Christine Mitter

Entrepreneurial finance – issues and evidence, revisited

Research in the field of entrepreneurial finance has long been neglected, despite the growing importance of entrepreneurial firms. Since the early 1990s, however, there has been an increasing interest in the nature and behaviour of financial markets and financial intermediaries that allocate capital to new ventures. This article aims at providing a deeper understanding of and insights into entrepreneurial finance by reviewing, structuring and interlinking theoretical models and empirical findings. In particular, it focuses on the relation between the entrepreneur and investors, sources of entrepreneurial funding, the returns of entrepreneurial investments to the parties involved (investors, entrepreneurs) and the drivers of entrepreneurial performance as well as implications for public policy. Based on a thorough review of the growing body of literature and current empirical studies, the article also highlights areas that still remain unclear and provide challenges and fertile ground for future research.

REPUTATION OF FAMILY FIRMS FROM A CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT Family firms aim to build favorable reputation with their stakeholders. The identity of a family firm, which – to varying extents – is conditioned by the owner family, is the basis for the corporate image as perceived by external stakeholders and thus influences the firm’s reputation. Favorable reputation, in turn, stimu-lates purchase decisions and fosters customer loyalty and retention. Based on an experimental survey, this article examines the impact of family ownership on reputation and customer loyalty. The findings indi-cate that family firms are rated higher in terms of customer orientation, social and environmental respon-sibility and other reputation factors. In addition, customers rather tend to recommend businesses known to be family-owned. Keywords : reputation, image, family firm, customer-based reputation, customer loyalty 1. INTRODUCTION Family firms (FFs) are characterized by their long-term orientation (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2006), identification of the owning family with their firm (Deephouse and Jaskiewicz, 2013), and strong social ties towards customers, employees, and the community (Arregle et al., 2007; Zellweger et al., 2012). These particularities provide incentives to create a unique image and build a good reputation (Salvato and Melin, 2008; Zellweger et al., 2012). According to corporate identity theory, the family is part of the identity of the firm (Dyer and Whetten, 2006) which provides the basis of corporate image and reputation (Brown et al., 2006). For some FFs, family ownership is obviously visible to the public, especially when the family name is part of the firm’s name (Deephouse and Jaskiewicz, 2013). Other firms hide their family ownership in their communication with external stakeholders (Carrigan and Buckley, 2008; Zellweger et al., 2012). Good reputation has positive effects on the financial success of a company (Basco, 2014), facilitates business transactions (Moog, Mirabella and Schlepphorst, 2011) allows access to capital on better terms (Yang, 2010), and enables entry into social and professional networks (Sieger et al., 2011). Since FFs consider strong relationships important (Arregle et al., 2007), especially relationships with customers (Binz et al., 2013; Craig, Dibrell and Davis, 2008), building a good reputation seems crucial for such firms. However, studies have only occasionally addressed the image or reputation of FFs related to customer loyalty and retention (Binz et al., 2013; Orth and Green, 2009). Moreover, scientific insights into the image and reputation of FFs and their potential impacts on customer loyalty are still rare. The relationship be-tween image as a FF and reputation is also not yet clear. The purpose of this study is to examine whether it is advantageous in terms of reputation to reveal a firm’s family ownership to customers and to identify possible consequences for customer loyalty. Our research contributes to existing literature in two ways. First, by drawing on an experimental survey, we investigate the impact of the communication of family ownership on FF’s reputation with customers. Second, we explore the relationship of reputation to cus-tomer loyalty. This paper is structured as follows. In the next section, corporate image, reputation, and their relevance for FFs are discussed, and hypotheses are developed. Section 3 explains the research methodology. In section 4 the empirical results of the experiment are presented. A discussion of implica-tions, limitations, and future research concludes the paper.

Doing Business in Russia: Lessons for Management Accounting

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is on the transition from a command economy to a market system. Having undergone fundamental political and economic changes in the last 20 years, Russia is considered to be a significant player in the world economy and an attractive location for foreign direct investments. As a result, Russia is also an important trading partner for Austrian companies that often maintain a Russian sales office, branch or subsidiary. It is widely acknowledged and empirically tested that leadership and management theories developed in one culture cannot be easily exported to other cultures. This applies also to management accounting that contributes to the achievement of the company’s objectives and thus takes on an important role in managing the organization. Since people react to situations and interpret information differently depending on the norms of their native culture, cultural differences impact management accounting activities. Despite the growing interest in management accounting in transition economies in general and in Russia in particular, there is still a significant lack of research concerning the influence of cultural factors on management accounting. Drawing on interviews with Austrian companies operating on the Russian market, this paper investigates the influence of cultural differences between Austria and Russia on management accounting. Our study does not only aim to enhance the understanding of the needs and particularities of doing business in Russia but also places a particular focus on the context of management accounting by exploring how cultural differences impact management accounting functions such as information supply, planning and control.Our results reveal that the access to management accounting information as well as the readiness to provide data is significantly lower in Russia than in Austria. Moreover, Austrian employees participate more actively in the planning process, develop more detailed and precise plans and are able to accept objective criticism to a greater extent than their Russian counterparts. Consequently, the study provides evidence that culture differences have a considerable effect on management accounting. This implies that companies entering or already serving the Russian market have to consider these differences in order to design an effective management accounting system.

Der Solvenztest als Mittel zur Ausschüttungsbemessung: Eine Alternative zur Handelsbilanz?

Einige Gesellschaftsrechtsexperten sind der Meinung, dass ein Solvenztest zur Ausschuttungsbemessung die gesonderte Handelsbilanz, die ebenfalls diesem Zweck dient, ersetzen konnte (vgl. High Level Group of Company Law Experts, 2002, S. 94 ff.; Rickford, 2004, S. 966 ff.). Ein weiteres Argument, das zu dieser Diskussion beitragt, ist, dass Glaubigerschutz und Shareholderorientierung vermehrt im Wettbewerb zueinander stehen (vgl. Kohler/Marten/Schlereth, 2007, S. 14). Der Solvenztest ware dabei vor allem als Erganzung des informationellen Glaubigerschutzes durch die IFRS-Rechnungslegung zu betrachten (vgl. Pellens/Jodicke/Richard, 2005, S. 1393 ff.).