First the empirical background of the UK venture capital industry is developed using a panel of major UK venture capital funds over the period 1988-92. Then a framework for applied principal-agent analysis is developed, focusing on risk management and information. Under risk management it...

The basic framework of the discussion revolves around two samples of Scottish small firms for the periods 1985-88 and 1994-97. It is shown that both samples were drawn during similar (prosperous) phases of the macroeconomic cycle. Further evidence is advanced which indicates that grant and...

The theme of this paper is developed in three parts. The first is concerned with methodology. The case is argued for a 'grounded' approach to the analysis of business economics. The second is concerned with intellectual history. It argues that the great economists, such as Smith, used this...

We present a quantitative, dynamic analysis of coevolution in the new firm. Organisation is treated as a process, rather than a state, involving the simultaneous evolution of interacting systems within, and between, small firms and their environment. Our quantitative analysis uses...

This paper is inspired by articles in the last decade or so that have argued for more attention to theory, and to empirical analysis, within the well-known, and long-lasting, contingency framework for explaining the organisational form of the firm. Its contribution is to extend contingency...

The small firm is viewed as taking a complex of actions to facilitate market place survival. Selection of such actions involves choice about markets, costs, strategy, finance, organisation, human capital and innovation. Probit models of survival over two years are estimated for a random sample...

The paper examines the co-evolution of different dimensions of information systems for a sample of fast-growing small firms. The investigation uses primary source longitudinal empirical evidence. The data are taken from a large database on the lifecycle experience of one-hundred-and-fifty new...