Active Non-Employee Owners: Informal Impact on Family-Owned SMEs

Families are an integral part of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Often family members are heavily involved with the operations of an SME, yet hold no formal role or title in the organization. The owner and CEO’s spouse, children, or other relatives could hold disproportionate influence over decisions without any formal responsibilities. These active non-employee owners could have an impact on the organization culture or influence over employees. This paper looks at active non-employee owners’ in SMEs and the emotional impact they have on non-family employees in hopes to explore in future research their organizational impact

The efficacy of SBA loans on small firm survival rates

In an attempt to support entrepreneurs, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offers loans to small firms.  The SBA claims that it not only offers capital to small firms, but that it offers services and support to help them build capabilities.  This study investigates whether the empirical evidence demonstrates an improvement in four-year survival rates for SBA-aided firms over the general population of small firms, and if there is any correlation between loan size and survival rates.  Additionally, the study examines if women and minority-owned SBA-aided small firms (who are a traditionally under-represented demographic) improve their four-year survival rate.  The results suggest that small firms that receive SBA loans do improve the four-year survival rate over the general population of small firms.  However, loan size was not correlated with higher survival rates.  The results also suggest that women-owned small firms experience a similar increase in survival rate, while minority-owned small firms do not receive a statistically significant increase.

The Impact of Customer Contact Personnel on Innovation in Service Firms

This study examines how information from customer interactions affects innovation of service organizations. Previous research on innovation has centered on the importance of the acquisition and utilization of knowledge within the innovation process. Organizations who are better able to acquire and utilize knowledge gain advantages in delivering and developing innovation. While the acquisition and utilization of knowledge in general is important to the innovation process, the literature views necessary one particular type of knowledge: knowledge of the customer. Given the importance of customer knowledge, much of the literature focuses on mechanisms organizations employ to engage customers to gather this type of information. While interacting with customers to gain information is important to innovation in all firms, that interaction has particular implications for service organizations which rely on the dual role of customer contact personnel (CCPs). During service production, CCPs gather information from customers (preferences, needs and desires), and use it in the production of the offering. CCPs occupy a unique position in service organizations, as they sit at the nexus of information gathering and information utilization. Considering the position that CCPs occupy in service organizations, it is surprising that little attention has been directed at examining the role of CCPs in service innovation. Therefore, this paper examines whether increasing levels of customer interaction with CCP will lead to more innovation in service firms. Moreover it will determine how knowledge structures matched with level of CCP-customer interaction can lead to different types of innovation in service firms. Lastly, it will investigate how levels of autonomy (of CCP) with certain types of innovation will influence performance

Dynamic Leadership: Toolbox for the Values-Based Entrepreneur

Four entrepreneurship models are proposed which lend guidance in the development of a business, from birth to exit, each examining ways to maintain the business founder’s initial vision and to continue to infuse values and ethical decision-making at each stage of development

Dynamic Leadership: Toolbox for the Values-Based Entrepreneur

Four entrepreneurship models are proposed which lend guidance in the development of a business, from birth to exit, each examining ways to maintain the business founder’s initial vision and to continue to infuse values and ethical decision-making at each stage of development

Dynamic Leadership: Toolbox for the Value-Based Entrepreneurship

Four entrepreneurship models are proposed which lend guidance in the development of a business, from birth to exit, each examining ways to maintain the business founder’s initial vision and to continue to infuse values and ethical decision-making at each stage of development