work organization significantly affects several measures of transition, with possible implications for the policies and institutional settings that condition firms’ organization of work.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142562055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender attitudes and business venturing in low gender egalitarianism culture: a study of Egypt and Jordan","authors":"Bach Nguyen, Muntasir Shami, Fujia Li","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00978-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00978-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examines the link between individuals’ gender attitudes and their engagement in entrepreneurial activities. Grounded in the social feminist perspective within institutional theory, the research posits that those holding egalitarian views on gender are more inclined to participate in business ventures. The analysis focuses on Egypt and Jordan, where institutional frameworks of gender-based discrimination significantly shape social dynamics. Employing an instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity concerns, the findings suggest a positive association between egalitarian gender attitudes and involvement in entrepreneurship. This relationship appears particularly pronounced for women, older individuals, and those with higher educational attainment. Given the limited understanding of how gender attitudes influence entrepreneurial engagement, this study contributes to the literature by identifying which attitudes may foster greater involvement in business venturing. Furthermore, it adds value by examining the relatively underexplored contexts of Egypt and Jordan.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"131 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142555892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hiring opportunities for new firms and the business cycle","authors":"Udo Brixy, Martin Murmann","doi":"10.1007/s11187-024-00948-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00948-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Whether firms founded during or outside economic crises have greater growth potential is an important question for both prospective entrepreneurs and policy makers. Existing research offers conflicting answers, and mostly either focuses on aggregate cohort-level effects or selectively excludes small new firms from the analyses. Using extensive linked employer-employee data on young German firms around and during the Global Financial Crisis, a period of sharply reduced access to external capital and recession, we show that young firms respond to cyclical conditions in highly heterogeneous ways. Our firm-level results reveal that the average new firm found it easier to hire its first employees when it was founded during the crisis. These firms achieved countercyclical growth by hiring career entrants. More specifically, hiring in very young (<1.5 years) and small to medium-sized (below the 90th percentile) young firms was countercyclical, while this was not the case for older and larger young firms. Thus, the firm-specific effects for young entrepreneurial firms may be very different from those reported in previous research. Our results suggest that market entry during a crisis may facilitate hiring and that policies that promote entrepreneurship may usefully complement policies that encourage labor hoarding by incumbents during recessions.</p>","PeriodicalId":21803,"journal":{"name":"Small Business Economics","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142541554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}