Owner-managers Of Small Enterprises Research Articles

Revisiting presenteeism to broaden its conceptualization: A qualitative study.

Presenteeism is generally viewed as a symptom of organizational or individual dysfunction and is rarely considered as a behavioral response to positive triggering factors. Our study examines this issue in small enterprises (SEs), which are an unexplored environment in terms of presenteeism. Through in-depth analysis, this study aims to understand the positive and negative factors that impact presenteeism in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with a particular focus on SEs. We adopt a qualitative methodological approach in which we conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with employees and owner-managers of SEs with between 20 and 49 employees. Our thematic analysis shows that presenteeism can be explained by factors related to pressure to attend work, by individuals' constraints and commitment, by organizational and individual characteristics and by a congenial work environment. Presenteeism can also be a type of "therapy" which helps individuals to avoid focusing on being sick and enables them to stay active and avoid social isolation. Our study differs from earlier research by providing a more in-depth analysis of the positive and negative factors that trigger presenteeism. This article will help to expand the current theoretical knowledge about presenteeism and encourage a more holistic interpretation of the phenomenon.

The contribution of small accommodation enterprises to sustainable solid waste management

Research on small accommodation enterprises’ contribution to sustainable solid waste management remains scarce. The study addresses this gap by examining the contribution of small accommodation enterprises to sustainable solid waste management in Ghana. Employing a constructivist approach to explore the issue of solid waste management in a developing country context, the current study involved interviews with 26 small accommodation owner-managers on their solid waste management practices illuminating their contribution to the growing need for sustainable solid waste management practices. Purposive sampling was employed to ensure that only small accommodation owner-managers in the region participated in the study. Based on the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory and sustainable solid waste management model, the findings revealed the existence of highly dominant social paradigm beliefs that emanate from the prevalence of altruistic and egoistic values. Consequently, awareness of the consequence of solid waste management practices to the environment is limited as many were not conscious of the connection between solid waste management and the environment. In this way, some actions were good practices that could be described as sustainable contributions while others were not. Some of the sustainable contributions included economically affordable and socially-acceptable practices such as waste minimization, reuse, sorting, feeding animals and controlled disposal of waste. However, other practices were environmentally ineffective due to a lack of biospheric values and a lack of awareness of the consequences of those actions on the environment. These results imply that many small enterprise owner-managers are more concerned about the economic affordability and socio-cultural acceptability of solid waste management at the expense of environmental effectiveness. Therefore, practices may be undertaken without a critical evaluation of their impact on the environment. The implications of these findings have been discussed.

Role of transitory communities of practice in business school collaborative knowledge-sharing projects: from the partner's perspective

This paper explores the essential roles that academics, graduates/post-graduates and small enterprise owner-managers play when working together on knowledge-sharing projects. The study uses six projects to explore the life cycle of these transitory communities of practice (CoP) and how they can provide an effective means for sharing knowledge and expertise. This investigation is significant as such sharing of knowledge and expertise is the basis of the increasingly informal knowledge management structures such as networks and open innovation communities. How this is achieved, we suggest is based on two factors: the stakeholders and the transitory CoPs. The stakeholders are the SME managers, academics and newly employed graduates (associates), who co-create value by capturing, analysing and disseminating new-to-enterprise knowledge and experience. They achieve this via temporary CoPs which have their own life cycle of creation, growth and maturity/destruction.

The Role of Owner-Managers' Psychological Ownership in SME Strategic Behaviour

According to the theory of psychological ownership, the feeling of ownership does not necessitate legal ownership, and may emerge when a person gets to know the target intimately, controls it and invests in it. We focus in this study on owner-managers of small enterprises, and build on the fundamental assumption that psychological ownership and legal business ownership are not mutually exclusive. Our data from 150 Finnish SMEs supports the assumption that these owner-managers may have strong feelings of psychological ownership that influence their ability to manage the firm purely as an economic instrument.