For obvious reasons, researchers and policy-makers alike have an interest in assessing the performance of small firms as well as in understanding the factors that contribute to it. Attaining such knowledge is not a trivial undertaking. Researchers have pointed out that the performance of small...

Business ventures are started by individuals and teams with very different backgrounds and motivations, pursuing business ideas of very variable inherent quality in environments that also show tremendous variability. As a result it is difficult to arrive at broadly valid generalizations, and...

Firm growth is almost universally portrayed as a good thing, and is commonly used as a measure of success. Applying resource-based reasoning, we argue that growth is often not a sign of sound development. Specifically, we hypothesize that firms which grow without first securing high levels of...

This paper reports on a comprehensive study of the role of SMEs for job creation and regional economic well-being in Sweden during the 1990-93 recession period as well as the years immediately preceding and following that period. It is found that SMEs were over-represented as job creators across...

This paper explores the internationalization scope of new technology based firms (NTBFs) during their early years of operation. Internationalization is considered as a growth strategy in its own right whose successful implementation requires relevant resources and capabilities. We focus on the...

Business growth has become a major theme in the rapidly expanding field of entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship researchers are not alone, however, in showing an interest in business growth. Therefore, there is reason to ask whether and under what conditions the study of growth really...

The purpose of this paper was to examine the factors affecting the future firm size expectations of nascent entrepreneurs. This was done by testing a decision model on a unique data set composed of a random sample of nascent entrepreneurs. The proposed model is based on four different components...

This study investigates the role of high growth firms for the creation of new employment in Sweden during the 1987-96 period. Our data set is unique in the sense that it captures both enterprise and company group levels of analysis, and in that organic growth can be separated from growth through...

In this article we investigate how small business managers? beliefs concerning the con-sequences of growth influence their overall growth attitude. We find this to be an important question. Although previous research has shown that small firm growth is the most important source of new jobs...

This journal aims at developing and sharing some ideas on methodological development in entrepreneurship research, based on the author?s experience from two decades of empirical work in this area. As there is no shortage of ideas in the literature as regards what "entrepreneurship" is, and what...