Why do micro-businesses hesitate to “grow up”?

Abstract

PurposeThis study analyzes the factors that affect the decisions of micro-businesses to switch to enterprises in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam.Design/methodology/approachIn order to explain the behavior of micro-businesses in switching to enterprises, the authors designed a questionnaire and collected survey data from 404 micro-businesses. The generalized structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the structured model with the dichotomous dependent variable.FindingsFirst, the behavior of micro-businesses to switch was indirectly affected by needs and directly affected by attitudes, perceived behavioral control, subject norm and institutional quality. Second, the subject norms exerted the most influence on the behavior of the micro-businesses in switching. This finding implies that (1) the behavior of the micro-businesses depended on the assessments, perceptions and views of their friends, relatives and colleagues, and (2) the behavior to switch stems mainly from the desire to improve the businesses' position in society. Finally, both formal and informal institutions play an essential role in the behavior of the micro-businesses to switch to enterprises.Originality/valueThere have been no previous studies that have applied structured models to test the behavior of micro-businesses to switch to enterprises. Furthermore, previous studies had mainly addressed the psychological factors or needs of micro-businesses. In this study, apart from the above factors, the authors discuss the impact of institutions on the behavior of micro-businesses to switch.

Operational performance improvement through continuous improvement initiatives in micro-enterprises of Turkey

“…Furthermore, this research demonstrated that even when a filter is applied to the CIIs, there are certain challenges, such as reluctance to give or receive responsibility, that needs to be overcome in micro-enterprises. Some of these challenges were also mentioned in the previous work (Hieu et al, 2021;Klute-Wenig and Refflinghaus, 2020;Inan and Bititci, 2015;Roy and Wheeler, 2006;Deichmann et al, 2004). Common problems experienced by micro-enterprises which were previously highlighted in the literature as low productivity, lack of financial assets, old manufacturing technologies and low-skilled employees (R€ ais€ anen and Tuovinen, 2020; Razak et al, 2018;Achtenhagen, 2017;Inan and Bititci, 2015) were also confirmed in this study.…”

‘They convert, I also convert’: the neighborhood effects and tea farmers' intention to convert to organic farming

“…Therefore, following Hieu et al . (2021) and Katebi et al . (2022), we apply generalized SEM (GSEM), which is a combination of the generalized linear model and SEM (Zhang and Zhang, 2018).…”

“…The strength of this model is its powerful flexibility to jointly test a variety of hypotheses that involve different types of complicated cause–effect relationships (Katebi et al , 2022). However, the SEM's assumption (all responses are continuous) exposes users to severe biases, especially if the dependent variable is a dummy variable (Hieu et al , 2021). Therefore, following Hieu et al .…”

“…where Following Hieu et al (2021) and Katebi et al (2022), we use Akaike's information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) to confirm the effectiveness of the GSEM. Two indexes are calculated as follows:…”

“…(1 = I want to convert; 0 = I don't want to convert to organic farming). This study measures the structures of the TPB based on the work of Hieu et al (2021) and Solesvik (2013). ATT is measured through five questions, SN is measured through six questions and PBC is measured through four questions.…”