Entrepreneurial participation from the neighbourhood is the final report of a two-year action research that investigated how cooperating formal and informal parties can support small-scale entrepreneurship in the Amsterdam neighbourhoods and stimulate participation by people who have unemployment benefits. The study mapped learning conditions for participants and described different types of participants, such as starting with the person instead of the entrepreneurial idea; different creative learning forms; the role of certificates and clear expectations.Three findings from our research turned out to be crucial for the cooperation between parties in this complex setting, looking at the principle of "collaborative governance": making clear agreements; have sufficient resources; and carefully consider which parties are participating. In addition, it appeared important that there is sufficiently clearly shared motivation about which goals the various parties involved want to achieve together; and that there is clarity on how they intend to achieve these goals. It is most natural to follow the dynamics of the neighborhood and invest in it. This could include joint mapping of neighborhood networks by participation professionals to focus more on their development, but also work on innovative financing structures and use people who can be 'boundary spanners' in the neigbourhood networks.
Vast empirical evidence underscores that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. As governments accordingly pursue export-promoting policies we are interested in the firmness of these conclusions with respect to African small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the influence of the destination of export trade. Using a micro-panel dataset from five African countries we confirm the self-selection. We apply propensity scores to match exporters and use a difference-in-difference methodology to test if African SMEs experience productivity gains because of export participation. Results indicate that African firms significantly learn-by-exporting. Manufacturers obtain significant performance improvements due to internationalization although this effect is moderated by export destination. Firms that export outside Africa become more capital intensive and at the same time hire more workers. In contrast we find evidence that exporters within the African region significantly downsize in capital intensity. Results regarding skill-bias of internationally active firms are mixed, where exporters within the region expand in size and hire more relatively unskilled workers.
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Attracting the best candidates online for job vacancies has become a challenging task for companies. One thing that could influence the attractiveness of organisations for employees is their reputation that is an essential component of marketing research and plays a crucial role in customer and employee acquisition and retention. Prior research has shown the importance for companies to improve their corporate reputation (CR) for its effect on attracting the best candidates for job vacancies. Company ratings and vacancy advertisements are nowadays a massive, rich valued, online data source for forming opinions regarding corporations. This study focuses on the effect of CR cues that are present in the description of online vacancies on vacancy attractiveness. Our findings show that departments that are responsible for writing vacancy descriptions are recommended to include the CR themes citizenship, leadership, innovation, and governance and to exclude performance. This will increase vacancies’ attractiveness which helps prevent labour shortage.
