Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development最新文献

Purpose

This study analyzes the role of regional cooperative banks in identifying and financing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a proximity perspective. Access to finance is a major challenge for SMEs. Regional cooperative banks can remove this barrier based on cooperative bank's characteristics and geographic proximity to SMEs. Understanding the interplay between these financial actors and firms can contribute to a better support of SMEs development.

Design/methodology/approach

The results are based on a case study of eight SMEs located in southwestern France. Interviews were conducted with two regional cooperative funds and eight SMEs. The interview guide included questions related to the company, the projects financed and how financing was accessed.

Findings

Results reveal that a combination of three forms of proximity allows regional cooperative banks and SMEs to establish effective financing operations. They show that regional cooperative banks are key players in the existing financing mechanisms for SMEs. Such financing is often used to gain access to larger players at a later stage. The findings suggest the need for public policies that promote the integration of financing actors in regional ecosystems to advance SMEs' development.

Originality/value

This article examines how SMEs access financing, with a focus on regional cooperative banks, which have received little attention in the literature. Moreover, the relationships between these actors are studied through the lens of proximity. Regional cooperative banks are able to finance projects that may have been overlooked by traditional banks due to trust-building local dynamics.

Purpose

The research study provides empirical insights on the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership (EL), entrepreneurial passion for founding (EPF), entrepreneurial bricolage (EB) and project success (PS), in the case of freelancers. The study aims to get a better understanding of whether freelancers, who behave like entrepreneurial leaders, can successfully complete projects through EB.

Design/methodology/approach

The study collected data from 209 freelancers through snowball sampling, in two waves, with a time-lag of fourteen days, to better examine the causality of variables. Data were analyzed by Model No. 4 and 7 (i.e. mediation and moderation, respectively) of Process macro.

Findings

Drawing on the effectuation theory, the results show that EB mediates the relationship between EL and PS and EPF moderates this relationship.

Practical implications

The freelancers can formally establish businesses later, after knowing whether they can complete these new types of projects. These online freelancing platforms can provide special services to freelancers who first want to test their skills on unrelated projects. In sum, the paper suggests that freelancers can be successful entrepreneurial leaders.

Originality/value

The EL, EPF, EB and PS are studied in the context of the informal sector, i.e. freelancing, which is the emerging working style in the world. It provides an in-depth understanding of phenomena in freelancers that lacks background literature.

Purpose

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of innovation in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India, focusing on the barriers and facilitators within their internal and external ecosystems.

Design/methodology/approach

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 1430 MSMEs across India, employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the relationships between internal and external factors and innovation adaptation.

Findings

The findings indicate that factors such as top management and organization structure, communication, technological capability and adaptation and organizational culture have a positive impact on innovation adaptation within the internal environment. Conversely, employee and market orientation, as well as financial factors, have a negative influence. Regarding the external environment, industry and competitive analysis, internationalization and partner alliances were found to positively affect innovation adaptation, whereas the country's infrastructure and policies had a negative impact.

Originality/value

The study emphasizes that MSMEs have the potential to leverage their internal and external environments to foster innovation within their organizations.

Purpose

This paper reviews the literature on the business models of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It seeks to examine the profile, conceptual and intellectual structure of the literature whilst leveraging the findings to suggest promising future paths to advance our knowledge on business models of SMEs.

Design/methodology/approach

The study resorts to a systematic literature review that conducts descriptive, bibliometric (i.e. co-word occurrence analysis and bibliographic coupling of documents analysis) and content analyses to review the literature on business models of SMEs. The research protocol included 301 articles collected in the Web of Science (WoS) database in the descriptive and bibliometric analyses. The bibliometric analysis was performed using the VOSviewer software.

Findings

The descriptive analysis portrayed the profile of this research stream. The systematisation of the co-word occurrence analysis describes the four clusters that comprise the conceptual structure of this research field. The content analysis of the bibliographic coupling of documents’ clusters portrays the seven clusters that involve the intellectual structure of this research area.

Originality/value

The integrated and holistic approach adopted in this study provides a detailed overview of the literature on business models of SMEs. We propose an integrative framework for the literature that bridges the main themes that form the conceptual and intellectual structure of this field of research. A comprehensive agenda for future research is suggested and implications for theory, policy and practice are stated.

Purpose

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurs' internality of causal attributions and firm growth during an economic crisis. We propose a U-shaped relationship between the two variables, arguing that the highest-growth entrepreneurs are those with either the highest or lowest levels of internal attribution (IA) during such periods.

Design/methodology/approach

To test our hypothesis, we analyze a database of 804 interviews with entrepreneurs in Brazil during a period of economic stress. Due to the existence of endogeneity, we estimate a model of simultaneous equations in two stages.

Findings

We find evidence of a U-shaped relationship. This means that during economic stress, the fastest-growing entrepreneurs are those who rely more on their own effort (high IA) and those who attribute their success to the economic crisis (low IA).

Practical implications

Tailoring interventions based on attribution patterns and recognizing the U-shaped relationship ensures effective support during economic stress. Entrepreneurial support programs should align with internality levels, emphasizing external awareness or skill development accordingly. Policymakers should take attributions into account when promoting financial resilience. Entrepreneurs would benefit from awareness programs on attributions for reflective decision-making. Ecosystems should foster collaboration by recognizing diverse attributions, enhancing a collective understanding of entrepreneurial responses in crises.

Originality/value

Our results have important implications for understanding the role of entrepreneurs in economic crises. Our results are relevant because they challenge the usual claim that entrepreneurs with high IA are the ones who perform better in situations where external economic conditions are adverse.

Purpose

Research has shown that business model innovation can facilitate most ventures to innovate and remain competitive, yet there has been limited work on how digital leadership capabilities influence business model innovation. Building on the dynamic capabilities view, we address this gap by linking digital leadership capabilities with business model innovation via managerial decision-making through provision of grants received by new ventures.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is cross-sectional research. Data have been collected utilizing purposive sampling from 313 founding members of new ventures in high-velocity markets, i.e. from Pakistan. SPSS has been used to conduct the moderated mediation analysis.

Findings

Digital leadership capabilities foster the business model innovation of the new ventures because they enable new ventures to capitalize on digital technologies and create new ways of generating value for the customers and themselves. Moreover, managerial decision-making mediates digital leadership capabilities and business model innovation relationship, whereas, grants moderate the indirect positive effect of digital leadership capabilities on business model innovation via managerial decision-making. The study generates initial evidence on the impact of digital leadership capabilities on business model innovation via managerial decision-making for new ventures. We advance knowledge on new ventures’ business model innovation by deep-diving into dynamic capabilities view and emphasizing digital leadership capabilities as a significant driver for business model innovation.

Originality/value

With the help of dynamic capabilities theory, this study analyzes how new ventures make use of digital leadership capabilities to promote business model innovation.

Purpose

Previous studies focus on the direct effects of marketing analytics on entrepreneurial performance, but few explore the underlying mechanisms. Drawing on affordance theory, this study explores pathways through new product innovation (NPI) for the effects of marketing analytics on business performance. NPI is a market-based innovation concept comprising customer- and competitor-driven NPD and incremental innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

Using survey data collected from UK-based entrepreneurial firms operating in the IT and telecoms industries, we apply confirmatory factor analysis and a sequential structural equation model to test the mediating role of NPI in the effect of marketing analytics on market performance and financial performance.

Findings

The results show that marketing analytics enhances business performance through competitor-driven but not customer-driven NPD. Although using marketing analytics to generate customer knowledge for existing product innovation may enhance market performance, this positive effect becomes negative when competitor-driven NPD is undertaken to improve existing product innovation.

Originality/value

This study makes significant contributions to the innovation and NPD literature. It delves deeper into the existing view on the positive contributions of customer engagement to business value creation, revealing the significance of competitor knowledge to enhance business performance through marketing analytics, particularly in the context of IT and telecoms entrepreneurial firms.

Purpose

This article explores the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), governance and geographic location on the performance of Palestinian family-owned businesses.

Design/methodology/approach

This quantitative study uses data collected in the fall of 2022 from 180 Palestinian-owned family companies – 90 were located in Palestine and the other 90 were located in the USA. Using R software, multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the relationships between the constructs that formed the study's conceptual framework.

Findings

The results indicate that (1) the risk-taking, innovation and proactiveness dimensions of EO have a significant positive impact on the performance of Palestinian family-owned businesses; (2) Governance moderates the EO dimensions of risk-taking and proactiveness on the performance of Palestinian family-owned companies and (3) geographic location does not moderate the relationship between the EO and performance of Palestinian-owned family businesses.

Originality/value

The current intensified conflict in Palestine warrants exploring the role Palestinian family-owned businesses worldwide can play in rebuilding the local economies of Gaza and the West Bank. The following years will be crucial in determining how proactive risk-taking and innovation will support regional recovery and augment the entrepreneurial and reinvestment capacity of diasporic and home country-based Palestinian family-owned firms. Thus, our study into factors that might enhance these businesses' performance and growth potential is pertinent. A further contribution of this study is new insight into the particularities of Palestinian family-owned businesses, augmenting general theories associated with ethnic and diasporic entrepreneurship.

Purpose

To critically examine the holistic implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in entrepreneurial ventures in Thailand.

Design/methodology/approach

The study observed 121 organizations (or respondents) covering 13 industries from both the public and private sectors. The research process started with a semi-structured interview and observation, followed by focus group interviews. The data collected were then analyzed using content and thematic analysis methods.

Findings

Respondents (chiefly entrepreneurial ventures) have good eco-knowledge. Most have more than 3–10 years of experience implementing eco practices that have significantly reduced their eco-impacts and costs. The study also revealed that firms’ directors developed environmental management systems (EMS) and cultures of their firms. This study rejected previously held beliefs that factors including country, firm size, industry type, years of activity and certification, impact both positively and negatively on green performance. However, the influence of top management, green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO), respondents’ different perceptions of the GSCM boundary and the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the success of GSCM’s implementation.

Research limitations/implications

The COVID-19 pandemic obstructed observing GSCM implementation at the respondents’ workplaces. This could reduce the validity of the research, as all evidence obtained was selectively provided by the respondents, not the researchers.

Practical implications

New practitioners are encouraged to focus on green logistics (GL) at a firm level as opposed to the broader supply chain. Effective GL practices recommended utilities usage reduction, reuse/recycle waste and green procurement.

Originality/value

GSCM researchers should focus on patterns of over-consumption, over-trading and relevant institutions that cause environmental unsustainability, rather than specific units in supply chains. The Buddhist sustainable sufficiency concept should be considered as a viable lens to analyze GSCM as it complements existing theories.

Purpose

Small businesses are facing evolving environments, with a resulting need to shift their traditional approaches toward new business models (BMs). Many face difficulties within this transition process due to their specific resource constraints. Based on this, incremental changes to the BM – business model transition (BMT) – are proposed as comprising a suitable framework for entrepreneurial small businesses.

Design/methodology/approach

This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) to cover a broad range of relevant literature within a final sample of 89 articles. The SLR method was chosen to integrate research in a systematic, transparent and reproducible way. For qualitative analysis and framework derivation, the study draws on a thematic ontological analysis.

Findings

The broad search criteria, focusing on BM, incremental BM changes and small businesses, pave the way for a comprehensive overview of multiple research streams of BM concepts (e.g. digital and sustainable BM). The main contribution of this work is the resulting holistic BMT framework, comprising the main parts BM innovation, external antecedents (transition of environment, entrepreneurial ecosystem), internal antecedents (dynamic capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation, resilience, strategy) and output (firm performance).

Practical implications

The framework provides guidance for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers to implement and complete BMT in small businesses. Furthermore, the presented paper sets a future research agenda focusing on small businesses structured according to the derived framework.

Originality/value

This study provides the first SLR of existing BM concepts with a small-business specific perspective on BMI and a focus on various incremental BM changes.