Petra Gibcus

Information processing and strategic decision-making in small and medium-sized enterprises: The role of human and social capital in attaining decision effectiveness

The decision-making literature emphasizes that in high-stake decisions the characteristics of individual decision-makers, their interpretation of decision situations, and their social ties play an important role in decision outcomes. Despite these results, research on small- and medium-sized enterprises has only partially covered these influences. In a sample of 565 small-business owners, this study identifies the extent to which these characteristics and social ties affect decision effectiveness and the extent to which their impact is mediated by evaluative judgements of the decision situation. Our results suggest that the interplay between human capital and social capital affects decision outcomes via evaluative judgments and this effect is moderated by decision content, in such a way that depending on decision content (internal versus external focus) entrepreneurial experience and the breadth of social capital are either assets or liabilities for decision effectiveness.

Social capital as a decision aid in strategic decision‐making in service organizations

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the role of social capital as a strategic decision aid in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in different service sectors.Design/methodology/approach – Data on 434 strategic decisions in service SMEs was gathered through computer‐aided telephone interviews and analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the mediating role of level of risk acceptance and confidence in the relationship between the breadth of social capital and decision effectiveness.Findings – Evaluative judgments (risk acceptance and confidence) explain the negative effects of social capital on decision effectiveness. Service delivery and dependency on tacit know‐how account for differences between SMEs in different service sectors and serve as explanations for different effects of social capital as a decision aid.Research limitations/implications – The study sheds light on the psychological underpinnings of social capital effects in strategic decisions. Higher varieties of actors make de...

Employment Growth of New Firms

This paper analyses the association between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth, controlling for measures of firm resources, characteristics of the entrepreneur, and aspects of the environment. The central research question is: How strong is the relationship between dynamic capabilities and the growth of new firms? The paper opens with a review of empirical studies on employment growth in new firms and then moves on to a discussion on the role of dynamic capabilities in the explanation of new firm growth. After a description of the data and variables the results and implications of this study are discussed.

The Decisionmaking Entrepreneur: A Literature Review

This study provides a literature overview of the entrepreneurial decision-making process. The literature review is used as background information for a qualitative study, which investigates, by means of case studies, the decision-making process of small business enterpreneurs in The Netherlands (Gibcus and Van Hoesel, 2003). The literature overview is the starting point of a confrontation between the literature on decision-making and the empirical findings of the latter qualitive study. Firstly, this literature review gives an introduction to general decision theory. It discusses the classical rationality, the bounded rationality and the neoclassical rationality. The place of the entrepreneur in the general decision theory is also discussed. Next, an analytic framework of the strategic decision-making in SMEs is presented. The analytic framework consists of three elements: the entrepreneur, the environment and the strategic decision process. Each of these elements is critical. Finally, some earlier empirical findings on entrepreneurial strategic decision-making are discussed.