E. Masurel

Family business and corporate social responsibility in a sample of Dutch firms

This paper 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 42 small and medium‐sized Dutch family businesses. The data obtained from content analysis suggest that a mix of corporate social responsibility perspectives, 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 paper also outlines some practical implications of the findings and suggests directions for future research.

Motivations and Performance Conditions for Ethnic Entrepreneurship

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. There is a general lack of empirical evidence on this issue in the current literature. The present paper aims to fill this gap by addressing in particular the critical success conditions for ethnic entrepreneurs. The focus of the research is on variations in success across three ethnic groups in the Amsterdam area. By means of structured personal interviews with many ethnic entrepreneurs, a systematic qualitative data base was created. 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, recently developed artificial intelligence method, 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. Two major findings emerge from this investigation: (i) performance conditions vary across ethnic groups, and (ii) informal networks are crucial for business success.

Diversity in Entrepreneurship: Ethnic and Female Roles in Urban Economic Life

The aim of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of ethnic female entrepreneurship in urban economic life. The focus of the research is on the attitudes and behaviour of Turkish female entrepreneurs in Amsterdam. The main question we pose is: Are ethnic female entrepreneurs special ethnic entrepreneurs or special female entrepreneurs? This paper provides an answer to this question on the basis of field surveys. The results of the case study research on Turkish female entrepreneurs in Amsterdam show that the “ethnic female profile” is a “special female profile” and that Turkish female entrepreneurs are “special female entrepreneurs”, particularly in terms of their personal and business characteristics, and their driving forces and motivations. They appear to combine their ethnic opportunities with their personal characteristics (and other opportunities) in the urban market, and to perform successfully. This is also due to the fact that they have become service providers for not only their own ethnic groups, but also for other groups in the city.

Breeding places for ethnic entrepreneurs: a comparative marketing approach

This paper aims to examine the performance conditions of ethnic (migrant) entrepreneurs in a modern economy. After a broad overview of key issues, an analytical tool from marketing theory is proposed, based on the five Ps (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 pattern recognition methods for categorized information, namely Apriori and rough set methods, are deployed in order to derive meaningful association and classification rules that are helpful to identify conditional success or performance rules.

Life Cycle Characteristics of Small Professional Service Firms

Our study of professional services firms clearly revealed that firms change over the course of their life cycles. During the first three stages, diversification in sales, the differentiation in labor force, and the level of labor productivity increase. In the last stage, diversification in sales, the differentiation in labor force, and the level of labor productivity decrease. Development effects can be treated as interdependent. Our findings show that the effects of growth can be predicted to a certain extent. In efforts towards development, these predictions are important to business strategy, as well as to consultation with and education of SME entrepreneurs.

The Role of Planning in Small Firms: Empirical Evidence from a Service Industry

The relation between planning behaviour and performance is analyzed for a large number of small real estate firms in the Netherlands. A firms planning behaviour appears to be influenced by the way it perceives its environment (in terms of complexity and dynamics) as well as its own characteristics (size, age and activities). The explanation of performance is dominated by a firms size and the nature of its activities. Hardly and effect of planning on a firms performance is found, though it appears that in an environment perceived as highly dynamic, planning is merely counter-productive.

Service Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Satisfaction in Financial Services

Does the widely accepted espectancy-disconfirmation model apply to situations within a financial services context? Or could it be, due to specific characteristics of services, that a different model applies? This paper addresses these questions and tests the relationships between consumer expectations, performance, disconfirmation, .satisfaction and repeat purchase in a lisrel model. The results would suggest that the relevancy of disconfirmation is fairly apparent and that expectations have only an indirect influence on satisfaction where financial services are concerned. The performance level of financial services however has a strong positive direct effect on satisfaction.

INTERMODAL FREIGHT TERMINALS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TERMINAL MARKET

Intermodality has become a major goal in modern transport policy. The improvement of combined transport within the European Union includes the refinement of freight terminal services. A freight terminal is a nodal place where goods are transhipped between any two or more transport modes. In this paper we describe and analyse the freight terminal market with the help of Porters model of five competitive forces. The central question is: who are the stakeholders in the terminal market? We will particularly address the critical decision factors faced by terminal operators in terms of strategic importance, location and network configuration of freight terminals by employing Porters competitive focus. First, the industry competitors in the freight terminal market will be analysed. Second, the buyers of the freight terminal services will be described, followed by the suppliers of the terminal infrastructure. Other competitive forces are the potential entrants into the terminal market and the substitutes for th...

Differences between First-Generation and Second-Generation Ethnic Start-ups: Implications for a New Support Policy

In this paper we study the extent to which first-generation ethnic entrepreneurs show a different motivation to start their own businesses from their second-generation counterparts. Our research project contains findings from empirical fieldwork among Turkish entrepreneurs in the Greater Amsterdam area. First-generation ethnic entrepreneurs appear to be more motivated by discrimination, problems with the transferability of their diplomas, and the goal of obtaining status, compared with their second-generation counterparts. The latter group derives more motivation from blocked promotion to start their own businesses. We found no other differences between these groups in their motives for starting up, that is, unemployment; need for achievement; making use of market opportunities; striving for independence; and using their own special talents. The reasons for finding fewer differences than expected between the two generations are discussed extensively in our paper. Having shown what the differences are between the two generations, we are able to sketch the contours for a new support policy for ethnic entrepreneurs. This new support policy is based on the need to pay attention both to the motives for starting up business and to the necessary preparatory activities. This lesson should be translated into a number of projects and programmes, as ethnic entrepreneurship is a multifaceted phenomenon with at least as many sides as there are ethnic groups.

Export Behaviour of Service Sector SMEs

Export is vital for almost any sector in the economy. Most research on SME export behavior is carried out in the manufacturing sector. In this article, however, the scope is broadened from the manufacturing sector to the service sector: which problems do SMEs in the service sector face when doing business abroad? In addition, the study involved a comparison with domestic activities. Normally, research on SME export behavior is directed at profit and risk only. In this paper, however, profit and risk perception in the context of international activities is also compared explicitly with domestic activities. The exporting SMEs dealt with in this paper experienced higher profits and lower risks than their non-exporting counterparts thanks to exporting. These conclusions about the service sector confirm research in the manufacturing sector and suggest that exporting SMEs are a homogeneous group that do not reflect the classical dichotomy between products and services. Furthermore, export profit and risk perception in an absolute sense are similar to export profit and risk perception in relation to domestic perception.