Purpose: Few high-growth firms (HGFs) are able to maintain high-growth over time. The purpose of this paper is to find out why only a small number of firms become persistent HGFs, explicitly focusing on the role of the founding entrepreneur in this process. Design/methodology/approach:...

Purpose: Although the majority of research explores the direct relationship between family control and innovativeness, the purpose of this paper is to investigate mediators that explain how family control is related to innovativeness. Grounded in agency theory, resource dependence theory, and...

Contents: 1. An Introduction to contextual heterogeneity in entrepreneurship research / Eddy Laveren, Cyrine Ben-Hafaïedh, Agnieszka Kurczewska and Yi Dragon Jiang -- 2. Interestingness in entrepreneurship research: International isomorphism and/or contextual heterogeneity? / Gouya Harirchi and...

Contents: 1. Introduction / Ulla Hytti, Robert Blackburn and Eddy Laveren -- 2. Innovation in family firms and SMEs: distinctive features and research challenges / Alfredo De Massis and Paola Rovelli -- 3. Speed of innovation and proximity in a rural context: the case of a manufacturing SME /...

We use the recent financial crisis to investigate financing constraints of private small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Belgium. We hypothesize that SMEs with a large proportion of long-term debt maturing at the start of the crisis had difficulties to renew their loans due to the...

Drawing on socioemotional wealth (SEW) literature, this paper revisits the established entrepreneurial orientation (EO)–performance relationship in a family business context. The main idea in entrepreneurship literature is that EO leads to increased firm performance. We question this logic in...