Researching small firms and entrepreneurship: Trends and future challenges

1
Researching small firms and entrepreneurshipTren
ds and future challenges

• Presentation to State University
• Higher School of Economics
• Moscow
• April 2009
• Robert Blackburn
• Kingston University, UK
• http//business.kingston.ac.uk/sbrc

2
The context

• Presentation focuses on the development of a
  field of study
• Small firms.../...Small and Medium Sized
  Enterprises (SMEs)
• Owner-managers.../... Entrepreneurs
• Self-employedetc
• 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

3
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
• Estimategt 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
• -gt2005 229

• Entrepreneurship
• 1970s 7
• 1980s 38
• 1990s 56
• -gt2005 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 (n98) (2001)

Source Perren et al. (2001) JSBED
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2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
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
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2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
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.
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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 firmsrecently 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 -gt 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
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Choice of topicdilemma 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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Its 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 r.blackburn_at_kingston.ac.uk http//busi
ness.kingston.ac.uk/sbrc