Search

Copyright of Service Industries Journal is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We investigate the determinants of young, small firm diversification by using longitudinal linked employer-employee data. We focus particularly on the role played by the sharing of managerial and qualified human resources, as well as market uncertainty and entry mistakes. We find that a small but significant proportion of young, small firms diversify in their first years. Firms with a greater proportion of managers and qualified human resources are more likely to diversify early, lending credence to the resource-based view of diversification. Firms entering volatile markets are more likely to diversify earlier as well, suggesting that entry mistakes and escape from uncertain, Schumpeterian environments also influence diversification. The inspection of survival patterns of diversified firms sheds further light on the importance of these two determinants of diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use detailed longitudinal data on firms, human capital and universities to study the impact of geographical proximity to knowledge sources and local absorptive capacity on the regional location of knowledge-based start-ups. Using municipalities as the regional unit of analysis, we examine the influence of the regional distribution of universities, yearly numbers of students and graduates, and workforce education on new start-up numbers. We estimate models of regional entry using zero inflated negative binomial regression. We find that local access to knowledge and human capital significantly influences entry by knowledge-based firms into regions, after controlling for other regional-level variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New private tourism firms play a key role in promoting local and national wealth creation. Building upon insights from entrepreneurial motivation and human capital theories, in this study fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of longitudinal data was employed to identify the human capital pathways of 1182 entrepreneurs in Portugal engaged in tourism reporting high firm sales growth between 2008 and 2015. Two dimensions of entrepreneur human capital at firm start-up were found to be sufficient for high sales growth: a) Necessity- and opportunity-based entrepreneurs with specific human capital industry experience relating to tourism, and b) Opportunity-based entrepreneurs with managerial experience. • Entrepreneurial motivations and human capital impact sales growth. • Tourism firm sales growth is determined by factor configurations. • Fuzzy-set QCA identifies the human capital pathways of 1182 entrepreneurs. • Data are split into groups of necessity- and opportunity-based entrepreneurs. • Human capital tourism industry experience generally leads to high sales growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]