Small business, big markets, one world

Dit rapport is een introductiepaper van het International Small Business Congress 2002, dat gehouden zal worden in Amsterdam van 27 tot en met 30 oktober 2002. Aangezien de euro op 1 januari 2002 geïntroduceerd wordt, zal speciale aandacht worden besteed aan de economische integratie in Europa en de gevolgen daarvan voor het kleinbedrijf.

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).

Barriers to Entry

Entry of firms into a market is an important economic mechanism that influences industry dynamics and contributes to allocative and dynamic efficiency. However, there are barriers that can prevent companies from entering a market, hampering the competitive process. Therefore, it is clear that barriers to entry are an important issue in competition policy. In this report, we studied a number of 37 different barriers with a special focus on the possible size effect of the barrier, the sustainability of the barrier, the way it can be measured and the relation with other barriers to entry.

Putative Biomarkers and Targets of Estrogen Receptor Negative Human Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a progressive and potentially fatal disease that affects women of all ages. Like all progressive diseases, early and reliable diagnosis is the key for successful treatment and annihilation. Biomarkers serve as indicators of pathological, physiological, or pharmacological processes. Her2/neu, CA15.3, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and cytokeratins are biomarkers that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for disease diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy selection. The structural and functional complexity of protein biomarkers and the heterogeneity of the breast cancer pathology present challenges to the scientific community. Here we review estrogen receptor-related putative breast cancer biomarkers, including those of putative breast cancer stem cells, a minor population of estrogen receptor negative tumor cells that retain the stem cell property of self renewal. We also review a few promising cytoskeleton targets for ER alpha negative breast cancer

Organizational Structure and Performance in Dutch small Firms

The relationship between organizational structure and performance in small firms has received relatively limited attention over the last few decades. In understanding small firm performance this seems to be a serious omission. In this paper, we first present the rationale for including organizational structure in the analysis of small firm performance. Then, from the literature on organizational theory, we retrieve several dimensions that may be postulated to describe organizational structures of small firms. Based on the study of a stratified sample of 1411 Dutch small firms we show that nine structure stereotypes can be delineated. We further investigate the relevance of the empirical taxonomy by looking at the relationship with firm performance in terms of sales growth, profitability and innovativeness. Eventually, we conclude that organizational structure indeed matters and that it deserves to be taken into account in models and future analysis of small firm performance. Copyright Springer 2005innovativeness, organizational structure, small firm performance, M21, D21,