During the last decades, a whole series of concepts have been launched in what has developed to a new management field : the business and society field also called the social issue in management. These concepts include corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate social performance, sustainable development, stakeholder theory, and business ethics.
With an average age of 51 years, 19 years of managerial experience, 14 years as an entrepreneur – and, certainly, considerable financial resources – Business Angels are private individuals who invest in young companies that are not quoted on the Stock Exchange. As very young companies (or those that need only a small amount of funding) often find it difficult to attract venture capital, the BANs bring these companies in contact with BAs who help provide the necessary funds. In a study commissioned by the Flemish government, Vlerick Professor Sophie Manigart and her Ghent University colleagues Veroniek Collewaert and Lotte Goossens have researched the Flanders Business Angel Network.
This article analyses the growth performance of a number of entrepreneurial firms in 10 manufacturing sectors of 11 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The focus of the article is on identifying the entrepreneurial attributes and company characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of high-growth firms (HGFs) in these countries. The authors investigate to what extent certain co-variates may affect the conditional distribution of company growth rates more fundamentally. They focus not only on the factors that systematically increase the ‘mean’ growth rates of firms, but also on the factors that tend to stretch the right tail of the conditional distribution of growth rates – in other words, factors that tend to generate a significant number of high-growth firms.
While available data seems to suggest that corporate responsibility (CR) is the prerogative of large businesses, there is ample anecdotal evidence that being a small business does not impede corporate responsible behaviour. Jan Lepoutre, Assistant Professor at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, has investigated the impact of firm size on CR engagement. SMEs face particular challenges, but are not lacking in opportunities.
Many SMEs in Flanders still use an internationalization strategy fitting the traditional stage models in which firms start internationalizing after years of purely domestic operations. For the average SME, international activities start with import after 2 years, followed by export after 9 years and export outside the EU after 13 years. Other forms of internationalization follow later in the firm’s life. Firms that start selling abroad often first enter neighboring countries, in many cases the Netherlands. After a successful first export experience, a number of firms enter other nearby markets. These markets are often larger (e.g. Germany or France) than the first export market
Growth companies in Flanders are not being affected financially by the crisis. Thanks to an effective approach, they are able to withstand the economic recession. That is the major conclusion of the large growth survey conducted by iGMO (Impulscentrum Groeimanagement voor Middelgrote Ondernemingen / Growth management impulse centre for mid-sized enterprises) at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. The results are being presented during the iGMO Growth Management Summit 2009 on 18 and 19 June in Oostende. The research was supported by Ernst & Young and KBC.