Interpreting Performance in Small Business Research

For obvious reasons, researchers and policy-makers alike have an interest in assessing the performance of small firms as well as in understanding the factors that contribute to it. Attaining such knowledge is not a trivial undertaking. Researchers have pointed out that the performance of small firms can be difficult to assess (Brush & Vanderwerf, 1992)—e.g., because reliable data cannot be obtained—and also difficult to predict (Cooper, 1995). In this paper I will discuss the equally important and difficult issue of how research results regarding small business performance and its predictors can or should be interpreted. In particular, I will discuss whether commonly used performance indicators like survival vs. non-survival and growth vs. non-growth really reflect ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ performance, as is commonly assumed. Although theory and other researchers’ findings will also be used to some extent, my exposition will rely primarily on experiences and illustrations from a number of research projects I have been directly involved in during the last 20 years. The paper proceeds as follows. I will first question the assumption that business discontinuance—often called ‘failure’—is a ‘bad’ outcome that best should be avoided from the aggregate perspective of the economic system. I will then continue to discuss ‘failure’ from more of a micro-perspective, arguing that most instances of discontinuation of new or emerging firms are not associated with substantial financial losses and do not necessarily represent efforts that should have been avoided. Staying at the micro level I will then turn to the issue of firm growth and the conditions under which growth represents a ‘good’ outcome from the perspective of the firm’s principal stakeholders. I will then return to the aggregate level and discuss the extent to which firm level employment growth translates to net increases of employment in the economy. Finally, the implications of the issues raised in the paper will be restated and discussed in the concluding section of the paper

Presidential Popular Constitutionalism

This Article adds a new dimension to the most important and influential strand of recent constitutional theory: popular or democratic constitutionalism, the investigation into how the U.S. Constitution is interpreted (1) as a set of defining national commitments and practices, not necessarily anchored in the text of the document, and (2) by citizens and elected politicians outside the judiciary. Wide-ranging and groundbreaking scholarship in this area has neglected the role of the President as a popular constitutional interpreter, articulating and revising normative accounts of the nation that interact dynamically with citizens’ constitutional understandings. This Article sets out a “grammar” of presidential popular constitutionalism, lays out the historical development and major transformations in its practice, proposes a set of thematic alternatives for today’s presidential popular constitutionalism, and locates presidential popular constitutionalism within the larger concerns of constitutional theory. In particular, it argues that some of the major political developments of recent decades, such as the “Reagan revolution” and the Clinton-Bush era, can be fully understood only by grasping that they are episodes in presidential popular constitutionalism

An Analytical Overview of Labour Market Reforms Across the EU: Making Sense of the Variation

While there has been an increase in interest in employment protection, for example in the literature on labour market insiders and outsiders, there is a lack of cross-country comparative research on reforms of the employment protection legislation and the regulation of temporary work. This article provides such an overview for a wide set of countries including the EU-15 plus five Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. It makes two contributions: first, it identifies a set of reform types. One major reform type, two-tier reform, and several minor types: deregulation of temporary employment in countries with low levels of job protection for regular work; reregulation in countries with high levels of temporary employment; reregulation in countries with low regulation of temporary work; and across-the-board concurrent deregulation. Second, the article highlights the difference in regulation that exists between fixed-term contracts concluded inside and outside temporary work agencies (TWAs). In identifying reform types, and the difference in the regulation of fixed-term contracts inside and outside TWAs, the article contributes to our understanding of the variation in labour market regulation and reform. In addition, the article points to different explanations for the reforms, in particular the influence of EC directives.

A Role-Based Approach for Orchestrating Emergent Configurations in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned as a global network of connected things enabling ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. With estimations of billions of sensors and devices to be connected in the coming years, the IoT has been advocated as having a great potential to impact the way we live, but also how we work. However, the connectivity aspect in itself only accounts for the underlying M2M infrastructure. In order to properly support engineering IoT systems and applications, it is key to orchestrate heterogeneous 'things' in a seamless, adaptive and dynamic manner, such that the system can exhibit a goal-directed behaviour and take appropriate actions. Yet, this form of interaction between things needs to take a user-centric approach and by no means elude the users' requirements. To this end, contextualisation is an important feature of the system, allowing it to infer user activities and prompt the user with relevant information and interactions even in the absence of intentional commands. In this work we propose a role-based model for emergent configurations of connected systems as a means to model, manage, and reason about IoT systems including the user's interaction with them. We put a special focus on integrating the user perspective in order to guide the emergent configurations such that systems goals are aligned with the users' intentions. We discuss related scientific and technical challenges and provide several uses cases outlining the concept of emergent configurations.Comment: In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on the Internet of Agents @AAMAS201

Har etnicitet betydelse? En studie av sex mammors möte med en Mini-Maria mottagning

Mini-Maria Nordost är en av fyra öppenvårdsmottagningar i Göteborg för unga som har bekymmer med alkohol och eller droger. Verksamheten vänder sig till ungdomar upp till 21 år och även till deras anhöriga. Syftet med min uppsats är att undersöka hur föräldrar upplever mötet med mottagningen och samtal som metod. Jag har gjort en kvalitativ studie där sex mammor har intervjuats, fyra med utländsk bakgrund och två med svensk bakgrund. Frågeställningarna handlar om i vilken mån man upplever samtal som metod som meningsfull och hur erfarenhet av att växa upp i en annan familjekultur än den svenska påverkar hur man hanterar bekymmer med tonårsbarns drogmissbruk. Jag har undersökt om det finns skillnader i hur respondenterna svarat som kan förstås utifrån teorier och kultur och etnicitet eller interkulturellt socialt arbete. Fem av sex respondenter anser att samtal har varit meningsfullt för dem. En av mammorna uttrycker att hennes besök var korta och mestadels innehöll information. Alla säger att de har upplevt bemötandet som respektfullt vilket har gjort det möjligt att även samtala om svåra känslor. I huvudsak syns inga skillnader bland respondenterna i hur man upplever samtal som metod som kan förklaras utifrån teorier om kultur och etnicitet. Två av mammorna ger uttryck för att de upplever en skillnad i hur de upplever ungdomarnas bekymmer och sin föräldraroll. Skillnaderna kan antas ha ett samband med att respondenterna själva är uppväxta med en kollektivistisk livssyn