Entrepreneurs' exit and paths to retirement : theoretical and empirical considerations

The number of ageing entrepreneurs in micro- and small-sized companies is rapidly increasing in Finland and other European Union countries. Over half a million jobs, in over one hundred thousand companies within the EU, are lost annually due to unsuccessful, predominantly retirement-related transfers of businesses. This challenge coincides with EU Grand Challenges and has been highlighted in the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan (European Commission 2013). It has been estimated that in Finland, some 8000 jobs are lost yearly due to the ageing of entrepreneurs. Therefore, entrepreneur ageing has implications not only for the ageing individual but also for the company and the society at large. As entrepreneurs age it becomes more essential for them to start planning when and how they transition into retirement. While they may experience several exits and subsequent re-entries into working life via buying or starting new companies, exiting ones entrepreneurial career due to old age retirement differs from exits that occur earlier during the career. In this chapter, we provide a short overview of the entrepreneur retirement and exit literature from an age perspective. Furthermore, we present a theoretical conceptualization which combines entrepreneur retirement process with exit theories. This will enable scholars to better understand the retirement process, including decision-making, transitioning, and adjustment to retirement. We also provide empirical evidence using data collected among Finnish entrepreneurs in 2012 and 2015, where we outline the types of exits and assess several factors, including age, in association with exit intentions.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Progression of UK women engineers: aids and hurdles

yesThis chapter reports on a pilot study looking at the progression of academic women at one UK University. The chapter focuses on the promotions process and criteria as one important issue emerging from that research. Earlier research has shown that women are less likely to break into institutional networks which allow them to access information not only on formal and objective promotion criteria but also on hidden criteria and the way the ‘academic game’ is played. One result of this is that some academic women may have an inaccurate view of promotion criteria and processes. At the university studied by the authors, the Human Resources department has sought to make the promotion process more transparent and, officially at least, it no longer depends purely upon research achievements. However, these changes will not necessarily result in easier progression for women academics. The authors’ study confirms that there is still a mismatch between what women think the criteria for promotion are, what the formal criteria are and how those criteria actually operate. Reliance on incomplete or inaccurate information about promotion criteria, coupled other factors, such as women’s reluctance to promote themselves actively and traditional barriers to promotion such as caring responsibilities, puts women at a disadvantage when they attempt to progress into more senior positions within universities. Reform of promotions procedures needs to look beyond re-writing the substantive criteria for promotion and look to improving understanding of what is involved

Measuring Wages Worldwide: Exploring the Potentials and Constraints of Volunteer Web Surveys

This chapter discusses the potentials and constraints of using a volunteer Web survey as a worldwide data collection tool for wages. It provides a detailed description of the bias related to individual-level wages and core socio-demographic and employment-related variables across selected developed and developing countries and evaluates the efficiency of post-stratification weights in adjusting these biases. The results confirm that Web samples are particularly attractive to younger persons, full-timers, and persons working in non-manual occupations. This can be observed across countries, although the strength of the bias differs between them. With respect to the efficiency of post-stratification weights, the results are inconclusive. Whereas it is advisable to implement weights for descriptive purposes of socio-demographic variables, the contrary holds in case of wages. Additionally, weights can have the opposite effect by (moderately) increasing the difference in the estimated parameters between the reference and the Web sample

Entrepreneurs’ exit and paths to retirement : Theoretical and empirical considerations

The number of ageing entrepreneurs in micro- and small-sized companies is rapidly increasing in Finland and other European Union countries. Over half a million jobs, in over one hundred thousand companies within the EU, are lost annually due to unsuccessful, predominantly retirement-related transfers of businesses. This challenge coincides with EU Grand Challenges and has been highlighted in the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan (European Commission 2013). It has been estimated that in Finland, some 8000 jobs are lost yearly due to the ageing of entrepreneurs. Therefore, entrepreneur ageing has implications not only for the ageing individual but also for the company and the society at large. As entrepreneurs age it becomes more essential for them to start planning when and how they transition into retirement. While they may experience several exits and subsequent re-entries into working life via buying or starting new companies, exiting ones entrepreneurial career due to old age retirement differs from exits that occur earlier during the career. In this chapter, we provide a short overview of the entrepreneur retirement and exit literature from an age perspective. Furthermore, we present a theoretical conceptualization which combines entrepreneur retirement process with exit theories. This will enable scholars to better understand the retirement process, including decision-making, transitioning, and adjustment to retirement. We also provide empirical evidence using data collected among Finnish entrepreneurs in 2012 and 2015, where we outline the types of exits and assess several factors, including age, in association with exit intentions