Small business & employmentUnderstanding SMEs is essential to our aspired succes as an economic partner. Small enterprises are not small big enterprises, and differ substantially among them The key ingredient to our help from education remains the education of a new highly skilled generation of workers …

Miller, Le Breton-Miller and Scholnick (2008) summarize and discuss two major perspectives constructed from the literature on family owned businesses (FOBs): stewardship and stagnation theory. In this paper the stagnation theory is being put to the test on Dutch small/medium enterprises (SMEs). According …

The complexity of Information Technology (IT) is increasing; so are customer expectations. Consequently it is not easy for especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to keep track of all IT-developments, let alone leverage them in business operations with the aim to satisfy increasingly demanding …

The „Ageing of Europe‟ phenomenon is related to a higher life expectancy of European inhabitants as well as to decreasing fertility and mortality rates. Those developments affect small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) because the number of older workers in SMEs is increasing too. Our research investigates …

The aim of this dissertation was to research how awareness concerning the threats of phishing among Dutch SMEs can be raised in order to improve their online security in the future. The following research question was formulated: ‘‘In what way can awareness concerning the threats of phishing amongst …

“By 1993, the European Single Market becomes a reality” (“Historical overview,” 2014). This is stated by the European Commission in its historical overview on the internal market. The question has arisen whether today, 30 years after the signing of the European Single Act, the European Single Market …

A growing amount of (semi) public organizations in the Netherlands write tenders with mandatory social conditions. It is important for SMEs to focus on social procurement in their business strategy. SMEs should be proactive and try to affect the conditions (semi) public organizations write in their tenders. …

Paper for the WION - Werkgemeenschap Inkoop Onderzoek Nederland - 2015, 3rd version. Purchasing within Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) is important for the overall SME firm performance. However, purchasing within SMEs is not the same as purchasing within larger organisations and there is limited …

Aims: identify and explain purchasing-oriented patterns in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) via case study research. Scope: Using a conceptual framework and empirical research this article proposes a series of purchasing-oriented patterns in SMEs. These patterns align activities to achieve the …

This paper discusses risk and uncertainty aspects and proposes an assessment tool leading to identification of critical control points (CCPs) within purchasing-oriented activities of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Identifying such CCPs is the basis for developing SME purchasing instruments to support …