Will multinational SMEs use internationalisation to achieve labour cost savings at the expense of employees both in their home country and abroad or will they transfer their existing employee-oriented practices to their foreign subsidiaries? This paper argues that the answer to this question is affected …

In April 2005, the report titled ‘Internationals for SMEs’ was published (Braaksma 2005). The authors aim to focus on the ‘international’ in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), by giving an account of the professional profile of the more highly educated for international positions in SMEs. The …

A Chinese colleague of mine said to me the other day: “You’re an old man!” I was really hurt by this remark, because first of all do I not feel old and secondly, there are things that I would definitively not like to hear from a young woman. My colleague on her part probably wondered why my reaction …

The EU and national governments rely on expert panels and opinions for their policies (EU, 2003; EU, 2006a; EU, 2006b) on SME ownership transfers. Also entrepreneurs depend on expert opinions and advice. We know from expert studies that expert judgment may lead to confusion and conflicting results. …

Innovation seems to be the most important element of activities of companies to stay vital in a very competitive international market. Innovation is the process of developing products or services in an organisation for a market. Especially small and medium-sized companies, for which it is difficult to …

Sustainable development will be a major driving force for new developments in businesses. Most companies are very much aware of that but find it difficult to translate this insight into concrete actions. An often observed obstacle is that most, particularly SME's, find it difficult to evaluate how sustainability …

In this study we test if successor’s timing of the acquisition and his actions account for better firm performance. We surveyed 500 Dutch SME successors two to six years after their acquisition. With ANOVA we tested successor’s timing (declining, average and increasing economical growth) and actions …

This paper explores if there is a relation between governance boards in small and medium sized family firms and performance indicators of the firm. A governance board can be either a supervisory or an advisory board, this in line with the two tier governance structure that is used in the Netherlands. …

To make sustainable management and innovation attractive for companies, they need focus. In particular SME's don't have a clear view on where innovation should be aimed at in relation to sustainability. It just seems too complex. At the same time innovation suffers from the 'innovation paradox': much …

With Fontys' new educational developments we became part of the project called 'BILOBA'. The principal outlines of this new education are based on developing competences, communication by ICT and setting up a major-minor educational system. Fontys has already developed 40 minors with topics related to …