Organizational structure and performance in Dutch SMEs

The relationship between organisational structure and performance has received little attention over the past few decades, especially in regards to firms with less than 100 employees. All too often, the stereotype of SMEs as unstructured, informal 'adhocracies' is heard. Based on the study of a stratified sample of more than 1400 Dutch SMEs (in three size classes and nine economic sectors) we show that this stereotype is false. We derive a set of typical organisational structures. We further investigated the circumstances under which these structures seem to perform well, and the circumstances under which they appear to perform poorly. Un update of this report is made on Januari 2005 (N200420).

Small business, big markets, one world

Dit rapport is een introductiepaper van het International Small Business Congress 2002, dat gehouden zal worden in Amsterdam van 27 tot en met 30 oktober 2002. Aangezien de euro op 1 januari 2002 geïntroduceerd wordt, zal speciale aandacht worden besteed aan de economische integratie in Europa en de gevolgen daarvan voor het kleinbedrijf.

Barriers to Entry

Entry of firms into a market is an important economic mechanism that influences industry dynamics and contributes to allocative and dynamic efficiency. However, there are barriers that can prevent companies from entering a market, hampering the competitive process. Therefore, it is clear that barriers to entry are an important issue in competition policy. In this report, we studied a number of 37 different barriers with a special focus on the possible size effect of the barrier, the sustainability of the barrier, the way it can be measured and the relation with other barriers to entry.

Reconstruction and Analysis of the Po River Inundation of 1951

Flood inundation models have become essential tools in flood risk management, being used also in the analysis of historical flood events, which is often needed for a reliable assessment of the potential flood hazard. This study aims at reconstructing the 1951 inundation of the Polesine Region, Italy. The 1951 flooding was a mayor natural catastrophe that caused a large inundated area (1080 km2) and produced devastating social consequences. The reconstruction of the 1951 hydraulic conditions is based on partial knowledge of discharges and water stages at the Pontelagoscuro gauging station (downstream of the 1951 levee breach) using extrapolation of the rating curves beyond the measurement range. This is, even today, something open to uncertainty. We applied a decoupled hybrid approach to the hydraulic modeling: a 1D model is used to simulate the flow into the river and to compute the flow through the levee breach; this result is then adopted as the inflow condition for a 2D model application on the inundated area. A good agreement between the patterns of the observed and reconstructed inundation areas was found, and the timing of the inundation was also found to be close to the information derived from the historical chronicles. The results of the flood inundation modelling exercise provide two practical insight: (i) obstacles in the floodplains increased the flooded area by 40% and prolonged the time to reach the sea from 5 to 15 days, (ii) the peak discharge of the event was overestimated by up to 20

Creating violent conflict:An ethnography about relationships, culture, and emotions in conflict situations among Dutch youths

Why do some youngsters at times engage in conflict and violence? Scientists have shown that background factors—such as neighborhood characteristics, socioeconomic disadvantage, subcultural affiliations, psychological profiles, or neurobiological traits—are related to violent behavior. However, these explanations fail to address why most people with the same “risk factors” remain non-violent most of the time, or why some conflicts escalate into violence while others do not. This book provides an answer to these issues and examines how and why some youngsters engage in conflicts and act violently at times.By hanging out with Dutch men and women who regularly encountered violent situations, both from a wealthy town and an impoverished inner-city neighborhood, I studied how they engaged with conflict. I observed a) how these youngsters used “street culture” and how this led to the escalation or de-escalation of situations, b) how relationships played a role in conflict situations and how these conflicts transformed their relationships, c) how they described their emotions during conflict situations and acts of violence, and how they managed these feelings, and d) how the youths constructed gender in (talking about) conflict situations and how these conceptions made them aspire more or less towards violence. Combining these observations with insights from ethnography, street code literature, cultural sociology, micro-sociology, phenomenology, and the doing gender approach, this book offers a framework for understanding why young people engage in conflict and, at times, violence, showing how conflict situations and violent actions are produced and are productive forces in the lives of youngsters

Melkert jobs, a unique experiment

Contrary to the still prevailing belief in the Netherlands that the Melkert job project was a failure, we argue based on a political-economic analysis that the Melkert job should be considered an innovative and successful project. It fully acknowledged that a large group of long-term unemployed should not be left in the lurch by creating basic jobs for this group, leading to improved public services. The Melkert job as a basic job thus represents a concrete implementation of the job guarantee, which currently is increasingly gaining interest in Europe

Melkert jobs, a unique experiment

Contrary to the still prevailing belief in the Netherlands that the Melkert job project was a failure, we argue based on a political-economic analysis that the Melkert job should be considered an innovative and successful project. It fully acknowledged that a large group of long-term unemployed should not be left in the lurch by creating basic jobs for this group, leading to improved public services. The Melkert job as a basic job thus represents a concrete implementation of the job guarantee, which currently is increasingly gaining interest in Europe