Making sense of the New Economy

Dit rapport presenteert een overzicht van de mogelijke definiërende, stuwende factoren achter de zogenaamde 'nieuwe economie'. Op basis van bedrijfskundige en economische literatuur worden vijf causale redenaties ('logica's') herleid. De causale redenaties beschrijven een aantal verbanden tussen informatie- en communicatietechnologieën en economische groei. Daarnaast wordt ingegaan op de effecten van ICT en een aantal prioriteiten voor toegepast onderzoek over ondernemerschap en ondernemingsgedrag.

Entrepreneurship and innovation

This report provides an overview of recent facts and figures on start-ups in the Netherlands, techno start-ups in particular and the overall link between entrepreneurship and innovation.

The relationship between family orientation, organization context, organization structure and firm performance

This study focuses on the prediction of three firm performance indicators, sales growth, innovation performance and profitability, on a sample of small and medium-sized firms in the Netherlands. Predictions from agency theory and the resource based view of organizations lead to alternate hypotheses regarding the direct and indirect effects of family ownership and management on firm performance. Other variables in the analysis include various organization structure variables including standardization, self coordination, team coordination, decentralization, departmentalization and specialization, and control variables such as firm size and age. Results suggest a direct effect of family orientation on innovation performance, even when controlled for other variables. The effect of family orientation on the other two dependent variables is quite limited.

Spin-off start-ups in the Netherlands

This report presents the results of an EIM study about spin-off businesses. These are new, independent enterprises set up by departing employees with assistance of former employers. The study entails preliminary exploration of that phenomenon, including analyses of the characteristics of spin-offs and parent companies, their relationships, motives and performance.

Organizational structure and performance in Dutch SMEs

The relationship between organisational structure and performance has received little attention over the past few decades, especially in regards to firms with less than 100 employees. All too often, the stereotype of SMEs as unstructured, informal 'adhocracies' is heard. Based on the study of a stratified sample of more than 1400 Dutch SMEs (in three size classes and nine economic sectors) we show that this stereotype is false. We derive a set of typical organisational structures. We further investigated the circumstances under which these structures seem to perform well, and the circumstances under which they appear to perform poorly. Un update of this report is made on Januari 2005 (N200420).

Entrepreneurial intentions subsequent to firm exit

While a large literature has emerged focusing on nascent entrepreneurship, the propensity for exentrepreneurs to consider re-entering into entrepreneurship, or what we term here as renascent entrepreneurship, has been generally overlooked. This paper suggests a different view of learning, where the entrepreneur can utilize her capacity to absorb and learn from the initial entrepreneurial experience, thereby augmenting her initial endowment of entrepreneurial skills.

Family Orientation, Strategic Orientation and Innovation Performance in SMEs: A Test of Lagged Effects

Past research suggests a negative effect of family orientation on innovation performance. However, many past studies have certain limitations that this study is designed to overcome. In particular,this study estimates lagged effects of family orientation on innovation performance while controlling for organization context variables and the mediating effect of strategic orientation. It also uses a multidimensional approach to measure family orientation while testing for common method bias. This study makes use of a sample of 343 Dutch small and medium size firms. Innovation performance, being the dependent variable, was collected in 2005. All independent variables, i.e. strategy, family orientation and context variables, are collected in previous time periods, with lags ranging between 3 and 4 years. Family orientation is measured according to five independent dimensions including family power, family culture,overlap of ownership and management and intentions to keep the firm in the family.

Strategic Renewal and its Effect on Small Firm Performance

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between strategic renewal and the performance of smaller firms (less than 100 employees). We use a panel of micro data on about 1000 Dutch firms. The dataset contains information on aspects of strategic renewal, including process innovation and knowledge management. In our regression analyses we explain the variation in firm performance and we explicitly control for reversed causality, business cycle effects, sector effects, and firm age. We find that market research, an active external network for knowledge acquisition and strategic efforts into the improvement of internal processes are positively related to turnover growth. Furthermore, codification of knowledge, cooperation with partner firms and the provision of training to employees directly relates to employment growth. The results emphasize the importance of both knowledge absorption and knowledge creation to the success of innovative efforts in small firms. We find that the impact of the various measures varies with firm size. One further notable finding is that the ownership of patents negatively impacts small firm performance, particularly for the smallest firms in our sample.

Learning in the business start-up process

The start-up process is an important source for learning opportunities. The present study investigates different types of entrepreneurial learning in the start-up process. Combining contributions from psychology, sociology, organisational and entrepreneurship literature, an appropriate conceptual framework emerges, in which different types of entrepreneurial learning are distinguished. Based on this framework, and using panel data on start-up entrepreneurs, we empirically rediscovered this typology of entrepreneurial learning for The Netherlands. In addition, the identified types are�analysed further to explore additional characteristics.

Incentives to innovate

This empirical study investigates the factors that influence firms' incentives to innovate. We study the variables stimulating, enabling and conditioning the idea generation process in small and medium-sized service firms. The employees and their context determine the richness of the early stages of the innovation process, and thus the firms' incentives to innovate. Of the final set of explanatory variables, the most significant 'manageable' variable is the formulation of clear innovation objectives in the corporate strategy. Furthermore, fostering freedom to experiment and applying multifunctional teams have positive effects on the incentives to innovate. Besides, two factors (quality competition and high� uncertainty of market demand) are market related. Finally, in contradiction to our expectations, having well-educated employees has a negative effect on the incentives to innovate.