Small Enterprise Finance, Governance, and Imperfect Capital Markets: An Introduction to the Inaugural Office Depot Forum Special Issue

Abstract

This special issue is based on the papers and discussant reports presented at the inaugural Office Depot Forum, whose theme was Enterprise Finance, Governance, and Imperfect Capital Markets. The forum covered topics such as venture capital, private equity, bank lending, self-financing, internal capital markets, securitization, government financing programs, small firm governance, and other related topics. The College of Business at Florida Atlantic University organizes the Annual Office Depot Forum to showcase cutting-edge research in the field of small business and entrepreneurship. The forum is cosponsored by Office Depot and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The format involves a day full of presentations of a limited number of high-quality papers that focus on a specific small enterprise area or topic. The papers presented at the annual forums, after a review process, will be published in special issues of Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM). The field of small business and entrepreneurship research is unique in its multidisciplinary approach. The Office Depot Forum, by presenting and publishing the best scholarly research in a business functional area each year, strengthens the connections among researchers in finance, marketing, management, operations, and other areas. More information about the Office Depot Forum and the Call for Papers for the next forum is available at http://www.officedepotforum.com. The Office Depot Forum chooses to make its research available through JSBM because of its reputation for publishing excellent, high-impact scholarly research papers in the field of entrepreneurship and small business. The oldest, most widely distributed, and arguably the leading scholarly small business and entrepreneurship journal worldwide, JSBM earned the distinction, in March 2006, of having the highest percentage increase in total citations from January 1995 to December 2005 in the field of economics and business, according the Thomson Scientific Essential Science Indicators. The Kauffman Foundation, dedicated to advancing entrepreneurship in the United States, has taken a leadership role in supporting entrepreneurship research. The foundation is committed to achieving a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship's contribution to the economy, the nuances of the entrepreneurial process, and policies that promote the formation and growth of the high-impact firms that hold great promise for improving living standards. In addition to providing research grants to leading scholars for the study of a wide range of topics within entrepreneurship, the foundation is funding the development of several data sets for the study of entrepreneurship and supports doctoral dissertations in the field. We were fortunate to have four excellent session leaders for the forum: Dr. Elijah Brewer III of DePaul University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Dr. Larry D. Wall of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Dr. Boyce D. Watkins of the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University; and Dr. Clifford W. Smith Jr. of the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. These leaders represent the heart and soul of the forum, and we owe them a great debt for making this special issue possible. Several other individuals provided significant comments, suggestions, and support that helped direct this forum to its successful completion. For their generous contributions, we thank Mrs. Karen Duray-Smith, Dr. Robert Strom, Ms. Mary Wong, Mrs. Melissa Dallas, Dr. Rob van der Horst, Ms. Rita Crowell, Dr. Harold Black, Dr. Charles Ou, Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., Dr. Dennis Coates, Dr. William J. Petty, Dr. Bruce Kirchoff, Dr. Carl Riegel, Dr. Bruce Mallen, Dr. James B. Thompson, Dr. Bill Lazer, Dr. Jerome Osteryoung, and Ms. Suzanne Wolf. The inaugural Office Depot Forum represented in this issue was organized around four sessions, each of which contained two papers related to the session topic and was guided by a highly qualified session leader who provided discussant comments on each paper and an overall review of the topic area. …