Banks entering an emerging market face a lot of uncertainty about the risks involved in lending. We use a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 shortterm loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between January 2000 and June 2005. Of the loans granted, on average 6.0 per cent of the firms defaulted....

Ce mémoire aura pour but de répondre à la question suivante "Les ERPs open source sont-ils arrivés à la maturité requise pour être déployés sans inquiétude par les entreprises et répondre aux besoins pour lesquels une entreprise met en place un ERP ?". Depuis plusieurs décennies, de...

Purpose: In Finland, customers often view public business services as being a multifaceted, complex and scattered system. Service providers in sparsely populated areas are facing context-specific challenges as they provide services for their customers. The aim of this study is to describe what...

This study examines the impact of innovation strategies on employment growth in four Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay) using micro-data for manufacturing firms from innovation surveys. Building on the model proposed by Harrison et al. (2008), we relate...

In Europe, entrepreneurship is promoting and in SMEs are over 99%. SMEs are viewed like the “economics engine”, they are the one that are generating work places. The researches in the entrepreneurial field proved that there is a good relation between the level of the entrepreneurial activity...

For large firms, SMEs are the world from which they have come and where their future competition will arise. For individuals, SMEs are often a first job, the first step in their careers. They are also a first step towards the world of entrepreneurs. For the whole economy, SMEs are launchers of...

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with an option to create and exploit strategic opportunities. Prior investment in ICT infrastructure can lead to follow-up decisions to adopt new ICT services, but there is no guarantee that SMEs...

This paper argues that a definition of small business is important for both research and governmental policy. A chronological history of definitions is discussed along with their limitations. A new definition of small business is advocated when a business has personal guarantees and has no...

A fundamental understanding of small businesses begins with an adequate definition of what constitutes a small business. Often the definition of a small business incorporates the definitions employed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) which, in part, uses the number of employees as the...