Small Business Economics

https://link.springer.com/journal/11187

List of Papers (Total 551)

Seeds in rocky soil: the interactive role of entrepreneurial legacy and bridging in family firms’ organizational ambidexterity

Existing research on family firms emphasizes the importance of entrepreneurship across generations but leaves the role of entrepreneurial transmissions between predecessors and successors relatively unexplore . Building on the concept of entrepreneurial legacy, we ask how interactions of entrepreneurial mindsets and resources influence organizational ambidexterity in family firms...

Re-viewing entrepreneurial universities through alumni engagement

The paper contributes to re-viewing entrepreneurial universities by expanding the understanding of the role and impact of alumni engagement in this context. Embedded in a stakeholder theory perspective, we develop and test a framework that identifies social, behavioural, cognitive and affective drivers of alumni engagement. We conducted statistical analyses to test hypotheses on...

The interaction of a size-dependent tax policy and financial frictions: evidence from a tax reform in Japan

This study examines the effects of the interaction of a size-dependent tax policy that exempts firms whose stated capital is at or below a certain threshold from taxation and financial frictions on firm growth and financing. Our empirical findings can be summarized as follows: First, firms with lower productivity, a positive potential tax benefit, and smaller stated capital are...

Divergent thinking and post-launch entrepreneurial outcomes: non-linearities and the moderating role of experience

Divergent thinking is the ability to produce numerous and diverse responses to questions or tasks, and it is used as a predictor of creative achievement. It plays a significant role in the business organization’s innovation process and the recognition of new business opportunities. Drawing upon the cumulative process model of creativity in entrepreneurship, we hypothesize that...

Look in to look out: strategy and family business identity during COVID-19

COVID-19 challenges the value systems of family firms and urges them to adapt their behaviors, affecting their identities. This study aims to explore how and why family businesses strategically respond to challenges to their identity during COVID-19. Based on a qualitative case study of six German family firms, we propose a process model of family business identity variations...

The dynamic impact of inter-firm network agreements

This paper sheds new light on the dynamic effects of inter-firm network agreements on firm performance and investigates whether the specific combination of partner profiles triggers heterogeneous causal effects. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that participation in network agreements has a persistent impact on firms’ revenues, value added, and EBITDA...

Entrepreneurship in religious organizations: How the Church of England developed an entrepreneurial orientation

Prior research established that religion shapes country-level entrepreneurial activity as well as individual-level entrepreneurial decisions. The organizational level has received less research attention. It is particularly unclear how the combination of entrepreneurship and religion is forged in established religious organizations. Through a historical case study of the Church...

Does religion matter to angels? Exploring the influence of religion in entrepreneurial investor decision-making

Despite the pervasive influence religion has on society, the role of religion in angel investor decision-making remains unknown. This study tests a model of how religion – both as a guiding institutional logic and a personal religious belief – influences angel investor evaluations. Drawing on the similarity attraction paradigm and expectancy violation theory, two scenario-based...

Specifying the role of religion in entrepreneurial action: a cognitive perspective

Research on the relationship between religion and entrepreneurship has produced mixed findings. We argue such equivocal findings are partly the result of under-specification of the role of religion in entrepreneurial action. To address this issue, we build on the process perspective of entrepreneurial cognition by simultaneously incorporating mental representations and cognitive...

Why generative AI can make creative destruction more creative but less destructive

The application of machine learning (ML) to operational data is becoming increasingly important with the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI). We propose a model where incumbents have an initial advantage in ML technology and access to (historical) operational data. We show that the increased application of ML for operational data raises entrepreneurial barriers that...

Marriage: an institution you cannot disparage? Evidence on the marriage norms of entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship research increasingly acknowledges marriage as an important resource for long-term commitment to entrepreneurial ventures. At the same time, family scholars emphasize the deinstitutionalization of marriage in many countries, meaning that marriage as formalized and long-term companionship has lost importance. We contend that outdated ideological positions in...

Coupling engagement with analytical rigor: advancing research on religion and entrepreneurship using a mechanism-based approach

Secularization processes alongside supposed tensions between science and religion may partly explain the slow development of literature on the relationship between religion and entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the overwhelming number of submissions we received for the present special issue of Small Business Economics suggests a profound interest in this topic by researchers from...

Is digitalization a source of innovation? Exploring the role of digital diffusion in SME innovation performance

Drawing on strategic management theory, this study examines the relationship between digitalization and innovation performance in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We hypothesize that SMEs with higher levels of digital diffusion have higher innovation performance, and that absorptive capacity moderates this relationship. To test this relationship, we use a sample of 1100...

A procedural perspective on academic spin-off creation: the changing relative importance of the academic and the commercial sphere

Academic scientists who commercialize their research findings via spin-off creation have to transition from the academic sphere to the commercial sphere. Along this spin-off creation process, they face challenges adapting to the conflicting logics of these spheres. We hypothesize that throughout the three phases of this process, the importance of the academic sphere decreases...

Refugee entrepreneurship motivations in Sweden and Germany: a comparative case study

Refugee entrepreneurs can make a significant contribution to sustainable growth and development in host countries. However, comprehensive comparative studies of refugee entrepreneurial motivations are scarce, particularly in the absence of a theoretical framework on entrepreneurship motivation that is suitable for such contexts. This is a research topic that is increasingly of...

Does market power drive business model innovation? Evidence from Italian family manufacturing firms

The increasingly dynamic and uncertain environment in which firms operate has strengthened the need to understand how firms react to changing conditions and unpredicted events. Using the information on business model innovation collected through a unique survey on Italian manufacturing companies, we study if and how variations in the firm’s competitive position in the product...

Per Davidsson: recipient of the 2023 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

Professor Per Davidsson is the recipient of the 2023 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Throughout an extraordinarily productive career, he has made invaluable contributions in building the field of entrepreneurship. His early studies on entrepreneurship and culture and his studies on the growth of small businesses played an important role in the emergence and...

Is this time different? How Industry 4.0 affects firms’ labor productivity

Does Industry 4.0 technology adoption push firms’ labor productivity? We contribute to the literature debate—mainly focused on robotics and large firms—by analyzing adopters’ labor productivity returns when micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) are concerned. We employ original survey data on Italian MSMEs’ adoption investments related to a multiplicity of technologies and...

Digital innovation in family firms: The roles of non-family managers and transgenerational control intentions

Digital innovation, i.e. the creation of products and services, processes, or business models on the basis of digital technology, represents a new innovation phenomenon that offers important opportunities, but also entails high risks. Family firm research argues that family firms generally possess a greater ability to innovate, but differ in their willingness to do so. We propose...

Making contributions: personal reflections from the co-creative evolution of entrepreneurship research

This essay reflects on the last few decades’ evolution of Ideas, Evidence, Concepts, and Methods in the multidisciplinary, multi-level, and multi-methodological field of entrepreneurship research. Using illustrations from my own career and how prior recipients of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research guided and inspired them, I describe the journey from early empirical...

Beware the community type: engagement and growth in core vs. open online communities

Entrepreneurs can benefit from the communities they build. Therefore, many entrepreneurs create online communities that allow self-selected stakeholders, such as customers, crowd investors, or enthusiasts, to interact with the venture and other like-minded individuals. However, research on how entrepreneurs can successfully engage community members and grow such online...

Getting off to a good start: emerging academic fields and early-stage equity financing

Prior studies show that access to academic knowledge plays a crucial role in new venture financing. We extend this research by shifting the focus from the access to academic knowledge to the developmental state of the academic field, where the academic knowledge is generated. Using natural language processing (NLP), we clustered peer-reviewed academic knowledge from Scopus into...

Corporate accelerators: design and startup performance

Corporate accelerators (CAs) have emerged as a key component of entrepreneurship ecosystems, offering startups corporate guidance, industry connections, and resources for accelerated venture creation. Although their proliferation is evident, we still know little about the value they produce for startups across different contexts. This study investigates the organizational setup...