دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی رشد و ایجاد شغل در سطح شرکت: داده های شرکت های کوچک و متوسط سوئدی - امرالد 2018

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between firm sales growth and employment level as a proxy for job creation among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach – The hypotheses were empirically examined by performing several univariate and multivariate regressions to investigate a large panel data set of 13,548 Swedish SMEs in four industry sectors in the four-year period from 2009 to 2012. Findings – The results indicate that growth, in terms of sales, as a competitive advantage is positively related to the number of employees hired by the sampled firms. In addition, the size and age variables are also positively associated with the number of employees hired. The results support the suitability of implementing the resource-based view to explain job creation by SMEs. Originality/value – While previous studies have mostly ignored the impact of these firm-level variables on job creation, the current study highlights the effect of firm-specific characteristics such as sales growth, size, age and industry. The authors use a combination of models to analyse a large cross-sectoral data set regarding the association, in SMEs, between the firms’ sales growth and job creation.

5. Discussion and conclusion

This study empirically examines the association between sales growth and employment as a proxy for job generation. In addition, three control variables were included. Three models were used to analyse the data set of 13,548 SMEs for the 2009- 2012 period.

The overall findings indicate that, on average, the employment level among the sampled firms is significantly positively related to sales growth, suggesting that growing SMEs tend to hire more employees than do other firms. This result is in line with those of previous studies from various countries (Birch and Medoff, 1994; Funke et al., 1999; Schreyer, 2000; Voulgaris et al., 2005; Moneta et al., 2013), further indicating that SMEs that achieve competitive advantage have better opportunities to invest in hiring employees. In addition, the size and age control variables included in the estimations positively influence the employment level. Taken together, this indicates that larger, established, high-growth SMEs are more likely to hire employees than are other firms.

The results concerning the impact of size and age on employment rate support those of a number of previous studies (Hall, 1987; Broersma and Gautier, 1997; Oliveira and Fortunato, 2006; Criscuolo et al., 2014; Yazdanfar and Öhman, 2015), although they stand in contrast to the results of Aga et al. (2015), Pyo et al. (2016) and Dogan et al. (2017) regarding the size variable, and the results of Voulgaris et al. (2005) and Aga et al. (2015) regarding the age variable. The positive effect of size on employment level implies that larger SMEs may be better placed than smaller ones to obtain financial resources, i.e. equity capital and/or external financing and to use economies of scale to improve their performance in terms of creating jobs. In addition, older SMEs, in agreement with the resource-based view, acquire resources gradually over time and are more likely to have better access to financial and other resources than are younger firms (Autio, 2005; Yazdanfar and Öhman, 2015). Moreover, the significant impact of industry affiliation on employment rate is consistent with results obtained by Evangelista and Savona (2003).