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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) commonly struggle to acquire needed financial, human, and technological resources. The above being stated, recent scholarly research argues that SMEs that are able to successfully navigate the legitimacy threshold are better able to gather the resources they need to survive and grow. This article provides an empirical test of that claim by examining whether the presence of a corporate parent positively influences SME resource acquisition. Results of the study show that SMEs with corporate parents, when compared to like-sized independent SMEs, have higher credit scores, have more complete management teams, use more computers, and are more likely to be on the Internet. These differences are most pronounced for very small firms and diminish in significance as firm size increases. Study implications include the notion that presence of a corporate parent likely represents a successful navigation of the legitimacy threshold, positively increasing SME resource acquisition.

We explored whether employees in smaller, younger firms would be more ethically compromised, and whether employee identification moderates this relationship.We collected survey data from 154 working professionals enrolled in an MBA program in the southeastern United States. We found that employees of smaller, younger firms selected more compromised ethical choices than employees of larger, older firms. Contrary to our expectations, employee identification had no effect in smaller, younger, firms, yet in larger, older firms, identification actually reduced ethical compliance, suggesting that there is not a simple relationship between identification and ethical compliance.

This is an empirical study of family firm size, as measured by the number of employees, and the relationship of a firmʼs size to a variety of management activities, styles, and characteristics. A statistical analysis of data drawn from 159 American family businesses indicates significant differences by size with regard to the number of nonfamily members in top management, use of outside advisors, time spent engaged in strategic management, use of sophisticated methods of financial management, proportion of women family members involved in firm management, and level of conflict between family members. Implications are offered for family firm owner-managers, for those who assist such businesses, and for researchers in the field of family business.

Regional policy instruments are typically driven by economic rationales, from either a firm or industrial perspective. Yet too often, these rationales are taken as ex ante to the contexts within which firms and industries compete. Recent regional development research has urged a better link be developed between the individual, the firm, and their context, so as to understand the role of regions in supporting effective competitiveness of organizations. In this article, recent research themes are explored that may shed light on the nature of this relationship and that can be developed into an investigative methodology that could aid policy practitioners in generating policy instruments that reflect differing societal constructions of SME reality.

Successful firms are important sources of productivity, employment and economic stability in societies. As the micro-level origins of firm innovations are increasingly attracting attention amongst innovation scholars, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of managerial innovativeness, i.e. small firm managers' innovative behaviour for firm performance. Specifically, the present study investigates managerial innovativeness as a predictor of small firms' product innovativeness and market performance.

This research model suggests that managerial innovativeness is positively linked to firms' market performance and that product innovativeness partially mediates the relationship between managerial innovativeness and market performance. The model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with a dataset (N = 93) collected from small logistics firms in South-Eastern Finland.

The findings support the authors' hypotheses and show that managerial innovativeness had a direct effect on firms' product innovativeness and market performance. The authors also found that firms' product innovativeness mediated the relationship between managerial innovativeness and firms' market performance.

This is one of the few studies that shed light on and show that managerial innovativeness is significantly and positively related with small firms' product innovativeness and market performance, whereas earlier research tended to focus on managers' personalities, traits, characteristics or managerial actions, leaving managerial innovativeness unexplored.

This study investigates how small firms develop preferences for varying levels of alliance partner diversity by applying a behavioral perspective.

Data were collected via an original survey administered by the Swedish National Bureau of Statistics (SCB) of 1,026 Swedish firms with 50 employees or less. Hypotheses were tested by specifying a series of fractional response regressions.

The results show a U-shaped relationship between experienced and preferred alliance partner diversity in small firms and further show moderating effects of firm age, prior growth and environmental dynamism. The findings suggest that preferences towards diverse alliance portfolios in small firms may arise, not only from well-informed deliberate strategic thinking based on prior experience, but also as a consequence of cognitive bias.

The findings suggest that (1) small firms considering a wide variety of alliance partners should carefully investigate whether they are, in fact, capable of mastering a highly diverse alliance portfolio or if they are overconfident novices. (2) Holders of homogenous alliance portfolios should recurringly investigate whether homogeneity is due to informed strategy or inertia.

This study contributes to the literature on alliance partner diversity and behavioral alliance portfolio configuration by shedding light on the learning mechanisms that shape alliance portfolio strategies of small firms by explicating the complexity of how different experience levels of partner variety affect current alliance portfolio preferences.

Marketing orientation refers to a culture in which organizations strive to create superior value for their customers (and superior performance for the business) by focusing on customer needs and long-term profitability. Some studies have found that firms with a high degree of marketing orientation experience improved performance; others have found mixed or nonsignificant results. The marketing orientation of small businesses has not been thoroughly investigated, however. This study of more than 200 small business CEOs examines the marketing orientation levels of small to medium-sized firms (SMEs) as well as the impact of various internal variables (sales/profit performance, company characteristics, and CEO characteristics) on marketing orientation levels. The results confirm some earlier research on marketing orientation and provide new insights into this important strategic dimension.

Entrepreneurship researchers use various types of screening criteria to select samples for study. In that selecting these criteria is, in effect, choosing a definition or model of entrepreneurship, the consequences are immense and have had a direct impact on the generalizability of research and theory development in our field. The purpose of this study is to help entrepreneurship researchers better understand these consequences and, thereby, improve our understanding of entrepreneurial phenomenon. Four of the most commonly used screening criteria are included in this study: firm age, firm size, firm growth, and innovation. Based on a sample of 368 manufacturing firms, the results indicate that few firms fit all or even most of the considered screening criteria and independent-dependent variable relationships vary considerably by screening criteria selection.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the relationship between patent applications and long-term risk for small firms across the global financial crisis of 2008. During a crisis, firm risk often skyrockets, and small and medium enterprises face significant dangers to their business continuity. However, managers have a set of strategies that could be implemented to increase a firm’s resilience, sustaining competitive advantages and improving access to financial resource. The authors focused on the investigating the impact of patenting activities on small business risk in a time of crisis.

This is a quantitative study based on a sample of Italian firms that applied for a patent in 2005. The changes in corporate credit ratings over a five-year period are related to different proxies of patent activity using multivariate regression analysis.

Firms that filed for a patent were more resilient, compared to the control sample, during the financial crisis. Innovative activities resulting in patent application seem to deliver strategic resources useful to tackle the crisis rather than increase riskiness. The moderating effect of patents on risk sensitivity is stronger for small firms and when the number of patents or the patent intensity is larger.

Limited evidence is available on how patent applications are related to risks for small firms during an economic crisis. The authors highlight that the innovative efforts resulting in patent applications can support small business resilience. The authors also point out that the implementation of patent information in small firms' credit score modeling is still an uncommon practice, while it is useful in estimating firm risk in a way more robust to exogenous credit shocks.

This paper aims to inform strategies to enhance public procurement opportunities for women-owned small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To do so, the study examines two research questions: To what extent are women-owned enterprises under-represented among SME suppliers to government; and Do barriers to public procurement – as perceived by SME owners – differ across gender?

The study draws on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and on theories of role congruity and social feminism to develop the study’s hypotheses. Empirical analyses rely on comparisons of a sample of 1,021 SMEs that had been suppliers to government and 9,376 employer firms that had not been suppliers to government. Data were collected by Statistics Canada and are nationally representative. Logistic regression analysis was used to control for systemic firm and owner differences.

Controlling firm and owner attributes, majority women-owned businesses were underrepresented as SME suppliers to government in some, but not all sectors. Women-owned SMEs in Wholesale and Retail and in Other Services were, ceteris paribus, half as likely as to be government suppliers as counterpart SMEs owned by men. Among Goods Producers and for Professional, Scientific and Technical Services SMEs, there were no significant gender differences in the propensity to supply the federal government. “Complexity of the contracting process” and “difficulty finding contract opportunities” were the obstacles to contracting cited most frequently.

The limitations of using secondary analyses of data are well documented and apply here. The findings reflect only the perspectives of “successful bidders” and do not capture SMEs that submitted bids but were not successful. Furthermore, the survey did not include questions about sub-contractor enterprises, data that would likely provide even more insights about SMEs in government supply chains. Accordingly, the study could not address sub-contracting strategies to increase the number of women-owned businesses on government contracts. Statistics Canada’s privacy protocols also limited the extent to which the research team could examine sub-groups of small business owners, such as visible minorities and Indigenous/Aboriginal persons. It is also notable that much of the SME literature, as well as this study, define gender as a dichotomous (women/female, men/male) attribute. Comparing women/female and men/males implicitly assumes within group homogeneity. Future research should use a more inclusive definition of gender. Research is also required to inform about the obstacles to government procurement among the population of SMEs that were unsuccessful in their bids.

The study provides benchmarks on, and directions to, enhance the participation of women-owned SMEs or enterprises in public procurement. Strategies to support women-owned small businesses that comply with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are advanced.

The study offers insights to reconcile economic efficiency and social (gender equity) policy goals in the context of public procurement. The “policy-practice divides” in public procurement and women’s enterprise policies are discussed.

The study is among the first to use a feminist lens to examine the associations between gender of SME ownership and public procurement, while controlling for other salient owner and firm attributes.