| Human Resource Practices in U.S. Small Businesses: 1990 versus Y2K |
| | Kuratko, Donald F. | Ball State U. | kuratko@sbe.nova.edu | 765-285-5327 |
| | Jeffrey, Hornsby S. | Ball State U. | jhornsby@bsu.edu | (765)-285-5306 |
| | The current level of human resource practices in 262 small businesses were surveyed for purposes of investigation and comparion to the Hornsby and Kuratko (1990) study. Little research has taken place in the U.S. since the Hornsby and Kuratko (1990) study, while at least four empirical studies have been conducted in Canada. This lack of research is surprising given the passage of landmark legislation such as the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on sexual harassment. The results of the current research are compared to the Hornsby and Kuratko (1990) research conducted a decade ago. The findings indicate very little advancement of human resource functions since 1990, in fact, it appears that human resource practices have regressed some in the last decade. In addition, the results revealed that small firms in the U.S. and Canada are not much different in their utilization of HR practices. Less than half of the firms surveyed had formalized HR practices. |
| | Keywords: small business; human resources; practices |
| Responses to Dependence: Rational, Trust, and Ambivalence Effects on Employment Practices in Entrepreneurial Firms |
| | Baker, Ted | U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill | bak@email.unc.edu | 919-929-6269 |
| | The literature on entrepreneurial firms typically presents an image of a powerful entrepreneur or a team, leading the business forward while beholden only to themselves, major customers, and perhaps venture capitalists. The image of entrepreneurship seldom includes the contingent connection between entrepreneurial success and the roles played by key early employees.
This paper develops and provides a preliminary test of a multi-level theory of entrepreneurial dependence on early employees, predicting firm level outcomes from the ways that founders respond to perceptions of dependence on individual employees. Using propositions deduced from the fundamental building blocks of Emerson's (1962) power-dependence theory, I extend insights from this line of research into employment relations in entrepreneurial firms. I draw on more recent developments in social exchange theory, and on emerging ideas regarding ambivalence to flesh out the theory. The paper conceptualizes small, young firms as malleable, and argues that differences in entrepreneurs' perceptions and attributions will have outcomes that can be measured at the level of the firm. The propositions are tested using a preliminary sample of the first 40 cases, from an eventual sample of 120 technology-intensive entrepreneurial firms. Most of the propositions are supported, and several of them are supported very strongly. The paper concludes with implications for the early strategic management of employment practices in entrepreneurial firms.
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| | Keywords: entrepreneur; dependence; employment |
| Network capital, relational rents, and the competitive advantage of small firms |
| | Florin, Juan | U. of Connecticut | jmflorin@aol.com | (802)-457-2578 |
| | The relational view of the firm as outlined by Dyer and Singh (1998) posits that firms entering partnerships with other firms benefit from abnormal returns, relational rents, that derive from the quality of the relationship and which are not available to firms that operate at arms-length. This new perspective offers unique new insights and prescriptions to the literature on alliances and interfirm strategy. However, it lacks a theoretical grounding. In this paper we briefly dicuss social capital theory and show how this well developed stream provides a theoretical framework which helps refine the relational veiw's normative prescriptions. In particular, this framework highlights the uniqueness of the relational view and helps identify a key source of relational rents not considered by Dyer and Singh, that is, the potential to recapture externalities from partner related investments which otherwise would be lost to agents in the broader economy.
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| | Keywords: Small firms; Relational rents; Alliances |