Do the entrepreneur's initial characteristics persist during the growth of the firm?
(2012) XXVI Research in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Conference (RENT) — Location: Lyon (France) (21.November.2012)
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- Authors
- Abstract
- There is abundant literature on SME growth. The main factors studied concern characteristics of the industry, the firm, the strategy and the entrepreneur. In an SME context, studying the entrepreneur appears essential. For nascent businesses, entrepreneur profile (age, training, experience, motivation etc.) can help us understand the development of the business over time. This paper supports the notion that the entrepreneur’s initial characteristics (at the time of business start-up or re-launch) influence business growth, but that this influence decreases over time. In order to verify this hypothesis, we measured the impact of several explanatory factors reported in the literature with regard to SME development situations (number of employees, turnover, number of businesses and establishments) three, and then five years after start-up. Our sample includes 4,036 SMEs from several industrial sectors. Our results indicate that the initial characteristics of the entrepreneur-creator cannot explain SME growth five years after its start-up as clearly as they do after three years. There appears to be a decrease in initial entrepreneurial characteristics that is conditioned by time. However, these characteristics do not completely disappear five years after start-up.
- Affiliations
Louvain School of Management Strategy and Organisation Louvain School of Management Strategy and Organisation
Citations
Janssen, F., & Gueguen, G. (2012). Do the entrepreneur’s initial characteristics persist during the growth of the firm? XXVI Research in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Conference (RENT), Lyon (France). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/205118