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Growth and job creation at the firm level: Swedish SME data

Darush Yazdanfar (Department of Business, Economics and Law, Centre for Research on Economic Relations, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden)
Peter Öhman (Department of Business, Economics and Law, Centre for Research on Economic Relations, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden)

Management Research Review

ISSN: 2040-8269

Article publication date: 3 April 2018

Issue publication date: 9 April 2018

678

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between firm sales growth and employment level as a proxy for job creation among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Design/methodology/approach

The hypotheses were empirically examined by performing several univariate and multivariate regressions to investigate a large panel data set of 13,548 Swedish SMEs in four industry sectors in the four-year period from 2009 to 2012.

Findings

The results indicate that growth, in terms of sales, as a competitive advantage is positively related to the number of employees hired by the sampled firms. In addition, the size and age variables are also positively associated with the number of employees hired. The results support the suitability of implementing the resource-based view to explain job creation by SMEs.

Originality/value

While previous studies have mostly ignored the impact of these firm-level variables on job creation, the current study highlights the effect of firm-specific characteristics such as sales growth, size, age and industry. The authors use a combination of models to analyse a large cross-sectoral data set regarding the association, in SMEs, between the firms’ sales growth and job creation.

Keywords

Citation

Yazdanfar, D. and Öhman, P. (2019), "Growth and job creation at the firm level: Swedish SME data", Management Research Review, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 345-358. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRR-03-2017-0093

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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