This article explores corporate social responsibility in family businesses. In particular, the research investigates family businesses in relation to a wide variety of constituent or stakeholder groups. It reports the preliminary results of focused interviews with forty-two small and medium-sized Dutch family businesses. The data obtained from content analysis suggest that a mix of corporate social responsibility perspectives, including economic benefits, conformance to ethical and legal expectations and philanthropic as well as community involvement, help to explain the nature of relationships with, and behaviors toward, various constituency groups. The family character of the business most frequently impacts employee, client, and supplier relationships. Statistically significant interaction effects are reported for the following moderator variables: generation of the owner; company tenure in the community; community size; company size; and inclusion of the family surname in the business name. Interaction effects were also tested for industry type and gender. The article also outlines some practical implications of the findings and suggests directions for future research.

Why do SMEs invest in environmental measures? From the literature we know that most SMEs are rather slow in adopting these sustainable measures, but then the following question arises: why are other SMEs fast in this respect? From our research, it becomes clear that improving the working conditions is the most important reason why these fast-going SMEs invest in environmental measures, as this probably improves their employees' motivation and performance. This explanation connects 'planet' and 'people' with each other, and does not exclude 'profit', which completes the traditional sustainability circle.

Ethnic entrepreneurship has become a popular concept in a modern multi-cultural society. This paper seeks to offer an overview of the potential of ethnic entrepreneurship for solving inter alia the structural unemployment problems of ethnic groups in cities. The present paper addresses in particular the critical success conditions for ethnic entrepreneurs. Based on a survey among ethnic entrepreneurs in the Amsterdam area, the paper sets out to identify empirically the driving forces for business success, such as education or the role of informal networks. The explanatory framework deployed for the identification of these qualitative success factors for distinct ethnic groups is based on a particular class of artificial intelligence methods, viz. rough set analysis. This multidimensional classification approach appears to be able to identify various important factors for the motivation and performance of ethnic enterprises.Pn954EMMTGV 1 New Horizons for Modern EntrepreneurshipIn the past decades we have witnessed an unprecedented dynamics in the functioning, organisation and location of business firms. We have seen the birth of global firms, but also the emergence of many promising small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Large-scale concentration was accompanied by outsourcing at a world-wide scale. And ICT developments have made the locations of industrial plants and offices increasingly footloose (see Audretsch 1991, Carroll and Hannan 2000and Hayter 1997. The behaviour of the modern firm can no longer be understood on the basis of monodisciplinary research angles, but needs, in general, elements from organisational sociology, management science, economics, geography, and demography. The study of entrepeneurship is not only concerned with survival strategies and success conditions, but also with the birth and death of firms and the linkage patterns of firms with their local and regional environment (see e.g. Beesly and Hamilton 1994, Krugman 1995and Van Wissen 2000.There is apparently in our modern world an abundance of business opportunities, and entrepreneurs appear to be very keen in responding -with more or less success-to such new challenges. The SME sector is booming, especially in the area of ICT and biosciences. But, next to the creation of many new jobs in high-tech sectors of our economies, there is another segment which also exhibits a rapid evolution in both the developed and the developing world, viz. ethnic entrepreneurship (see Waldinger 1989). The trend towards a multi-cultural society reflected in particular in urban areas, has created the seedbed conditions for new entrepreneurial activities which find their origin in the specific socio-cultural habits of an ethnic segment of the population. In many cases, ethnic entrepreneurship may also be seen as a new form of self-employment, be it in the formal or informal sector. It is noteworthy that this phenomenon used to be rather rare in Europe, but we observe nowadays an upswing in the growth of ethnic SME activities in the European ci...

This study claims that policy makers may not be sufficiently aware of the importance of maintaining an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation networks for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). On the basis of the open innovation model, policy makers are also increasingly stimulating SMEs to develop their exploration skills. In the Netherlands, a government subsidy called the 'innovation voucher programme' was introduced to stimulate SMEs to develop innovation in cooperation with knowledge institutes. Yet, although many studies show that SMEs tend to have a higher R&D productivity than larger firms, and innovative SMEs are more likely to make external networks with other SMEs or institutions such as universities, there is still little examination of the successfulness of SME's innovation activities. The growing policy attention for the role of SMEs in innovation prompts the questions how innovation in SMEs can be facilitated, and which factors contribute to the success (or failure) of their innovation efforts. This study explores the innovation strategy of innovative Dutch SMEs by means of their sources of innovation, innovation capabilities, innovation performance, and commercialization sources. By means of structural equation modelling of a sample of 243 Dutch SMEs, this study shows that exploring (technology) opportunity together with institutions such as universities and private research establishments is important for successful innovation in SMEs. But, in addition, our model shows that contacts with competitors are also important for successful innovation performance. Our finding that openness of open innovation also applies to the commercialization phase is too often neglected by researchers and policy makers. JEL Classification

Abstract:This study uses the model of Patzelt and Shepherd (2011) to examine the factors influencing the identification of sustainable opportunities among SMEs in a developing country, Zambia. The factors under investigation include knowledge of the natural/social environment, perception of threats to the natural/social environment, altruism towards others and entrepreneurial knowledge. We interviewed 220 owner-managers in the trading and service sector who supply goods and services to the mining industry in Zambia. We found that altruism towards others was partially supported by our empirical results while the positive effects of knowledge of the natural/social environment and perception of threats to the natural/social environment on the identification of sustainable opportunities were not supported. Contrary to our expectations, entrepreneurial knowledge does not positively moderate the relationship between explanatory variables and the identification of sustainable opportunities. In sum, we found only limited empirical support for the model of Patzelt and Shepherd (2011) concerning the identification of sustainable opportunities. Our findings contribute to literature on entrepreneurship and sustainable opportunity identification by showing what factors influence the identification of sustainable opportunities. This can help us to create awareness among entrepreneurs regarding the effects of entrepreneurial activities on the environment and society; consequently, stimulating entrepreneurs to identify sustainable opportunities.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial motivation and small business growth in one of the poorest emerging countries: the African least developed country (LDC), Rwanda. Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of theoretical resources and a pre-study of interviews with local experts in Rwanda, the authors developed a survey for this study. Based on primary data from 133 Rwandan small business owners, the authors conducted an exploratory factorial analysis to uncover the underlying factors. Subsequently, the authors conducted regression analyses to test the hypotheses. Findings – The analyses show that the predictors for the growth of small businesses can be divided into three factors: one factor with a mix of motivations related to family background, necessity and opportunity motivations; one factor with items predominantly related to opportunity motivation; and one factor with items related to necessity motivation. The first factor has the strongest positive effect on small business growth followed by the second factor. The factor concerning necessity motivation was irrelevant for further inclusion in the regression model, due to insufficient reliability. Research limitations/implications – The study contributes to the debate in the literature about which entrepreneurial motivations affect the growth of small businesses in LDCs. Practical implications – The results reported in this study also have implications for how small business growth in LDCs can be supported and stimulated by policy-making practice. Originality/value – This study shows that entrepreneurial motivation is not a clear distinction between necessity and opportunity, but that a mix of motivations is important to assess the growth of small businesses in an LDC, which is an understudied context.

This paper aims to examine the performance conditions of ethnic (migrant) entrepreneurs in a modem economy. After a broad overview of key issues, an analytical tool from marketing theory is proposed, based on 5 P's (product, price, place, personnel and promotion). Next, an empirical application is presented, in which results from an in-depth interview study on Moroccan entrepreneurs in Amsterdam are discussed. Given the linguistic and qualitative information in our data base, two recently developed pattem recognition methods for categorised information, viz. apriori and rough set methods, are deployed in order to derive meaningfùl association and classification rules which are helpful to identify conditional success or performance rules. Acknowledgement

The objective of this study is to explore entrepreneurial motivation in a least developed country (LDC), which can be divided into push factors and pull factors, without a priori separation between those which are necessity-driven and those which are opportunity-driven. This study shows that the premise "For people who start their own business in an LDC, push factors are more important than pull factors" can be rejected. In contrast to the findings from prior studies on entrepreneurship in LDCs, this study shows that push factors and pull factors are not mutually exclusive. In addition, this study shows that pull factors are even more important than push factors, and that therefore push factors only play a minor role for entrepreneurs. The overall implications are that motivation is a more combined, and nuanced construct, and that the Western concept of entrepreneurial motivation and method of measuring entrepreneurial motivation, are globally applicable.