The search for labour flexibility has assumed great importance in most developed countries and has been the catalyst for the deregulation which has occurred, and continues to occur, in the Australian labour market. However, despite this, the question remains whether deregulation of the labour market in Australia is necessary for the attainment of flexibility since the empirical evidence is inconclusive. Industry representatives from the hospitality sector argue that a high degree of labour flexibility is a vital component in being able to meet market demands and achieve a competitive environment. Using data from a study of 435 registered clubs in the Australian state of NSW, areas of labour flexibility which these hospitality enterprises value are examined. Managers’ perceptions of the impact of awards and trade unions on the ability of the enterprises to achieve labour flexibility in a variety of areas are also examined. It was found that while there was a perception by managers that awards and trade unions did have a moderate to low impact or restriction on labour flexibility, the impact was not perceived to be as great as the proponents of deregulation would suggest. It is argued that registered clubs are choosing not to enter into formal enterprise bargaining because of this perceived low/moderate level of award and trade union impact on labour flexibility.
DENNIS HOWARD AND DAMIAN HINE ARE PhD candidates working at Southern Cross University, Australia. Despite the wealth of programs employed by governments towards the small business sector, there is often little in the way of studies that systematically evaluate those programs. The authors believe that a major cause of this is a general lack of models that systematically explain what environmental factors influence small enterprise development. The paper addresses in part this issue and recommends the need for research to test the model. Small business development will be a major policy front through the 1990s because of the perceived role of small businesses in job creation and sustainable development. Policy approaches differ, however, because of the debate about government intervention in the economy. While there is substantial agreement in favour of neutralising forces that inhibit free markets, the benefits of direct intervention at the level of the firm are often debated. In this paper, life cycle theories (the Product Life Cuycle and the Organisation Life Cycle) are used to outline how product markets and organisations theoretically develop. An additional life cycle is identified, the Population of Organisations Life Cycle (POLC). It is useful for predicting a range of possible outcomes associated with small business assistance programs (SBAPs) and suggests when the benefits of such programs are maximised.
This paper commences by discussing Small Business Assistance Programs (SBAPs) including why they are necessary, how they work and when they should be employed. This sets the fundamental parameters upon which to base the design of SBAPs. But there is little in the literature, apart from rudimentary planning models to help with strategic positioning of SBAPs in a government policy context. The Small Enterprise Environment Matrix (SEEM) is proposed as a conceptually simple yet potentially useful tool to help policy-makers. It is based on the popular portfolio/matrix approach to strategic decision-making.
Life cycle models have become important in explaining the changing size structure of firms based on the carrying capacity of regions or industries. In particular, the population ecology model predicts stages of growth, maturity and eventually decline in the number of firms in an industry. There has been criticism of such models because of their focus on external variables as pre‐determinants of the potential for enterprise development. This paper attempts to reconcile the external focus of the population ecology model with relevant internal management factors in enterprise development. A survey was conducted of Australian services exporters, and the results not only confirm the existence of four separate life cycle stages in the population ecology model, but also identify the external and internal variables that are strategically relevant at each of the stages. The findings provide potentially useful information in a range of contexts including the design of small business assistance as well a providing “guide posts” to entrepreneurs engaged in enterprise development.
Regional economic or regional enterprise development has been subject to intense research by economists, planners, enterprise specialists and policy specialists for decades. The paper examines various models for regional economic or regional enterprise development and focuses on small towns and communities as an essential component of development. The paper reviews the role of entrepreneurs in enterprise strategies linked to towns and communities and the origins of entrepreneurs and strategies that might be adopted at the regional level to provide support for the entrepreneurial event. The results of a field study of over three hundred Australian regional development centres small enterprise clients, the strategies of those centres impact on entrepreneurs, reveal that the proposed objectives were not achieved and the strategies were in retrospect questionable. The paper concludes with recommended strategies for practitioners and policy makers dedicated to regional development and recognising the role of entrepreneurs in that process.
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