Entrepreneurial Growth Aspirations and Familiarity with Economic Development Organizations: Evidence from Canadian Firms

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between theudentrepreneurship ecosystem and the entrepreneur’s willingness to grow. This studyudis particularly interested in exploring the relationship between entrepreneur’sudfamiliarity with the key economic development organizations in the entrepreneurshipudecosystem and the willingness to grow. Several studies have investigated the growthudprocess in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) since the case has beenudmade that high growth SMEs contribute to economic growth through job creation.udTo date, these studies have identified multiple internal and external determinantsudincluding their effects on small business growth. There is evidence in the literatureudthat characteristics of the entrepreneurs such as the willingness to grow and theudentrepreneur’s network are important factors in growth process. However, theudrelationship between growth process and the entrepreneur’s networking behavior isudyet to be fully understood. Drawing from the entrepreneurship ecosystem literature,udthe growth process literature and the resource dependence theory, this study usesudthe business confidence survey from 2011 to 2013, which targeted all businessesudacross all of Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) in Nova Scotia, Canada, to exploreudthe relationship between the entrepreneur willingness to grow and the propensityudto network with key economic development organizations of the entrepreneurialudecosystem. The findings support the assumption that the proportion of businessesudthat are willing to grow (i.e. hire additional staff and enter new markets within theudnext twelve months) is higher for the group of businesses that are familiar withudthe key economic development organizations than for the group of businesses thatudare not familiar with them. However, the results are not homogeneous across alludpopulations. Our findings also indicate that the higher the expectation to enter newudmarkets over the next twelve months, the higher the odds to be familiar with theudkey economic development organizations. Our findings contribute to the literatureudaround the association between networking and small business growth.