Benevolence, integrity and ability: a survey of Italian SMEs and banks

Access to appropriate finance is crucial for the start-up, survival, growth and development of firms. The majority of entrepreneurs, especially in smaller firms, are reliant on the bank system. Previous research examines relationships between firms and banks from a transaction costs economics and/or agency theory point of view. This postulates an opportunistic base to human behaviour. An alternative set of assumptions about human nature encompass altruism and trust. Trust is relevant because it is a way to reduce complexity; it is the 'lubricant' in exchanges; it is crucial in situations of risk or high pressure, and it is among the building blocks of social capital, which have been shown to underpin access to resources for entrepreneurs. Trust is based on an assessment of ability, benevolence and integrity. This paper tests whether there is a relationship between trust and the cost of finance (i.e. interest rates)

Identification through technical analysis : A study of charting and UK non-professional investors

The usefulness of technical analysis, or charting, has been questioned because it flies in the face of the 'random walk' and tests present conflicting results. We examine chartists' decision-making techniques and derive a taxonomy of charting strategies based on investors' market ontologies and calculative strategies. This distinguishes between trend-seekers and pattern-seekers, and trading as a system or an art. We argue that interpretative activity plays a more important role than previously thought and suggest that charting's main appeal for users lies in its power as a heuristic device regardless of its effectiveness at generating returns.PostprintPeer reviewe

Roots of Social Enterprise : Entrepreneurial Philanthropy, England 1600-1908

Purpose: Insights into the roots of social enterprise from before the term was adopted are provided by examining histories of charitable service and comparing current understandings of social enterprise. Social enterprise models of welfare provision are evidenced from the 17th Century onwards. Persistent themes are identified that provide insights for current practice and understanding. Design/Methodology/Approach: This historiography examines interpretations from 1905 to the present day of examples of welfare provision between two watershed points: 1600, just prior to the Poor Laws and 1908, when the Old Age Pensions Act shifted emphasis in public sector provision. Findings: Activities that would nowadays be termed social enterprise are evidenced in histories of charitable philanthropy covering each Century since 1600. Prevailing attitudes uncritically demarcated deserving and undeserving poor. Histories contributed to a heroic narrative of social entrepreneurs, describing activities dependent on wellnetworked, politically active individuals that rarely continued beyond their involvement. The political environment was recognised to influence the types of organisations, governance and resourcing. Research limitations/Implications: The historiography takes examples from three centuries between 1600 and 1908 but is not comprehensive. Recurrent themes are identified for further research. Originality/Value: Social enterprise is a 21st Century label but not a new phenomenon. Identification of prevailing themes provides insights for the understanding of social enterprises in the 21st Century

Multipartite Attitudes to Enterprise : A Comparative Study of Young People and Place

The article examines young people’s attitudes towards enterprise, comparing prosperous and deprived neighbourhoods and two UK cities. Corpus linguistics analysis identified multi-layered attitudes and variations in how place prosperity and city affect attitudes. High interest in enterprise was associated with weaker place attachment and reduced social embeddedness. Young adults from prosperous neighbourhoods delegitimised other’s enterprises; the ‘deprived’ sub-corpus included more fluid notions of enterprise legitimacy. Liverpool accounts contained stronger discursive threads around self-determination; Bradford accounts included greater problematizing of entrepreneurship versus employment. An original Multipartite Model of Attitudes to Enterprise is presented consisting of four layers: attitudes to enterprise generally; attitudes legitimising particular forms of enterprise; attitudes to enterprise related to place; and attitudes to enterprise related to self. The conclusion explains why policies and research need to be fine-grained and avoid uni-dimensional conceptualisations of attitudes to enterprise or deterministic arguments relating entrepreneurship to specific types of places or backgrounds

The language of social entrepreneurs

This paper questions the application of the entrepreneurship discourse to social entrepreneurship in the UK and looks at how people ‘doing’ social enterprise appropriate or re-write the discourse to articulate their own realities. Drawing on phenomenological enquiry and discourse analysis, the study analyses the micro discourses of social entrepreneurs, as opposed to the meta rhetorics of (social) entrepreneurship. Analysis using both corpus linguistics software and Critical Discourse Analysis showed a preoccupation among interviewees with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. Echoes of the enterprise discourse are evident but couched in linguistic devices that suggest a modified social construction of entrepreneurship, in which interviewees draw their legitimacy from a local or social morality. These findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of enterprise is used to promote efficiency, business discipline and financial independence. The paper raises critical awareness of the tension in meanings appropriated to the enterprise discourse by social enterprise policy and practice and illustrates the value of discourse analysis for entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship research

The crafting of an (un)enterprising community: context and the social practice of talk

This article examines a ‘deprived’ UK community to identify how (dis)connections between context and enterprise are produced within accounts of a particular locality. We used a discursive psychological approach to examine how the community depicted itself as a context for enterprise. Our analysis identified three discursive repertoires mobilised by a range of voices in the community which combined to portray an unenterprising community and create a conceptual deadlock for enterprise. We suggest it is too deterministic to assume context is fixed and controls the potential for entrepreneurial development. Instead, we should consider social practices, including talk, that help construct the contexts in which entrepreneurship is expected to occur

Juggling on a tightrope: Experiences of small and micro business managers responding to employees with mental health difficulties

This article presents findings from an in-depth qualitative study focused exclusively on the first-hand experiences of small and micro businesses managers who have responded to employees with mental health difficulties. Despite growing policy focus on workplace mental health, empirical research evidence on management experiences of responding to mental health issues in a small or micro business context is rare. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 UK-based small and micro business managers who described 45 individual employee cases, we examine how managers traverse a support-performance continuum, and use a tension-based lens to analyse the tensions that managers experienced. We examine three key tensions for small and micro business managers that surfaced when responding to employees with mental health problems: (1) Individual vs Collective; (2) Confidence vs Caution; (3) Informal vs Formal. Our analysis exposes how managers handle tensions when managing at the nexus of support and performance and contributes a deeper understanding of the dynamics and challenges of managing mental health problems in small and micro businesses

Managing Mental Health in Small and Micro Businesses

In recent decades, the social and economic impact of mental health problems among working age people has risen up the agenda across the western economies. Common mental health problems, including stress, anxiety and depression, are a leading cause of workplace absence and productivity loss. To date, few empirical studies address, directly and in-depth, the first-hand experiences of small and micro employers in managing mental health problems among their staff. The vast majority of research on managing workplace mental health has been conducted within larger organisations with employer guidance arising from this research inevitably shaped around the experiences and needs of larger organisations, whose resources and capacities are likely to differ from small and micro firms. The aim of this research is to begin to address this gap in evidence. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, we explore the lived experiences of managers within small and micro businesses who had first-hand experience of supporting employees through mental health problems

Waves of Professionalization Before, During and After Management Buyouts and Buy-ins of Private Family Firms

YesWe explore the process of professionalization pre- and post- buyout (MBO) or buyin (MBI) of former private family firms using longitudinal evidence from six UK family firms undergoing an MBO/I in 1998. Professionalization behaviour was monitored up to 2014. Previous studies have conceptualized professionalization as a threshold to be attained. We demonstrate that professionalization is a complex process occurring in waves, triggered by changes in firm ownership and management. Waves of professionalization converge during the MBO/I process. Buyouts provide a funnelling mechanism enabling diverse control systems to be standardized. Post-MBO/I, divergence in the professionalization process reoccurs contingent on firm-specific contexts. Professionalization focuses on operations when stewardship relationships predominate, but on agency control mechanisms when there is increased potential for agency costs. Buyout organizational form is an important transitory phase facilitating the professionalization process. Professionalization is not a once for all development stage.The Enterprise Research Centre is an independent research centre which focusses on SME growth and productivity. ERC is a partnership between Warwick Business School, Aston Business School, Imperial College Business School, Strathclyde Business School and Birmingham Business School. The Centre is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS); Innovate UK; and, through the British Bankers Association (BBA), by the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC; HSBC Bank PLC; Barclays Bank PLC and Lloyds Bank PLC. The support of the funders is acknowledged. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the funders

Young people and entrepreneurial cultures in low-income communities

Understanding how to support entrepreneurial cultures is critical for the future of places. Local entrepreneurial cultures are the shared views that determine how people in a place - or location -understand and experience the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurship literature has often attributed lack of enterprise in certain types of places, particularly ëdepletedí or ëlow income communitiesí to an entrepreneurial deficit and distance from enterprise culture. In UK policy, however, enterprise has long been promoted as panacea to deprivation in lowincome communities . Little is known about how entrepreneurial cultures develop differently within more and less deprived places. Particularly little is known about how young people ís attitudes to enterprise, as one element of those shared views, are affected by place, as they conceptualise it. Yet entrepreneurial responses might still be needed most in the places marginalised from the growth centres. Enterprise initiatives targeting young people as an alternative career route tend to be universal rather than place-based and take-up of enterprise remains low. How far the potential for enterprise within young people ís trajectories is influenced by place is unknown. This paper reports the findings of a research project exploring the links between place, enterprise and young people in Bradford and Liverpool, UK. The research combined interpretive, corpus linguistic and discourse analysis to examine how certain place factors affect young adults í attitudes to enterprise in low-income versus more prosperous neighbourhoods. Beyond various age-based commonalities, we found that where they live and deprivation status each has defined effects on how young adults construct enterprise within their own trajectories and the trajectories of their places. This paper challenges views that attribute simplistic place or person specific factors to an area ís propensity for enterprise. We argue for understanding how place-based factors, expressed and shaped by the attitudes of young members of those places, affect the future of entrepreneurial cultures. In this way, the paper bridges thinking on informal, youth and place-based entrepreneurship