Bernadette Power

Perception of the risks of smoking in the general population and among general practitioners in Ireland

BackgroundData on perception of smoking risk amongst the Irish population are sparse.AimsTo study the accuracy and determinants of the perceived risk of premature death due to smoking in the general population and amongst general practitioners (GPs).MethodsTelephone surveys of a representative sample of Irish adults (1,247) and GPs (171; 85% response rate) asked participants to estimate how many of 1,000 20-year-old life-long smokers would die from smoking-related disease before the age of 70 and to identify the main cause of death from a list of seven causes: smoking, road traffic accidents, accidents at work, AIDS, homicide, illicit drugs and alcohol misuse.ResultsIn the population and GP samples, perception of the risk of smoking-related death was similar (median 200 and 150 deaths per 1,000 smokers respectively, epidemiological estimates 250/1000). Only 43% of the population identified smoking as the most important cause of death compared with 87% of GPs. Current smoking status, younger age, female gender, lower educational attainment and lower income were associated with failure to identify smoking as the main cause of death.ConclusionDespite decades of health promotion, the general public underestimates the relative importance of smoking as a cause of death.

Turbulence, Flexibility and Performance of the Long-Lived Small Firm

This paper focuses on a new concern in the small firm’s literature, namely what makes a small firm stay in business for a long time. It reflects a change in economic policy, away from an emphasis on volume of start-ups to an emphasis on quality of start-ups. The basic hypothesis is that flexibility enhances the long run prospects of the small firm. This is explored by examining precipitating causes of organisational change within the small firm, and the consequential adjustments. The study is fieldwork based and uses evidence from face-to-face interviews with 63 owner managers of mature small firms in Scotland. New measures of flexibility and turbulence are used to explain the performance of mature small firms. These depend on our unique body of evidence from interviews with owner managers. Performance is measured using a Likert scale over 28 distinct attributes.Econometric estimates are reported on the relationship between flexibility, turbulence and performance. This is done in two forms. The first involves generalised least squares estimation (with heteroskedastic adjustment) of the relationship between turbulence, four measures of flexibility, and performance. The second involves Heckman sample selection estimation, of this performance relationship. It is found that turbulence has a negative effect on performance. Further, this impact is relatively large. Next in importance are those flexibility factors which can be categorised as precipitating causes of organisational change (as opposed to consequential adjustments) within the mature small firm. Finally, trade-off relationships are found to exist between two of the measures of flexibility (viz. agility and speed). We believe that this trade-off relationship is worthy of further empirical investigation.

Performance and Strategy: Simultaneous Equations Analysis of Long-lived Firms

Abstract A simultaneous equations model of performance, strategy and size is tested using fieldwork evidence on long-lived firms in Scotland. Estimation is by I3SLS, with correction for sample selection bias. The contributions of this paper are that it: (a) grounds estimation on fieldwork evidence; (b) calibrates performance and competitive strategy; (c) tests and models endogeneity; and (d) computes robust trade-off elasticities between firm size and performance. It shows how this trade-off provides the entrepreneur with two strong incentives: (i) to seek greater efficiency typically by an increase in the human capital of the ‘core’ workforce; (ii) to achieve higher levels of performance by adopting more diverse competitive strategies.

Organisational change and performance in long-lived small firms: a real options approach

This paper supports two key principles of real options reasoning: (a) the value of waiting and (b) the value of staging. It tests whether real options logic applies to small firms implementing significant changes (e.g. in technology) in a model of small firm performance, estimated on data collected by interviews with entrepreneurs. We found that to achieve a higher value by waiting, a delicate balance of precipitators of change against time until exercise is necessary (e.g. if there were just one or two precipitators, then waiting would certainly raise the value). Similarly, to achieve a higher value by staging, the entrepreneur needs to balance embedding against investment time. Thus, provided that investment time is less than 1¼ years, we found that embedding will raise the value. Overall, this implies that strategic flexibility in investment decisions is necessary for good long-run performance of small firms.