Experiences Of Small Businesses Research Articles

Risk management in times of crisis: Experiences of small businesses during the 2021 unrest in parts of South Africa

Risk management in times of crisis: Experiences of small businesses during the 2021 unrest in parts of South Africa

Motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs: Experiences of small businesses in Dhangadhi City of Nepal

Entrepreneurship is recognized as a crucial factor in the economic progress and poverty reduction of the world. It is a formidable engine of business activities that promotes innovation and takes advantage of new opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs in small business of Dhangadhi City Nepal. Descriptive research design is used and the data were analyzed using factor analysis and descriptive statistical tool. The study conducted on 50 women entrepreneurs of Dhangadhi city who were purposively selected and used structured questionnaire with the help of survey method. The profile of women entrepreneurs shows information about their age, marital status, cast, religion, education, types of business, sources of capital and types of family they belongs too. The results shows that among the various reasons for starting the business, motivated from friends is most significant factor to start the business to women entrepreneurs. Therefore, the trade exhibition and business meetings in local level should be encouraged. Regarding the motivating factors the self interest of women entrepreneurship is found important inspiring factor. Thus, the family members should encourage. Whereas, regarding the various challenges, the high level of competition in same nature of business is found major problem to them. Therefore, the business should be undertaken in new area with innovative ideas. Moreover, this study could be milestone for future researchers, policy makers, academician, owners and women entrepreneurs

By the Seat of Our Pants: the Experience of Small Businesses in the COVID-19 Pandemic, Washington State, March-October 2020.

IntroductionMost US businesses are small, yet they employ almost half of the nation’s workforce. Literature is limited about how small employers (those with 20–250 employees) have made decisions about operating their businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. We sought to learn how employers made these decisions, what information sources they used, what information they wanted, and to what extent they worked with or used information from their local health department.MethodsWe conducted qualitative, semistructured interviews with 26 employers in Washington State, from August through October 2020. Employers were recruited from 7 counties (4 urban and 3 rural) that were experiencing either higher or lower COVID-19 case rates than Washington State overall.ResultsEmployers relied heavily on national government resources to make decisions about how to operate their businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Few employers had relationships with or turned to their local health departments for information or support. Employers wanted information about COVID-19 safety that was specific to their business operations and industry. Employers also described the emotional toll of COVID-19 and the challenge of trying to make high-stakes decisions with rapidly evolving information.ConclusionSmall employers showed little awareness of their local health departments and the information and assistance they could provide. Local health departments could increase their visibility and build relationships with small employers by partnering with them on value-added services such as workplace health promotion. Establishing these relationships could support more rapid collaboration between local health departments and small employers during future public health crises.

Understanding the challenges and opportunities of micro, small, and medium enterprises during covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia: a systematic review

Through this review, we will discuss the challenges and opportunities for MSMEs during a pandemic in Indonesia. This review examines the two sides of the small business experience, both difficulties, and opportunities. Understand these small business movers' experiences and success stories, a series of data collection; Google search, Google Scholar, ERIC Publications, and other data sources. Then we continue our in-depth analysis with a phenomenological approach until we get valid and reliable data in answering the questions of this systematic review study. Analyzing our data starts with understanding the study problem, coding the data, evaluating the data in-depth, and drawing data conclusions. The procedure and design of this systematic review study followed the guidelines for descriptive qualitative research methods. These findings include that most MSMEs have turned challenges into opportunities in sustaining their businesses after being hit by the Pandemic through the support of many parties, especially the government and experts. Thus the findings of this study are essential inputs to support MSMEs to survive and be sustainable.

The current status of customer relationship management: experience of small businesses in the Jordanian food industry

The current status of customer relationship management: experience of small businesses in the Jordanian food industry

The current status of customer relationship management: experience of small businesses in the Jordanian food industry

This study aims at exploring customer relationship management (CRM) in Jordanian small food companies. More specifically, the study investigates CRM benefits, tools, and evaluation criteria in Jordanian food companies. The study is based on qualitative design; face-to-face and semi-structured interviews are conducted to collect data. The study employs thematic and textual analysis of each interview. Accordingly, the study adopts cross-interview analysis to highlight holistic view of the study themes. The study concludes that CRM is limited to some practices and the concept is relatively new in the sector. Profit maximisation, market share, brand equity, and positive word of mouth are expected benefits of CRM. Phone calls and social media are the common CRM tools in food industry. The study provides executives with insights into CRM practices by creating awareness among customers and managers of food companies to enhance the effectiveness of CRM and confirm benefits and advantages for interested parties.

EUROPEAN MODEL OF LENDING SMALL BUSINESS ENTITIES

In the article investigated the experience of formation, development and operation of small business crediting in the developed countries. Also systematic differences between foreign experience of small businesses crediting based on the determination of the European model of crediting.Studying the experience of a European model of lending to small businesses is important in terms of developing a long-term strategy for developing and supporting small businesses. Much of this experience can be reflected in the legal, organizational and institutional forming of Ukrainian policy related to small business, both at the national level and at the level of each individual region. According to the realities of the Ukrainian economy of these foreign tools that promote small business loans, you can create associations of mutual guarantees and state insurance fund credit risks. Using these tools will allow small businesses receive guarantees from its counterparties to obtain credit in the bank, not to burden the state budget and develop financial risk insurance.

Program-target methods of management small business

Experience of small businesses in Russia are just beginning their path to development. difficulties arise with the involvement of small businesses in the implementation of government development programmes. Small business in modern conditions to secure a visible prospect of development without the implementation of state support programmes. Ways and methods of regulation of development of the market economy are diverse. The total mass of the huge role is played by the program-target methods of regulation. The article describes the basic principles on the use of program-target approach to the development of a specific sector of the economy, as small businesses, designed to play an important role in getting the national economy out of crisis. The material in this publication is built from the need to maintain the connection between the theory of government regulation, practice of formation of development programs at the regional level and the needs of small businesses. Essential for the formation of entrepreneurship development programmes is to preserve the flexibility of small businesses in making management decisions related to the selection and change of activities.

'It Hurts My Head to Think About It' - SMEs and the Legal Framework for International Commercial Contracts

The exercise of party autonomy through careful contractual drafting allows parties contracting across borders to stipulate the applicable law and dispute resolution process most appropriate to the transaction at hand. This paper reflects on empirical and legal research to consider the perceptions and experiences of small businesses in New Zealand in relation to the legal framework for international commercial contracts. The inclusion of choice of law and dispute resolution provisions can greatly increase certainty in relation to the applicable legal framework. However, the introduction of more suitable default positions for international transactions is warranted to more adequately meet the needs of New Zealand’s SMEs and provide more meaningful access to justice.

Small Businesses and Small Business Finance During the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession: New Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances

We use the Federal Reserve's 2007, 2009 re-interview of 2007 respondents, and 2010 Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCFs) to examine the experiences of small businesses owned and actively managed by households during these turbulent years. This is the first paper to use these SCFs to study small businesses even though the surveys contain extensive data on a broad cross-section of firms and their owners. We find that the vast majority of small businesses were severely affected by the financial crisis and the Great Recession, including facing tight credit constraints. We document numerous and often complex interdependencies between the finances of small businesses and their owner-manager households, including a more complicated role of housing assets than has been reported previously. We find that workers who lost their job responded in part by starting their own small business, and that factors correlated with the survival of a small business differed greatly depending upon whether the firm was established or new. Our results strongly reinforce the importance of relationship finance to small businesses, and the primary role of commercial banks in such relationships. We find that both cross-section and panel data are needed to understand the complex issues associated with the creation, survival and failure of small businesses.

Small Businesses and Small Business Finance during the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession: New Evidence From the Survey of Consumer Finances

We use the Federal Reserve’s 2007, 2009 re-interview of 2007 respondents, and 2010 Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCFs) to examine the experiences of small businesses owned and actively managed by households during these turbulent years. This is the first paper to use these SCFs to study small businesses even though the surveys contain extensive data on a broad cross-section of firms and their owners. We find that the vast majority of small businesses were severely affected by the financial crisis and the Great Recession, including facing tight credit constraints. We document numerous and often complex interdependencies between the finances of small businesses and their owner-manager households, including a more complicated role of housing assets than has been reported previously. We find that workers who lost their job responded in part by starting their own small business, and that factors correlated with the survival of a small business differed greatly depending upon whether the firm was established or new. Our results strongly reinforce the importance of relationship finance to small businesses, and the primary role of commercial banks in such relationships. We find that both cross-section and panel data are needed to understand the complex issues associated with the creation, survival and failure of small businesses.

Entrepreneurship and crisis management: The experiences of small businesses during the London 2011 riots

This article examines the impact of a crisis on small firms. Taking a phenomenological research approach, qualitative interviews were conducted to capture the experiences of small businesses directly affected by looting, vandalism and/or arson in the London 2011 riots. This study adds to the literature on crisis management by highlighting the different types of losses encountered by small businesses following a crisis and the role individual owner–managers, businesses and the wider community play in enhancing or minimizing losses. A model is developed to capture those factors that influence which small businesses were vulnerable or resilient to the riots.

Providing Legal Services to Rural and Regional Small Business: Gaps and Opportunities

This article examines the findings from a survey of 207 regional small businesses and 68 regional lawyers that explored the small business experience of accessing legal services in rural and regional Victoria. In particular, it considers small business expectations of local legal practices, their degree of satisfaction with existing legal services and identifies current and potential demand and supply gaps. By doing so it seeks to determine potential areas in which regional law firms can improve, expand and refine their services in response to the current and emerging demands on them and the communities they serve.

Clients, Customers and Consumers: A Framework for Exploring the User-Experience of the Planning Service

Planning has increasingly been portrayed as a “service” provided to “customers”. This paper challenges such a view, and highlights some important dimensions of the relationship between planners and users of the planning service that have been overlooked in previous studies. It draws on sociological research into consumption to interrogate the various logics that underlie the concept of “customer-focused” planning services, and shows that they are typically based on an oversimplification of the relationships involved in both producing and consuming planning services. In particular, analyses of these reforms tend to underplay the demands that are made of consumers of planning services. The new analytic framework that is presented is illustrated with a case study that investigates the experience of small businesses when applying for planning permission.

Asian female immigrant entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized businesses in Australia

Among western nations Australia has received, in relative terms, one of the largest and most diverse intakes of immigrants, many of who start up their own small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While most immigrant entrepreneurs are male, there is growth in the number of female immigrants who have moved into entrepreneurship in Australia and other countries. Yet, research into female immigrant entrepreneurship and a theoretical investigation as to how the impact of ethnic diversity and gender on entrepreneurship can be conceptualized is not well developed in the literature. This article attempts to redress this gap. It reviews the theory of immigrant entrepreneurship and the Australian research, including the findings of unpublished fieldwork with 80 Asian female immigrant entrepreneurs in Sydney. While female immigrant entrepreneurs draw on their human capital and community and family networks as do all female small business owners, their small business experience is also shaped by broader societal responses to minority immigrants, embodied in the concept of the ‘accent ceiling’, that creates labour market and entrepreneurial barriers for women of minority linguistic, ethnic or religious background that non-immigrant entrepreneurs do not face.

Lifestyle businesses: Insights into Blackpool's hotel sector

The vast majority of firms in the sector are micro-businesses employing 10 or fewer staff. Indeed many are so small as to employ no permanent staff at all. Those running these businesses are not classical entrepreneurs driven by a need to maximise profits and build a business empire. Many are best described as lifestyle entrepreneurs, their key motives are more associated with improving their quality of life. This paper reports on the owners of a significant sample of Blackpool hotels. The majority have sold a domestic property to buy the hotel. Few have any prior hotel experience, or small business experience, for that matter. The linkage between commercial and domestic provision of meals and accommodation convinced many of these interviewees that they had the skill sets required for hotel ownership and management. The paper also confirms earlier findings that a subtantial minority withdraw from the hotel business in their first year. The lack of training in the business aspects of the hotel operation has serious implications for the quality of hotel operations in places like Blackpool, because a significant segment of hotel stock is being managed by these lifestyle entrepreneurs who are not primarily concerned with commercial objectives which prioritise service quality as a way of generating profits and growth.

Croatian SMEs: Current Stage and Prospect

Small businesses in Croatia are recognized as a locomotive for economic restructuring and increase of rate of employment. Bank credits have become more accessible in Croatia for the SME sector following privatization by foreign banks, which now participate with more than 90 percent in total bank assets of the country. Although foreign banks had a positive impact on the domestic banking market they tended to prefer household and large scale enterprise lending. Besides creating an equity gap, especially for the earlier stage non-technology based SMEs, asymmetric information leads to imperfect lending (credit rationing) even for prospective SMEs with fast revenue growth. SMEs' role in banks lending decreases with bank size: small businesses have dominant place in small banks credit portfolio (cca 50% of credits). Furthermore, small business experience obstacles in assurance of appropriate bank finance. However, there is a trend among larger banks of paying greater attention to small businesses, as well as positive development in the variety of sources used for investment finance.

The effects of attitudes and perceived environment conditions on students' entrepreneurial intent

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine key factors influencing students' intent to create a new venture. Based on Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour and Autio's model of intention, it aims to develop a model of entrepreneurial intent that incorporates both human and environmental factors. Specifically, the proposed model aims to focus on three constructs to predict the entrepreneurial intent, i.e. general attitudes (toward money, change, and competiveness), the attitude toward entrepreneurship, and the perception of the university environment and regional start‐up infrastructure.Design/methodology/approachIn June 2005, 35,040 students of medicine, law, and technical, natural, social and business science from seven universities in Austria (electronic survey) were contacted. The response rate was 8.10 per cent. A total of 2,124 cases were considered in the final analysis. A multiple linear regression model with attitudes, perceptions of environment conditions, and selected control variables (age, gender, field of study) was estimated to test the hypotheses.FindingsWith the exception of the attitude toward competitiveness, all other paths regarding general and specific attitudes are significant. Pertaining to the environment conditions, only significant effects of the university on students' interest in business founding were detected. Other environment factors have no impact on entrepreneurial intention among students in Austria. In addition to that, significant differences in entrepreneurial intent regarding age, gender and field of study were found. Despite variation in the intent level between students of different fields of study, any significant differences in the effects of predictor variables on the entrepreneurial intent among the investigated student population were not discovered.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should place more emphasis on interaction between personal and environmental factors. Besides, students' social networks (family and friends) should be included in the analysis of entrepreneurial career decision.Practical implications– The universities in Austria should more extensively address entrepreneurship education to students of other subjects than business sciences. An important component of entrepreneurial training is a social learning process. In this respect, inviting successful entrepreneurs (role models) to the lectures or enabling students small business experience via interaction with local entrepreneurs can be viewed as supportive actions. Developing entrepreneurial skills as crucial life capacities should be the main target of all university faculties.Originality/valueThe paper lays the foundation for a better understanding of the “intent preconditions” in the context of new venture creation, particularly in the context of Austrian students.

Trials and Tribulations of Hotel Ownership in Blackpool: Highlighting the Skills Gaps of Owner-Managers

The research reported on in this paper suggests that people who buy hotels in Blackpool are doing so for a cluster of lifestyle reasons. Few have classic entrepreneurial ambitions to make a lot of money and own a chain of hotels. Many have a lifelong ambition to own a hotel, or some business that gives them greater control of their lives, or because they think they will enjoy the life of hotel ownership. The vast majority of these interviewees had sold a domestic property to buy the hotel, and few had any work experience of hotel work, or even the hospitality sector. This lack of experience of the operational requirements of the business was further compounded by a lack of management skills, or small business experience. As a consequence, the professional skills of hotel management are often below par and hotel ownership changes hands at an unacceptable rate. Sometimes this results in outright business failure, but more often, is the result of individuals feeling that the reality of hotel ownership has not matched their dreams. The low skill base of the almost permanent cadre of new owners creates problems for tourism authorities keen to develop the quality profile of visitor experiences. There is limited development of the hotel stock as individual properties change hands on a regular basis and no one owner stays long enough to refurbish the property. The low skill base of owners can also limit the quality tourism experiences of services provided.

Small Business Loan Turndowns, Personal Wealth, and Discrimination*

We examine the impact of personal wealth on small business loan turndowns across demographic groups. Information on home ownership, home equity, and personal net worth, in combination with a rich set of explanatory variables, furthers our understanding of the credit market experiences of small businesses across demographic groups. We find substantial unexplained differences in denial rates between African‐American‐, Hispanic‐, Asian‐, and white‐owned firms. We find that greater personal wealth is associated with a lower probability of loan denial. However, even after controlling for personal wealth, large differences in denial rates across demographic groups remain.