To Örebro University

oru.seÖrebro University Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Sleeping gazelles: The unseen job creators?
HUI Research, Stockholm, Sweden.
HUI Research, Stockholm, Sweden.
HUI Research, Stockholm, Sweden.
2015 (English)In: Entrepreneurial Growth: Individual, Firm, and Region / [ed] Andrew C. Corbett, Jerome A. Katz, Alexander Mckelvie, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2015, p. 161-185Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

High-growth firms have recently received considerable attention in the firm growth literature. These firms might have grown despite the existence of growth barriers, and evidence also suggests that, having already grown exponentially, they may not be in the best position to grow further. Policies targeting high-growth firms may therefore be misdirected. We argue that entrepreneurship researchers should concentrate more on firms that are not hiring, despite having high profits. We call these firms “sleeping gazelles,” and demonstrate that they represented almost 10% of all limited liability firms in Sweden from 1997 to 2010. Nearly half of these firms continued to earn high or moderate profits in subsequent three-year periods, while still displaying no growth. Regression analyses indicate that these firms were significantly smaller, older, more likely to be active in industries with high profit uncertainty, and more likely to be located in less densely populated municipalities than were corresponding growing firms.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2015. p. 161-185
Series
Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth, ISSN 1074-7540 ; 17
Keywords [en]
Gazelles, high-growth firms, firm growth, growth barriers, job creation
National Category
Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-60668DOI: 10.1108/S1074-754020150000017013ISI: 000359479000007Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-84938795582ISBN: 978-1-78560-047-0 (print)ISBN: 978-1-78560-046-3 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-60668DiVA, id: diva2:1139605
Available from: 2017-09-08 Created: 2017-09-08 Last updated: 2025-01-20Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Unseen job creators and firm growth barriers: the role of capital constraints and seniority rules
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Unseen job creators and firm growth barriers: the role of capital constraints and seniority rules
2017 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The topic of this thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of how the institutional framework affects firms’ hiring decisions.

The first article focuses on a group of firms, called sleeping gazelles, that do not grow despite having high profits. Sleeping gazelles constitute a much larger share of the firm population than that of high-growth firms. If it is growth barriers that are hindering these firms from hiring more employees, many new jobs could be created if these barriers were removed. To investigate the effects of one of the suggested growth barriers in the literature, the second article, focuses on whether small-firm growth is hampered by lack of capital. Using survey data from business owners matched with register data, we find that firms may face a capital constraint paradox, whereby the supply of external capital might be sufficient, but firm owners might refrain from accessing it due to fear of losing control of their companies. The third article investigates whether employment protection acts as a growth barrier in Sweden. Using a reform of the Swedish last-in-first-out (LIFO) rule, we estimate the causal effects from a liberalization of the employment protection. We find that firm growth increased because of the reform and that a more expansive reform could provide new job opportunities and increase overall employment. The LIFO rule was introduced to protect older workers. The fourth article investigates whether the reform weakened the labor market position of these workers. It is found that more young individuals who were unemployed or previously not in the workforce were hired as a consequence of the reform, showing that the reform lowered youth unemployment. There is no indication of older workers leaving the workforce or becoming unemployed to any greater extent after the reform. The fifth article show that the positive effects of the reform were limited to native workers, with no effects on the labor market position of immigrants. The effects depend on the relative insider-status of employees, so that groups of employees who are closer to being insiders benefit more from less-strict employment protection legislation than groups that are further from being insiders.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Örebro: Örebro University, 2017. p. 54
Series
Örebro Studies in Economics, ISSN 1651-8896 ; 37
Keywords
Firm growth, growth barriers, employment protection, institutions, capital constraints
National Category
Economics
Research subject
Economics
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-58145 (URN)978-91-7529-207-6 (ISBN)
Public defence
2017-10-06, Örebro universitet, Musikhögskolan, Hörsal M, Fakultetsgatan 1, Örebro, 13:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2017-06-20 Created: 2017-06-20 Last updated: 2017-09-15Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus
Economics

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 129 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf