Starting a Small Business Outreach Program: The Experience of a Small Southeastern University

When the Federal government decided not to fund the Small Business Institute through the U.S. Small Business Administration, many business schools eliminated or severely curtailed their SBI activities. Despite lacking federal funds, a southeastern rural university founded a new Small Business Institute program in 1999. Since inception it has assisted forty-five small businesses in a five county area. This paper describes starting a new business outreach program without Federal funds. It concludes with observations and implications relating to other schools starting or renewing an SBI program

Do Legislators Pay to Deviate from Constituents?

In their survey of the legislator shirking literature, Bender and Lott (1996) point to 4 areas of relative consensus regarding legislator voting: 1. legislators almost always represent their constituents' interests, 2. when legislators do diverge from constituent interests, the adverse economic effects on constituents are trivial, 3. when legislators do not attempt re-election, their attendance rates fall, and 4. even small deviations from constituent interests quickly lead incumbents to lose re-election. In this study, this last result is continued by investigating whether incumbents who deviate more frequently or further from their constituents' interests tend to increase their total campaign expenditure to retain their seats, other things equal.Election

Starting New Small Business Institute Programs: A Survey of New Programs Begun Since 1996

In   1996  the  U S   government   eliminated  federal  funding  for   Small  Business  Institutes, resulting  in a significant  loss of formal  SBI membership.   A poll  of Small  Business  Institute Directors Association members identified five schools that had started new SBI programs since 1996, despite the lack of federal funding. The authors conducted a survey of these five new SBI programs. The authors conclude that starting new SBI programs is a viable means of offering students hands-on business experience despite the lack of federal funding

Creating a New Program in Entrepreneurship Education: A Case Study in Colombia

Entrepreneurship has been widely recognized as having greatly influenced the United States. Its influence has especially been documented over the past 20 years. Paralleling our societal interest in entrepreneurship has been increasing interest in entrepreneurship education. While our interest in entrepreneurship education has grown considerably over the past two decades, this field of study continues to have critics both within and outside of schools and colleges of business (Kuratko 2004). In spite of these criticisms, some researchers suggest that the United States is still far ahead of other regions of the world in terms of entrepreneurial education (Solomon et al. 1998). Using entrepreneurship education in the United States as a point of departure, this article uses a case study to analyze the efforts of a private university in Bogota, Colombia, to create a new program in entrepreneurship. The Colombian Legislature passed Law 590 in July 2000 as a means to promote and develop entrepreneurship in the nation. Shortly thereafter a private university in Bogota started a new program in entrepreneurship. At the university’s invitation, a small number of faculty from U.S. universities participated in the school’s “kick-off” efforts. The paper offers analysis and recommendations based on five criteria: 1) What is taught, 2) Why it is taught, 3) How it is taught, 4) How well it works, and 5) Leadership support. In addition, rather than simply adopting a U.S. or European model of entrepreneurship education, the authors propose that they should develop a center that integrates lessons from other models with elements that are relevant to the local situation

Omitted Variable Bias in the Link Between Planning and Performance

This article argues that existing research poorly specifies the link between planning and performance because of omitted variable bias. Researchers agree planning is a critical part of creating any new venture. Many researchers assess planning by whether a small firm has a written business plan. Unfortunately, efforts empirically to validate this relationship have been inconclusive. This article proposes that researchers should assess business plans both on the quality of the plan (and the planning process that produced it), and on the quality of the underlying business opportunity. Failure to account for both aspects of a business plan amounts to omitted variable bias, frustrating attempts to accurately estimate the true relationship

The Black Box: Unraveling Family Business Succession

Using the family business succession, resource-based view of firms, familiness, and organizational clan literatures, this article develops a model based on the ability of the family business to use familiness, a specific bundle of attributes deriving from a family’s culture, as a competitive advantage for the family firm. In particular, this resource-based framework of family business shows how familiness can distinguish between family firms that succeed beyond the second generation and those that do not. Implications for future research are discussed

Re-Examining Firm Size and Exporting: An Empirical Analysis of South Carolina Firms

Mittlelstaedt, Harben, and Ward (2003) and Wolff and Pett (2000) offer contradictory evidence on the impact of firm size (by employment) and the propensity to export. Using a data set very similar to that of Mittelstaedt et al., we re-examine the issue. Although we find that firm size has a significant impact on export propensity, we fail to find a threshold at twenty employees, as Mittelsteadt, et al., did. Our findings are more supportive of Wolff and Pett, who argue very small firms are capable of exporting. This paper concludes by considering the implications for researchers and policymakers