Die Dissertation umfasst vier Einzelbeiträge aus dem Bereich der Mittelstandsforschung. Der Autor zeigt hierbei auf, dass die übergreifenden Themenfelder Innovation und Konjunktur jeweils für sich genommen dazu geeignet sind, die möglichen Besonderheiten kleinerer Unternehmen zu untersuchen....

Differences in the growth of firms remain a major topic in economics and strategy research. In this paper we investigated the link between innovation performance and employment growth. First we discuss the problem from the theoretical point of view and then we analyze the relationship between...

Recent research has underscored the prominent role played by a small fraction of fast-growing new firms in contributing to aggregate net employment growth. While it is typically assumed that those firms experience this superior performance thanks to their ability in undertaking technological...

There is growing evidence that firms increasingly adopt open innovation practices. In this paper we investigate the impact of two such external knowledge acquisition strategies, buy and cooperate, on firm's product innovation performance. Taking a direct (productivity) approach, we test for...