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on Small Business Management |
| By: | Mulalo Mamburu |
| Abstract: | Traditionally, much of the research on economic growth drivers has been focused on small and medium enterprises. In recent years the academic focus on small businesses has shifted to a particular group of firms that are interesting from an economic growth and policy development perspective, namely high-growth firms. While the standard definition that is recommended by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is widely accepted, various scholars have used different definitions concentrating on different variables such as turnover or employment growth. Using new South African firm-level data, the study hypothesizes that the identification of high-growth firms is highly sensitive to the measure of firm growth, such that different firm growth measures will return samples of firms with significantly different demographic characteristics. These differences will then have an impact on the findings of analyses based on these growth measures. They will also have implications for public policy recommendations that seek to encourage the emergence of high-growth firms. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2017-107&r=sbm |
| By: | Jacob Greenspon & Erika Rodigues |
| Abstract: | This report sheds light on trends in Canadian innovation as indicated through patenting. Central to these recent trends is an apparent paradox: the number of patents granted to Canadians, an output indicator of innovative activity, has increased substantially between 2000 and 2014 despite decreased business sector expenditures on research and development, a crucial input to innovation, in the same period. This report examines this issue an provides several potential explanations as to why this is the case, the strongest being that the divergence between trends in patenting and R&D expenditures is caused by greater efficiency of research processes and an increase in strategic filings of patents. Furthermore, this report documents recent trends in patenting activity in Canada from several sources and compares trends across different technologies. Patenting trends are also used to give a regional perspective on innovation by tracking the level of innovative activity occurring in provinces and census metropolitan areas. |
| Keywords: | Productivity, Patenting, Research and Development, Innovation, Trends, Technology, Measurement, Canada, |
| JEL: | O31 O32 Q55 D70 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:1702&r=sbm |
| By: | Angelo Bonomi (CNR-IRCRES, National Research Council, Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth, Moncalieri, Italy) |
| Abstract: | This work describes a model of the R&D process derived by technology management and experience in carrying out this type of activity. The model gives a comprehensive description of the numerous processes of technological nature involving innovations from science to business. The model sees R&D as an organizing activity of fluxes of knowledge and capitals with a dynamics that is determined by R&D projects and their implementing rather than by R&D investments. The model recognizes the existence of a general knowledge generated by R&D activities, formed either by successful or abandoned projects, not necessarily linked to the objectives of the projects, and diffusing among the various actors making R&D in the distributed innovation system existing in conditions of open innovation. Such general knowledge has a role of driving force in developing innovative ideas and saving R&D costs. The model separates neatly the R&D process from scientific research considering existence of an intertwining process between research and R&D. About relation with socio-economic factors determining the effects of new technologies, the model presents different views about relation of R&D investments and economic growth. In fact it considers the inexistence of limits to generation of new technologies, when unlimited financing of R&D is available, and highlights the importance of the specific innovative system of a country in determining the contribution of R&D investments to its economic growth. Concluding the model considers that economic growth does not depend actually on R&D investments, that should be considered rather a means, but on the intensity of generation of innovative ideas, that depends on the efficiency of the territorial innovative system, and on adopted strategies and availability of capitals financing their development joined with an effective industrial organization. |
| Keywords: | research & development, R&D model, R&D management, technology innovation, knowledge spillover, socio-economic growth |
| JEL: | O30 O31 O47 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csc:ircrwp:201702&r=sbm |
| By: | Habermann, Harald |
| Abstract: | The present article links business takeovers to the literature on serial autocorrelation of growth rates. The aim of the study is to identify the effects of successions on the performance of small German firms by analysing the growth pathways over a period of eight years after business takeover. Using panel data from 1,872 firms, the present article shows that for the first two years after a business takeover, small firms are subject to negative serial correlation of growth rates regarding employment. The analysis underlines the importance of longitudinal data to provide evidence on changes in the behaviour of a firm following a business takeover. |
| Keywords: | business takeovers,successions,autocorrelation,panel data,small firms |
| JEL: | L25 M13 M21 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifmwps:0117&r=sbm |
| By: | Valentina Meliciani (University Luiss Guido Carli, Rome, Italy); Grzegorz Tchorek (Narodowy Bank Polski and University of Warsaw) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the determinants of companies’ performance during the crisis based on their short-term (sales changes) and medium-term (exit) reaction, using firms’ data from the EFIGE survey and combining them with balance-sheet statistics. The results show that vulnerability to the crisis depended on a company’s position within a GVC and modes of international operation. While exporters were more affected than nonexporters during the first crisis, their survival rates were not lower five years later. Moreover, more sophisticated internationalization modes increased firms’ resilience in the first and second waves of the crisis. The paper also investigates the mediating role of intangible assets and financial constraints in the relationship between internationalization and companies’ response to the crisis. While intangible assets were very important for preventing a drop in sales for internationalized firms immediately after 2008, they amplified the probability of firms’ exit five years after the crisis in weaker European countries (Spain and Italy). At the same time, financial constraints increased companies’ probability of exit. Innovation prevented a drop in firms’ sales and firms’ exit. |
| Keywords: | global value chains, crisis, intangible assets, financial constraints |
| JEL: | O3 E22 G01 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbp:nbpmis:259&r=sbm |
| By: | Antonelli, Cristiano; Ferraris, Gianluigi (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | The paper elaborates an agent based simulation model (ABM) to explore the endogenous long-term dynamics of knowledge externalities. ABMs, as a form of artificial cliometrics, allow the analysis of the effects of the reactivity of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions conditional on the levels of endogenous knowledge externalities stemming from the levels of knowledge connectivity of the system. The simulation results confirm the powerful effects of endogenous knowledge externalities. At the micro-level, the reactions of firms caught in out-ofequilibrium conditions yield successful effects in the form of productivity enhancing innovations, only in the presence of high levels of knowledge connectivity and strong pecuniary knowledge externalities. At the meso-level, the introduction of innovations changes the structural characteristics of the system in terms of knowledge connectivity that affect the availability of knowledge externalities. Endogenous centrifugal and centripetal forces continually reshape the structure of the system and its knowledge connectivity. At the macro system level, an out-of-equilibrium process leads to a step-wise increase in productivity combined with non-linear patterns of output growth characterized by significant oscillations typical of the long waves in Schumpeterian business cycles. |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:201717&r=sbm |
| By: | Durufle, Gilles; Hellmann, Thomas F; Wilson, Karen |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the challenge of entrepreneurial companies to go beyond the start-up phase and grow into large successful companies. We examine the long-term financing of these so-called scale-up companies, focusing on the US, Europe and Canada. The paper first provides a conceptual framework for understanding the challenges of financing scale-ups. It then shows some data about the various aspects of financing scale-ups in the US, Europe and Canada. Finally the paper raises the question of long-term public policies for supporting the creation of a better scale-up environment. |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12004&r=sbm |
| By: | Bryson, Alex (University College London); White, Michael (Policy Studies Institute) |
| Abstract: | A long-running debate in the small firms' literature questions the value of formal 'human resource management' (HRM) practices which have been linked to high performance in larger firms. We contribute to this literature by exploiting linked employer-employee surveys for 2004 and 2011. Using employees' intrinsic job satisfaction and organizational commitment as measures of motivation we find the returns to small firm investments in HRM are u-shaped. Small firms benefit from intrinsically motivating work situations in the absence of HRM practices, find this advantage disturbed when formal HRM practices are initially introduced, but can restore positive motivation when they invest intensively in HRM practices in a way that characterizes 'high performance work systems' (HWPS) and 'strategic human resource management' (SHRM). Although the HPWS effect on employee motivation is modified somewhat by the recessionary transition, it remains rather robust and continues to have positive promise for small firms. |
| Keywords: | small firms, human resource management, high performance work system, workplace motivation, intrinsic job satisfaction, organizational commitment |
| JEL: | L23 M50 M54 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10737&r=sbm |
| By: | Tirado, Daniel A.; Sanchís Llopis, M. Teresa; Martínez-Galarraga, Julio; Díez Minguela, Alfonso |
| Abstract: | This study focuses on South-West Europe, an area comprising France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, to evaluate inequality in regional income between 1870 and 1950. To do this, information on a decadal basis on regional population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 171 regions (84 French départements, 22 Italian regioni, 18 Portuguese distritos and 49 Spanish provincias) has been collected. Regional inequalities increased between 1870 and 1910 but subsequently tended to flatten out through until 1950. In the first period, regional disparities increased mainly driven by a handful of French and Spanish regions in northern France, such as the Paris basin, Catalonia, the Basque-Country and northern Italy. In the second period, inequality flattened out, driven by the incorporation of new regions on the path of modern economic growth. The study also shows the evolution towards a bimodal, polarized pattern of regional income distribution in 1910-1950 with two convergence clubs. The richest regions were clustering in northern France, the Paris basin and the north of Italy. Meanwhile, most of southern Italy and the vast majority of the Spanish and Portuguese regions already occupied the bottom positions in the income distribution ranking. This point to the emergence of the core-periphery pattern that characterizes much of South-West Europe today. |
| Keywords: | Portugal; Italy; Spain; France; Regional inequality; Economic History |
| JEL: | R11 O18 N94 N93 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:24544&r=sbm |
| By: | Leonardo Costa Ribeiro (Inmetro-RJ); Márcia Siqueira Rapini (Cedeplar-UFMG); Leandro Alves Silva (Cedeplar-UFMG); Eduardo da Motta e Albuquerque (Cedeplar-UFMG) |
| Abstract: | Size matters: the total of internationally co-authored scientific articles in 2015 corresponds to the global scientific production in 1993. The steady and systematic growth in international collaboration in science provides a strong basis for an emerging GIS. Therefore, it is important to map international flows that connect different national systems of innovation. This paper tracks knowledge flows through cross-border co-authorships in scientific publications, through a database with 10 million papers published in 2000, 2003, 2006 2009, 2012 and 2015. The data show an increase in international co-authorships from 10.7% in 2000 to 21.3% in 2015. However, this growth has network properties, since the number of international flows has grown from 545,372 in 2000 to 7,083,075 in 2015. Those international co-authorships signal networks of universities and research institutes, providing international connections to firms that eventually interact only locally with those universities and research institutes. The growth in the size, dimension and quality of those scientific flows strengthens a broad and variegated mosaic of interconnections can be grasped by the size of the network of cross-border co-authorships, a network that might be supporting an emerging and rudimentary global system of innovation. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge flows, International co-authorships, Science, Innovation systems |
| JEL: | O30 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td553&r=sbm |