IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijesbu/v17y2012i2p220-248.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are SMEs large firms in miniature? Evidence from the growth of German SMEs

Author

Listed:
  • Christina E. Bannier
  • Sabrina Zahn

Abstract

Based on German data between 1999 and 2007, we analyse the growth factors of SMEs and contrast them with those of large firms. Differences show up both in balance sheet and employment growth. While we confirm earlier results on inherent growth structures and the influence of firm age, we derive several new, complex growth effects that set SMEs apart: particularly ownership type and ownership structure play a distinctive role that may additionally interact with other variables affecting growth, such as, e.g., profitability or capital structure. As a consequence, the distinction - according to size - between SMEs and large firms may not be sufficiently meaningful unless combined with further information on firm governance and, preferably, also on age.

Suggested Citation

  • Christina E. Bannier & Sabrina Zahn, 2012. "Are SMEs large firms in miniature? Evidence from the growth of German SMEs," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 17(2), pages 220-248.
  • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:220-248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=48848
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marek Matejun, 2017. "Characteristic features of small business and large firms: An empirical comparative study," Journal of Administrative and Business Studies, Professor Dr. Usman Raja, vol. 3(4), pages 192-203.
    2. Christina E. Bannier & Sabrina Zahn, 2014. "SMEs' Growth Heterogeneity - Evidence from Regional Developments," International Journal of Business Administration, International Journal of Business Administration, Sciedu Press, vol. 5(2), pages 23-49, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:17:y:2012:i:2:p:220-248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=74 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.