This paper investigates the decision by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to raise funding via the sale of equity. Prior theoretical and empirical work on the ‘pecking order’ of funding has indicated that we should not expect SMEs to prefer equity funding over internal funding and external...

This paper presents a conceptual model of the work effort decision of individuals and thereby advances our understanding of workaholism and other patterns of high or low work involvement and high or low work enjoyment. Researchers have categorized eight main types of work behaviors using the...

Methodology/Approach: There is a lack of theoretical development on the question of why people work long hours and the nature of ‘workaholism’. This paper uses the economist’s utility-maximization model to build a conceptual model of voluntary work effort that explains the work effort...

The intention of an individual to behave entrepreneurially arises because the entrepreneur perceives self-employment (or entrepreneurial behaviour within an organization) to be utility-maximizing, and thus forms the motivation to behave entrepreneurially. As argued elsewhere, the intention to...

This study investigated the longitudinal behaviour of growth rates and profitability for a large sample of Australian firms. Similar to previous studies, growth rates were found to be much more volatile than profitability measures. Using a regression equation with lagged profit and growth...

An individual’s intention to behave entrepreneurially will have attitudinal and self-efficacy antecedents. Nascent entrepreneurs also have the choice to behave entrepreneurially in their own new business or to behave entrepreneurially in an existing business (as an intrapreneur). When faced...

The traditional theory of the firm, as presented in virtually all economics textbooks, implicitly treats the firm as an owner-managed, or entrepreneurial, entity. In reality, ownership and control of the firm are often separated. The consequent delegation of tasks and information asymmetry lead...

Research on entrepreneurship has investigated what entrepreneurs do, what happens when they act as entrepreneurs, and why they act as entrepreneurs. This paper contributes to the latter investigation, and specifically asks why some people choose to be entrepreneurs, while others choose to be...

Although scholars have long recognized the increased mortality risk that new ventures face in terms of a "liability of newness," most of the discussion around this risk has been in terms of the contextual constraints that new ventures face and the difficulties that managers have in overcoming...

This paper substantially extends recent work on the decision to become a self-employed entrepreneur rather than to be an employee of an organization. To enter self-employment typically requires access to financial capital. This article investigates the costs and benefits of different sources of...