The Early Entrepreneurial Stage in Finnish Family and Nonfamily Firms

This study examined factors influencing the survival and success of 200 Finnish family and nonfamily firms in the metal-based manufacturing industry and business services over the first three years of their operation. The features that this study reviewed include owner-manager personality attributes, entrepreneurial competence, and motives for the start-up. Strategic choices of the firms were also examined. The study found that family firms were better equipped to survive beyond the early entrepreneurial stage than were nonfamily businesses. The entrepreneurial abilities and resources of the family business owners enabled them to operate relatively successfully in the nearby market, often w…

Entrepreneurial Metaphors and Concepts: An Exploratory Study

IN THE PAST RESEARCH THERE HAS BEEN continued controversy over the definition of entrepreneurship and the identification of entrepreneur. By combining the ideas of entrepreneurship and linguistics, this paper takes a new approach to examining the definitions. An exploratory analysis of entrepreneurial metaphors and concepts is conducted to achieve this goal. In a quantitative analysis of entrepreneurial concepts respondents defined the terms 'entrepreneur' and 'entrepreneurship' with suggested conceptual equivalents. In an analysis of metaphor, informants formed metaphoricalexpressions of entrepreneurship. The sample consisted of 751 respondents from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Canad…

Family firm prerequisites for international business operations: a production and marketing capabilities approach

The purpose of this study is to compare SME family firms’ and non-family firms’ organisational prerequisites for international business operations. The main focus lies in the production and marketing capabilities needed for conducting international business. A quantitative study was conducted in Finland. A random sampling was done by utilising the database of the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK). A sample of 2,000 firms was gathered from the target population, EK database, which consisted of 16,000 firms. The answer rate for the study was 28%. All together, 555 firms answered the mail survey. Three hundred thirty three respondents were coming from family firms and 222 replies repres…

Reflections on the advent of a more enterprising culture in Finland : an exploratory study

ENTREPRENEURSHIP: METAPHORS AND RELATED CONCEPTS

In past research there has been continuous controversy over the definition of entrepreneurship and the identification of entrepreneurs. By combining the ideas of entrepreneurship and linguistics, this paper takes a different approach to examining entrepreneurial definitions. An exploratory analysis of entrepreneurial metaphors and concepts is conducted to study informants' perceptions of these two terms. The sample consists of 751 respondents from Scandinavia, Ireland, Australia and Canada. In the quantitative analysis of entrepreneurial concepts, respondents defined the terms 'entrepreneur' and 'entrepreneurship' with suggested conceptual equivalents. In the metaphor analysis, informants …