Small Business Economics最新文献

We highlight the importance of considering diversity in individuals’ value priorities and their career and venture types to explain different dimensions of eudaimonic well-being. Analyzing European Social Survey data, we find that individuals who value openness to change are more likely to become entrepreneurs than employees, regardless of the sector in which they operate. In contrast, those who value self-transcendence are more inclined to pursue entrepreneurship in socially-oriented sectors. Related to eudaimonic well-being outcomes, entrepreneurs in other sectors tend to experience higher levels of autonomy in life. Furthermore, we observe that entrepreneurs in both socially-oriented and other sectors report a higher sense of meaningfulness in life than employees, but the effect is stronger for entrepreneurs in socially-oriented sectors. A key practical takeaway is that individuals should identify their core values to pursue (entrepreneurial) career types that align with these values, enhancing specific aspects of eudaimonic well-being. Similarly, policymakers and educators can encourage value-based career choices through public awareness campaigns and by integrating values into educational programs, ultimately improving well-being of societal members.

As firms face the dual challenges of digitalization and net zero innovation to combat climate change, understanding how these twin transitions relate is crucial. This study examines potential synergies or trade-offs between digital technologies and net zero innovations in UK SMEs. By integrating the Resource-Based View (RBV) and the Attention-Based View (ABV), we explore how categories of digital adopters relate to categories of net zero innovation adopters. Utilizing novel survey data for 964 UK SMEs, we employ ordered Probit estimation to examine the relationship between digital and net zero adoption. Our results reveal that digitally advanced SMEs are more likely to be advanced adopters of net zero innovations, suggesting that digital complementarities and enhanced capabilities can reinforce environmental innovations that reduce carbon emissions. We offer valuable contributions for both theory and practice, highlighting the importance of supporting SMEs in their twin transitions.

The replication crisis has cast social science’s epistemological foundations into question. So far, entrepreneurship scholars have responded by advocating more transparency in data collection and analysis, better empirical methods, and larger and more representative data. Here, we explore the possibility that the problem may be innate to empiricism itself within the social sciences, generally, and entrepreneurship theory, specifically. We review classical arguments and introduce new ones about how and why the weaknesses of empiricism—such as challenges of unobservability—are exacerbated in the study of human behavior, which weaknesses manifest centrally in entrepreneurship theory. These arguments suggest that social science as principally an empirical endeavor may be foolhardy, particularly in the highly agentic entrepreneurship discipline. Herein we propose a radical solution: a rationalist scientific paradigm, where phenomenological reasoning, rather than observation, is paramount. This proposal rests upon arguments that empiricism’s innate limitations can be overcome, albeit not entirely, by its rationalist counterpart. We can, we argue, develop robust scientific foundations—even laws as valid as those of the natural sciences—for entrepreneurship theory through a formal rationalist approach. These laws would necessarily be few but would serve as a much stronger foundation for entrepreneurship theory than the empirical contingencies that we observe. We conclude by illustrating what such a rationalist management program might look like for entrepreneurship scholars with Bylund’s entrepreneurial theory of the firm.

A growing body of literature explores whether and why female and male entrepreneurs differ in their access to equity financing. This trend has led to an increasing fragmentation of the research field, as many studies analyze various mechanisms and focus on a certain form of equity financing. To advance research on gender differences in equity financing, it is necessary to identify patterns and inconsistent findings in the literature related to these mechanisms. Therefore, we perform a systematic literature review to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on gender differences in the key forms of entrepreneurial equity financing (venture capital, angel investment, and equity crowdfunding). Based on 75 studies from 2001 to mid-2024, our review indicates that male entrepreneurs have an advantage in raising capital from venture capitalists and business angels, whereas female entrepreneurs are more successful in equity crowdfunding. These gender differences stem from a complex combination of mechanisms, which we categorize into four thematic dimensions that capture entrepreneurs’ characteristics, investors’ characteristics, the ventures’ characteristics and strategies, and contextual factors. We propose specific future research directions for each dimension, and discuss theoretical and methodological research opportunities that are applicable across dimensions to improve our understanding of gender differences in equity financing.

The paper examines the impact of venture capital (VC) financing on the growth of cleantech companies, using newly available data and a more comprehensive perspective on the sector. The analysis is conducted on a sample of 24,538 European cleantech companies identified using machine learning techniques, 401 of which received a first VC investment between 1988 and 2023. To adequately control for selection bias, we applied a matching procedure that allowed the creation of two control groups: one consisting of non-VC-backed cleantech companies and another of non-cleantech VC-backed companies. Our analysis reveals that, in terms of selection, investors discount the inherent risk of the sector by investing in fast-growing cleantech companies. Regarding the impact of VC on invested cleantech companies, when the differences at selection are neutralised, our results suggest that VC effectively supports the growth of invested cleantech companies, with a more pronounced effect in the short term.

As occurs in new venture creation, founders’ biases may also play a role in the context of entrepreneurial exit. This conceptual paper presents a framework about how founders’ hubris affects exit strategies. Our framework points out three key aspects. First, hubris bias influences entrepreneurs’ intentions, and the performance threshold is linked to business exit. Second, when the firm shows performance below the expected threshold, hubristic founders are prone to escalate firm investments and insist on pursuing choices that have beforehand resulted in inadequate performance. Such hubristic behavior will likely lead to an entrepreneurial exit, resulting in bankruptcy. However, we also recognize the less probable occurrence of a bright side of hubris, linked to its support to long-term effort perseverance and interest consistency. Third, when a firm performs above the expected threshold, hubristic founders prefer to walk out of their business through a financial harvesting strategy, thereby excluding stewardship behavior option under such conditions. To detect the practical implications of our framework, we provide a series of illustrative quotes, anecdotes, and cases. Implications for the entrepreneurial exit literature and the hubris theory of entrepreneurship are discussed.

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.

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.

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.

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.