International Growth and Social Media Competitiveness of Small Software Firms

The current chapter aims to increase the understanding on how social media as a tool can become a source of competitiveness and enhance international growth of small technology firms operating in software sector. Based on exploratory case studies undertaken in two Finnish software firms, our chapter specifically links international growth to organizational functions and specific social media platforms. We offer insights on how organizational functions like sales and marketing, research and development, customer support, and human resources can efficiently use specific social media platforms to positively influence international growth. Finally, our chapter offers both theoretical and managerial implications.© 2021 Palgrave Macmillan. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of a chapter published in a book “Technological Innovation and International Competitiveness for Business Growth : Challenges and Opportunities”. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51995-7_4fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Did firm age, experience, and access to finance count? SME performance after the global financial crisis

© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper examines the relationships between firm age and entrepreneurs experience on SME performance after the 2008/09 global financial crisis. We find that in general the crisis had a long-lasting scarring effect on the SME sector, but there is evidence of some recovery in performance. Interestingly, the well-established, and negative, firm age-growth relationship still holds, but entrepreneurial experience did not have any substantive effects on small business performance. Our findings suggest that the severity of the crisis meant that previous entrepreneur experiences had little value in this unique and uncertain environment. However, young firms still accounted for a disproportionately high share of growth, especially among the fastest growing firms

Managers’ Marketing Strategy Decision Making During Performance Decline and the Moderating Influence of Incentive Pay

This paper focuses on managers’ marketing decision making during performance decline. Drawing on the reconciliation of theories of failure-induced change and threat-rigidity by Ocasio (1995), we examine how performance decline may result in a rigid decision-making process and decision characteristics that reflect the narrowing of attention and increased risk seeking. Furthermore, drawing on managerial compensation research, we consider how incentive pay may affect the marketing decision-making process and decision characteristics of managers during performance decline. Using a simulation game with experienced Chinese managers, our results indicate that performance decline decreases marketing strategy process comprehensiveness but increases reliance on short-term marketing decisions, strategic change, and strategic risk taking. Moreover, incentive pay attenuates the rigid decision-making process of managers but accentuates their heightened risk seeking during performance decline. This paper offers unique behavioral insights into how managers make marketing decisions