Researching small firms and entrepreneurship:
Trends and future challengesPresentation to State University
Higher School of EconomicsMoscow
April 2009
Robert BlackburnKingston University, UK
http://business.kingston.ac.uk/sbrc1
The context• Presentation focuses on the development of a field of
study– Small firms.../...Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs)– Owner-managers.../... Entrepreneurs– Self-employed…etc– GEM
• By a community of researchers and academics, shaped by practitioners, policy analysts, corporate sector interests
• Why bother? – Significant socio-economic-political phenomena– strength of the sector: SMEs = 99% private sector organisations
and over 50% employment and output
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Objectives of the presentation
• Examine the development of the scientific field of study– A magnet of interests
• What are the challenges facing researchers?– Particular issues of conducting research– Status of the field in disciplines
• How can the status be raised?– Methodologies; – topics; – mainstream engagement
• Air some issues in relation to the further development of the field
• Mainly from UK experience
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Developments in the UK looking back…
• Bolton Report 1971– Saw little future for small firms, hence interventions– Strength and weakness of this ‘policy touchstone’
• First major academic conference 1978 Durham– Diaspora of interests: lecturers and researchers– Origins lay in social sciences, not just ‘management’
• UKEMRA (1988); ISBA (1991); ISBE (2004)– Organic growth in numbers and focus
• Early days: growth in interest– London Business School Bibliographies of small firms: – 2592 entries in 1983 and around 12,000 by the late 1980s
• A community of researchers– ‘Hard core’ plus ‘immigrants’ from disciplines– Annual conference 200 in 1980s….500+ in 2007
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Looking back….consolidation, institutionalisation and legitimisation
• Funding 1989-1993 ESRC Small Firms Initiative– £1.5m: Three ‘Centres of excellence’; 16 projects– Support by ESRC, Leverhulme etc
• Growth in research and teaching– Embedded in curriculum– Start-up (LBS 1970s) Entrepreneurship education (now)– 2000 onwards: ‘Third stream’ funding for enterprise education– Estimate> 158 (2003) to 271 (2007) Professors in UK
• Growth in field outside the UK– USA; Europe; Japan; Australia/NZ; BRIC......
• A ‘bonanza’ of activities (Gartner)
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UK Doctorate completions growthwords in abstract...
• Small Business• 1970s: 36• 1980s: 129• 1990s: 258• ->2005: 229
• Entrepreneurship• 1970s: 7• 1980s: 38• 1990s: 56• ->2005: 48
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Key journals in the field (7 ISI ranked)
• European– Small Business Economics (ISI)– Entrepreneurship and Regional Development (ISI)
• UK – International Small Business Journal (ISI)– Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development– Venture Capital– International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and
Research,– Environment and Planning C, Government and Policy (ISI)– International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education.
• USA– Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ISI)– Journal of Business Venturing (ISI)– Small Business Management (ISI)
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What is the future challenge?• Development of field has been multi-disciplinary..but• Mainly empirical contributions
– Small-scale surveys– Localised: geographically constrained– To international …Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)
• Dominant ‘positivist’ empirical approach– Unquestioning of the assumptions of knowledge– Growing disillusionment, shift to process issues
• Some interesting ‘breakthroughs’– Challenging conventional wisdom eg ‘small is beautiful’;
motivations for ownership; management styles; dilution of home/work divide; social organisation of production
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Respondents' ranking of small business research against other areas (n=98) (2001)
Respondents' Perceptions Small business research compared with other management areas
Small business research compared with other traditionalareas
Much Higher 1%
Higher 3% 6%
Same 28% 5%
Lower 58% 52%
Much Lower 10% 37%
Source Perren et al. (2001) JSBED
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2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
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“Research in the UK in the sub-area is primarily in small business, with little in entrepreneurship. This is very much counter to what can be found in the USA, which sets the international standard. There are no premier international journals in the sub-area within the UK. Moreover, less than a handful of UK academics are on the editorial boards of the major international journals. With very few exceptions, there is no critical mass of researchers in any one institution. Of the outputs submitted to the RAE, a low proportion was of international standard, and less than half of national standard.
There is a severe shortage of supply of qualified teachers, that is, doctorates in the sub-area with some practical experience and a wish to continue researching. Neither can they be bought in from the USA, as pay rates in the UK are very low in comparison.”
Source: http://www.hero.ac.uk/rae/overview/docs/uoa43.pdf
2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
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“Since the 2001 RAE, the field has matured considerably in terms of scale and quality of research, income levels, postgraduate and doctorate students and outlets for publication. ../..
..., the research showed eclecticism in methodological paradigms and drew on a range of core disciplines utilising quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods approaches; although there were only a few longitudinal studies.
Outputs included papers published in mainstream journals, as well as the very best international field journals.../..
The panel detected the development of strong groups of researchers in a number of institutions, and interest in the field across many of the submissions. Overall, the panel assessed that over 70% of the outputs were of international standard or better.”
Areas for future attention
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i) Confused agendas and mixed stakeholder interests
• Small firms research– Who for?– Educationalists, policy makers, academics, practitioners, small
firms…recently RDAs and Enterprise Education
• Multiple audiences – Confuses who or what is unit of analysis– Detracts from critical development of the field– Need to ‘get the answers out there’ – short term– Inadequate long-term funding
• Dilemma of how to manage ‘client base’– Challenge the ideological basis of the research? – Or just do it?
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ii) Employing weak or inappropriate methodologies• Researching small business has specific practical problems
– Few existing data sets– Finding businesses/ key informants– Culture gap researcher and researched– Low response rates– Longitudinal difficult
• Over - abundance of ‘quantitative’ surveys– ‘De rigueur’ in small business methods– Self-completion; telephone; face-to-face– Underpinned by Journal paper selection (Grant and Perren, 2002)
• Need to understand assumptions regarding research approach not ignore them– Ideological assumptions of your work Ogbor (2000)
• Implications: for research training; for researchers; for journal editors
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iii) Failure to adequately engage with mainstream literatures and disciplines
• But curious because many origins in social sciences…– Psychology (eg. Chell; Ket de Vries)– Sociology (eg Scase; Goffee; Curran; Aldrich )– Economics (eg Storey; Parker; Audretsch)– Plus management (eg Jennings) and accountancy (eg Chittenden)
fields• Yet, small firm researchers’ have had difficulty
challenging the norms in many of these fields– desirable ‘standard employment’ practices– desirable ‘management styles’– desirable ‘accountancy practices’– Often small firms still regarded as ‘a little big firm’
• Dilemma is how to bridge the gap: engage and influence mainstream agendas or ignore and contradict mainstream?
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Small business research agendas and ‘good research’ practices
• The field suffers from rampant empiricism– More acceptable in early days – pioneering data collection
of new territory– But, need to avoid going over same well trodden territory
• Empirical -> theoretical shift encouraged
• But choices will have to be made– Topic areas– Methodological issues
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Careful choice of topic for research
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Mapping Small Firms’ Research Topics: Some Tentative Examples
Cul-de-sacs? Enduring? Novel?Picking winners Ethnic enterprise Social InclusionUse of internet Business
transfer/closureEthics
Financial aspects Gender Venture capitalNetworking Marketing Knowledge mgtPsychology of O-M
Economic development Transitional economies
Self-employment Third age/YouthPublic policy Environmental
issuesRegional development Home/work nexus
Exit18
Choice of topic…dilemma here
• Should established researchers be more directive in research agendas?– Conventional approach in natural sciences– But possibly constrained by funding?– Or continue to let 1000 flowers bloom?– Advantage of occasional breakthrough– Continuance of an ideological dominance
• No hard and fast answers
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It’s your choice
• Subject to constraints: practical ($) and conceptual• Build upon mainstream disciplinary base
– Sociology– Economics etc
• SBE as a permeable area of study– Significance of academic ‘immigrants’– A frontier zone rather than an impermeable field
• New people, new ideas, new research• Balance with continuity and knowledge accumulation
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Conclusions
• Identified a growth area in research• Variety of stakeholders• Your contribution important• But, quality needs to be raised• Greater engagement with mainstream literatures• Decide who your audience is
• I would argue, – Definitely need to strengthen methods– Dilemma remains over being directional in agenda– Question the unquestionable
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Thank you
Blackburn, Robert and Kovalainen, Anne (2009) Researching small firms and entrepreneurship: past, present and future. International Journal of Management Reviews, ISSN (print) 1460-8545
Blackburn, Robert A. and Smallbone, David (2008) Researching small firms and entrepreneurship in the UK: developments and distinctiveness. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 32(2), pp. 267-288. ISSN (print) 1042-2587
http://business.kingston.ac.uk/sbrc
