Prelims

Half Title Page

Small Business Management and Control of the Uncertain External Environment

Series Page

ADVANCED STRATEGIES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP, EDUCATION AND ECOLOGY

Series editor: Stavros Sindakis

Titles in Advanced Strategies in Entrepreneurship, Education and Ecology:

Global Opportunities for Entrepreneurial Growth: Competition and Knowledge Dynamics Within and Across Firms

Stavros Sindakis and Panagiotis Theodorou

Forthcoming:

Entrepreneurial Rise in the Middle East and North Africa: The Influence of Quadruple Helix on Technological Innovation

Stavros Sindakis and Sakshi Aggarwal

Title Page

Small Business Management and Control of the Uncertain External Environment

EDITED BY

KONSTANTINOS BIGINAS

University of East London, UK

STAVROS SINDAKIS

University of Sharjah, UAE

ANTONIA KOUMPROGLOU

University of East London, UK

VLASIOS SARANTINOS

University of the West of England, UK

AND

PETER WYER

Independent Consultant

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83909-625-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83909-624-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83909-626-6 (Epub)

Contents

About the Contributors

Sakshi Aggarwal is a Teaching and Research Assistant. She received her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the St. Bede’s College – Shimla, India. She proceeded to her postgraduate studies and received her master’s degree in Business Administration from the Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India in 2016. Her specialisation is in human resource management and marketing and strategy. She is also an Active Researcher in various research projects at the Institute of Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Education for Growth – Paphos, Cyprus.

Bob Barrett is a Marketing Specialist who for many years held Senior Lecturing and Management roles at Bolton Business School and Canterbury Christ Church University.

He made lead research and scholarly contribution to the emerging academic focus on the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship.

He was one of the early marketing scholars to orient business school research to entrepreneurship and marketing interaction within the small business context. He participated actively at the turn of the millennium in research symposium and associated proceedings within the newly formed ‘Research at the Marketing/Entrepreneurship Interface’, including the Academy of Marketing interest groups which were held throughout the UK.

Konstantinos Biginas is the Former Assistant Dean of London College of International Business Studies. He is currently a Lecturer at University of East ­London. The enhancement of students’ learning experience has always been a top priority for him. He is also an Online Tutor on the online Global MBA Programme of University of London and a Visiting Senior Lecturer in Business at University of Bedfordshire. Konstaninos has also been a Lecturer in Business and module leader at Coventry University London. He has extensive research and teaching experience in both Business Economics and International Strategic Management fields. Teaching has been an important part of his career, as he has taught undergraduate and postgraduate Business Economics, Strategic Management and Leadership modules in a number of academic institutions. He has vast professional experience having worked in several institutions in various countries. He has researched and written extensively on international strategic management, global competition, FDI strategies, entrepreneurship, and innovation. He has developed his own teaching and learning strategy. The "Classroom Culture" approach. A teaching initiative designed to build an inclusive and highly engaging learning environment. He has participated in various conferences and had his work published. As an Associate and Lead Editor, he has participated in various book writing projects. He is also a Reviewer for the Journal of Knowledge Economy and Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Regular Reviewer for book publishers. He is also a Fellow of CMI (FCMI), recognised Chartered Manager (CMgr) and Senior Fellow of HEA (SFHEA).

Shaun Bowman is a Management Lecturer with experience at several UK universities. Over 23 years of involvement in the higher education sector coupled with experience of working in small and large businesses, the private and public sectors, across a range of fields has given him a particular multidisciplinary view of business. His research interests are small business and not for profit strategy.

Gratien J. J. David Pillai has over 20 years’ teaching experience in the UK and international HE environment having taught Organisational Behaviour and HRM at Warwick and Birmingham Universities in the UK and Assumption University and SIBA International Programme, Bangkok before joining Coventry University London as a Senior Lecturer in 2014.

In addition to teaching, he held Senior Management roles at SIBA International Programme, where he helped to setup an international programme in collaboration with leading universities in the UK and Australia. He is currently the Course Director for the MBA Global Business programme; Module Leader for Leading in a Changing World and International Business Cultures. He also lectures in the following postgraduate and undergraduate modules: Management, OB and HRM. Before entering academia, he spent two years with Citibank credit card division in India.

In addition to his teaching and research, responsibilities, he is the Programme Leader for the Get Ahead Programme, a Talent Management programme for final year undergraduate students. He also leads on the Online International Learning (OIL) projects at Coventry University London and has successfully conducted OIL Projects with International Partner Universities in Europe and in the Middle East.

Nikolas Hourvouliades is a Yale MBA graduate and holds a PhD in Financial Derivatives. He currently serves as the Head of the Business School at the American College of Thessaloniki. His expertise is on Portfolio Management, Investments and Financial Markets. He teaches a wide range of subjects, including corporate, financial statistics and econometrics. His research work has been published in international peer reviewed journals and international conferences. He has worked at various private and public colleges and has also been active in the business field, holding top executive positions and acting as a Board of Directors member in private and public sector organisations.

Dimitrios Koufopoulos is a Visiting Professor, School of Law, CCLS, Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck University of London and the Director of the Global Online MBA Programmes in University of London. He has held numerous academic positions at Brunel University (2002–2018) and Cardiff University (1991–2002) in UK. He began his career very early, in construction industry –simply put, a builder –as well as a guitar player and singer where he quickly realised that was not good enough. Then, he turned his attention to accounting, where he saw opportunities and potential employment successes. He gained his university bachelor’s degree in Management from the Athens School of Economics and Business Sciences in Greece, in 1988. Two years later has embarked on postgraduate studies in UK. In 1991, while was studying for his MBA at Cardiff Business School, unforeseen family events made him at Cardiff where he earned his MBA, and straight after was employed as Research Assistant at Cardiff University, Cardiff business School. He started working on his PhD on Strategic Planning Systems alongside his academic and consulting career. He has been a Full-time Academic Member of Staff at Cardiff Business School from 1991 to 2002 and then joined Brunel Business School. He publishes extensively in academic journals and every year papers that co-authors are presented in major conferences all over the world.

Antonia Koumproglou is a Lecturer at University of East London in business management and a Visiting Senior Lecturer in Business and at University of Bedfordhire. She is a Transdisciplinary Scholar of Business Management and Intercultural Communication, who explores the intersections among culture, language and cross-cultural, technology-mediated communication and organisational learning in a variety of contexts. She has teaching and research experience, mainly from her positions at Coventry University London Campus, University of East London, University of Bedfordhire, LCIBS, EU Business School and the external programmes of the University of Central Lancashire and State University of New York College. She has vast professional experience having worked in several institutions in Greece, UK, Switzerland and Spain. She has extensive teaching experience in global and transcultural communication, leadership, cross-cultural management, international marketing and organisational behaviour. She has participated in various conferences and has been a Contributing Author and Editor in a number of books covering a range of different topics such as entrepreneurial innovation, workplace learning in small and medium enterprises. She is also a Member of CMI (MCMI) and Fellow of HEA (SFHEA).

Roopa Nagori equipped with 22 years of experience in HR Consulting, Training and Education, she is a Senior Lecturer at Coventry University London Campus. Her previous experience includes projects with the Singapore Productivity Board, The Open University and University of Hertfordshire. She brings a diverse and global mindset to the group. Her experience in HR Consulting has been in three countries: India, Singapore and the UK and has involved managers from various sectors: health care, hospitality, retail, education and the finance. Her consultancy and training work includes workshops to improve the skills and competencies of executives and to prepare organisations to achieve certifications like ‘The Investors in People’ award. As a Chartered Member of the CIPD (MCIPD), she regularly participates in HR seminars and networking events and presents papers in international education conferences. Her research interests include cross-cultural practices and employee engagement.

Zaira Pedron is an HR Manager with over 15 years’ experience both at corporate and manufacturing plant level in various industrial sectors and in several countries. She believes in lifelong learning and is fascinated by topics like business and education and the future of the workplace. She speaks fluent English, German, Spanish, French and Italian. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Industrial Psychology and Educational Sciences, and a master’s degree in Organisational Development. Most recently, she attained her MBA with a Major in Human Resources Management.

Vlasios Sarantinos is a Senior Lecturer in Bristol Business School at the University of the West of England in the UK. He has been an Active Academic in the field of HRM and Business Management for over 10 years in both teaching and scholarship. He has a passion for international education, having been involved in numerous roles and projects across different countries.

Stavros Sindakis is an Educator, Advisor, Mentor and Innovator in the fields of business innovation, management, entrepreneurship and service design and development. With both a PhD and an MBA in strategy, enterprise and innovation, he has made significant contributions to these fields through his research and publications on entrepreneurship and business innovation. As an educator, he has taught in several different countries at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and holds a variety of Advisory and Mentoring Positions for Students and Faculty at numerous schools including the University of Sharjah, Chongqing Technology and Business University, University of Liverpool, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Laureate Online Education and Anaheim University.

Aaron Taylor is a Principal Lecturer in human resource management and organisational behaviour at Coventry University London. He lived and worked in Japan for 10 years as an Academic and HR Manager and continues to be fascinated by Japanese working practices.

Peter Wyer is a Professor of Entrepreneurship with over 20 years of experience in managing and working with growth-seeking small businesses. Peter is also an independent consultant specialising in entrepreneurship education and small business development support. He is also an entrepreneurship specialist with the Institute of Continuing Education University of Cambridge and Freelance Consultant providing small business development and entrepreneurship education support to the government, private and university sectors in Ghana, Uganda and the UK. His research focusses predominantly upon small business strategy development processes and incorporates a comparative dimension that examines small business development in the developed economy context of the UK, the developing economy context of Malaysia and Ghana and the transitional economy context of Russia. His business support provision includes strategic development analysis for growth-seeking small businesses across all sectors, the design, development and delivery of small- and medium-sized enterprise management coaching and training in Russia and master’s level curriculum development in the area of small business management in Malaysia’ Ghana and Germany. He has undertaken Consultancy Activity for major British companies, based upon the outputs of his Academic Research Activity, including projects for British Aerospace and the National Freight Consortium. His research output in the entrepreneurship and small business development field includes articles, book chapters and conference papers disseminated across nine different countries.

Foreword

All countries are epitomised by highly uncertain and unpredictable business environments. From the vagaries of the economy through to varying degrees of social unrest or the impact of adverse weather, businesses of all forms and sizes must cope with ongoing change, uncertainty, and risk.

Preface

We write this book at a time of unprecedented global health pandemic. National economies throughout the world are experiencing devastating human and economic impact. Businesses of all sizes find themselves fighting for survival as they attempt to navigate the vagaries of the crisis-torn external operating environment. Amid fast-changing cultural and societal norms and consumer behaviours, enterprises grapple with newly unfolding enabling and constraining forces and events within both their external and internal business contexts. Warned to expect a ‘new normal’ of severe competitive challenges, weaker enterprises struggle and sink, more astute business leaders seek innovative solutions and sense potential development opportunities. An unfolding invisible enemy was cruelly crystallising business thinking – a high-level ‘strategic awareness’ capability was needed to firstly keep the ship afloat and then navigate it forward through what were totally unchartered waters.

It would, thus, be reasonable to contend that our reasons for writing this book with its focus on how small businesses manage and control highly uncertain environments was spurred by the Covid-19 crisis and all the turbulence that it has spawned.

Certainly, the unprecedented Covid-19-generated business context reinforces the urgent need for this book. Yet, for me, the seeds of this text were actually sown some 25 years ago at an international entrepreneurship conference in the city of Sheffield when I nervously presented one of my first academic papers. I had entered academia from a hospitality industry background employed by a large brewery to help manage its tenanted tied estate of some 180 public houses. It was here, operating in a paradoxical situation of pursuing large brewery company objectives and profitability targets through the fostering of small business development aspirations of the pub tenants that the distinctiveness of small enterprise vis-á-vis large well-resourced organisations really hit me. Small business are ‘not little big businesses’. They are not a microcosm of a large company. They are qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from a large organisation. They experience different developmental challenges and difficulties.

I had, thus, through my embed in the world of business practice conceptually distinguished micro and small enterprises as endowed with potential benefits of smallness of operation, but also facing unique size-related problem types. Yet to my surprise, on entering academia I discovered that such distinctiveness of small business was barely recognised, with both undergraduate and postgraduate business management programmes and small business management training provision predominantly underpinned and informed by large company-oriented management theories, concepts and tools. The distinctive managerial, organisational and developmental characteristics of small business were not being addressed – with, at worst, an assumed universal utility of management theory and concepts across organisations of all sizes, and, at best, a presumption that a simple watering down of such large company concepts to the small business context would suffice.

My first solo conference paper thus responded to this deficiency. From my experience, I had recognised how a key size-oriented problem impacting growth-seeking small businesses was their difficulty in relating to their fast-changing external environment – and how within academia the proffered antidote to this dilemma was the offering of rational long-term planning models of strategic management. Faced with an audience of lead international academics and creative growth-seeking small business owner managers. I, thus, apprehensively took to the conference stage to present my paper ‘Small Business Interaction with the External Operating Environment – the Role of Strategic Management and Planning’. The content of which flew in the face of much conventional academic wisdom with its offering of alternative conceptualisation of what small business do as best management practice in control of their highly uncertain operating environments – and its integral suggestions for future focus and direction of small business research.

My nerves were soon to give way to emotions ranging from relief to sheer delight as positive reception to my perspectives emerged across the audience. Responses such as ‘a breath of fresh air’ and ‘a total revelation’ reverberated in my mind for days after – and provided me with the motivation and confidence to pursue investigation of the phenomena as central focus of my research in the years that have followed.

Despite recognition within much of the present-day small business literature that micro and small enterprises have unique characteristics and support needs, large swathes of the management literature still do not adequately address distinctiveness features of small firms. For example, neither the strategic management literature or ‘how to’ texts offer practical guidance on the issue of small business management of the uncertain operating environment – the latter continue reliance on traditional rational long-term planning models of strategic management and integral pedestrian use of overplayed and static SWOT analysis techniques.

Thus, within this book, we address ongoing deficiencies within the academic literature and practical self-help business books with regard to how growth-achieving small businesses not merely cope with but also exploit often-hostile operating environments and create and implement innovative and sustainable strands of development.

Our approach throughout the book to consideration of key concepts and issues is such as to accommodate a dual readership. In the world of academia, we reach out to undergraduate and postgraduate students and to academics seeking to push forward their research careers. Our synthesis of relevant existing literature-based understanding with findings from our own small business development research, accompanying summaries of our innovative research methodologies that produced those findings and our novel and creative conceptualisation of small business managerial, organisational and developmental processes and activities produces theoretical and conceptual frames of understanding that are academically rigorous and practically relevant. For the world of small business practice, our illustrative use of live small business development case studies and capture of theoretical perspectives and own innovative conceptualisation of small business management and organisational processes and activities as ‘guiding lenses’ orients the book towards informing support vehicle for growth-seeking owner managers as they strive to progress in the turbulent environment. Moreover, in this latter respect graduating university students are further served with informing contribution with regard to career-readiness and knowledge and ability relevant to set up and running of their own enterprise.

As co-editor most steeped in the idiosyncrasies and informalities of small business, I have been asked to write this preface. We present content of this book not as incremental chapter-by-chapter build-up of insight, rather as standalone chapters of guiding perspective. The chapter contributors are all lead academics with expertise in their own specific management fields who are providing perspective in the form of free-standing essays, capturing their own take on accommodating of the ‘distinctiveness of small business’ from the departure of their own specialist knowledge base.

It is thus not necessary that the reader progressively digests each chapter from book start to finish. He or she can randomly dip in and out of the text. Though I have suggested that Chapter 1 provides summary contextualisation of the distinctiveness of small business and that my own contribution to the text with focus on the specifics and minutia of small business strategic management and control of the external environment builds sequentially out of the introductory chapter as Chapters 2 and 3.

Thus, for our dual readership we have constructed a small business development tome that:

• At its core, is founded on qualitative research investigations which embrace small business operation and development within comparative operating contexts: thus, the developed economy context of the UK and Japan, the emerging economy contexts of Malaysia and Ghana and the transitional economy context of Russia.

• Provides a creative working conceptualisation of the contemporary external business environment that makes clear and explicit that most change situations encountered by growth-seeking small businesses are totally unpredictable in terms of timing and consequences – thereby dismissing as futile any utilisation of rational long-term planning approaches that rely upon information from the recent past and present to identify and plot business development into what is an unknowable future.

• Makes explicit the distinctiveness of small business vis-á-vis large companies – and how key distinctiveness characteristics manifest themselves in unique problem types which in turn contrive to concur a highly complex strategic learning task upon the small business in its interaction with its unforgiving external environment.

• Presents, by way of indication of rigour of investigation, an innovative case study research methodology with example of its rich, thick outputs in informing small business strategic development context. But also in microlevel detail which transcends the generalist, surface ‘black box’ insight of small business strategy process and content presented in much of the current strategic management and small business literatures.

• Shows how entrepreneurial learning differs from other forms of learning and lies at the heart of successful and effective small business–external environment interfaces.

• Identifies a unique ‘natural makeup’ in small businesses in the form of idiosyncratic, formal and informal infrastructures, organisational forms, management and work activities and capabilities; and owner manager- and size-related potential unique problem types and benefits of smallness. And how these are exploited and utilised by more progressive, entrepreneurial owner managers to facilitate strategic learning and strategic control processes and activities to manage the external environment.

• Gives focus to the size-related staffing and skilling problem impacting most small firms surrounding ability to attract and retain high quality workforce – affording attention to processes of recruitment, and skills development; to creative organisation and leadership of such workers to get the best out of all competency levels and to foster productivity increases through employee engagement.

• Demonstrates areas of commonality and relevancy of ‘leader skills’ across large and small organisations alike and inadequacy of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ leadership approach, showing how an owner manager must adapt in the face of the different challenges and opportunities that both day-to-day change events and organisational growth unfold.

• Addresses the issue of smallness of operation-related issues constraining the raising of reasonable cost finance – drawing upon the unique economic challenges encountered by Greece to highlight need for robust entrepreneurial management abilities to circumvent small business funding constraints.

• Embraces the issue of owner manager’ technology awareness’ capability – analysing opportunities for and potential drawbacks in small business adoption of e-commerce as an operational tool to improve operational efficiency and strategic development vehicle to enhance competitive positioning and increase profitability.

• Produces innovative conceptualisation and provision of ‘guiding lenses’ for informing small business management – resulting in the germinating seeds of small business management theory leading management practice. To date, in the main, the converse has been true.

Our underlying motive in compiling this text is, thus, dual-pronged. To entice yet more robust academic interest in the unfolding of microdetail understanding of the intricacies of small business development and help engineer a bridging vehicle between academic theorising-conceptualisation and the world of small business practice. While no single high-level theory of small business growth is likely to exist in our lifetimes, well within our grasp is development of low-level theory in the form of ‘guiding lenses’ of best small business management practice capable of informing small business start-up and sustained business growth. The focus and contents of this book are a first step towards such ‘guiding lenses theory’.

Professor Peter Wyer