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Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations

Colin C Williams

2018

Business ethics

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Taxation

Evaluating Competing Perspectives Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Bulgaria, Colin C. Williams Aug 2018

Evaluating Competing Perspectives Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Bulgaria, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

When explaining and tackling the undeclared economy in Central
and Eastern Europe, participants have been conventionally viewed
as rational economic actors. They engage in undeclared work
when the benefits outweigh the costs. Participation is thus
deterred by increasing the sanctions and/or probability of being
caught. Recently, however, an alternative social actor approach
has emerged which views participants as engaging in undeclared
work when their norms, values and beliefs (i.e. citizen morale) do
not align with laws and regulations (i.e. state morale). Here, therefore,
initiatives to develop greater symmetry between civic and
state morale are pursued. To evaluate the validity and …


Explaining Informal Sector Entrepreneurship In Kosovo: An Institutionalist Perspective, Colin C. Williams May 2018

Explaining Informal Sector Entrepreneurship In Kosovo: An Institutionalist Perspective, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Institutional theory has been widely used to explain entrepreneurship in the informal economy.
A first wave of institutionalist theory argued that informal entrepreneurship resulted from formal
institutional failures and a second wave that such entrepreneurship results from an asymmetry
between the laws and regulations of formal institutions and the unwritten socially shared rules of
informal institutions. This paper evaluates the validity of these two waves of institutionalist explanation
and a new third wave of institutional theory explaining informal entrepreneurship in terms
of a lack of both vertical and horizontal trust. Reporting data from a 2013 survey in Kosovo
involving 500 …


Explaining Cross-Country Variations In The Prevalence Of Informal Sector Competitors: Lessons From The World Bank Enterprise Survey, Colin C. Williams Apr 2018

Explaining Cross-Country Variations In The Prevalence Of Informal Sector Competitors: Lessons From The World Bank Enterprise Survey, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

To advance understanding of informal sector entrepreneurship, the aim of this
paper is to evaluate and explain the cross-country variations in the prevalence of informal
sector competitors. To do so, World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data is reported
from 142 countries. This reveals that 27% of formal enterprises view competition from the
informal sector as a major constraint on their operations, although this varies from 72%of
formal enterprises in Chad to no formal enterprises in El Salvador. To explain these crosscountry
variations, four competing theories are evaluated which variously view informal
sector entrepreneurship and enterprise to bemore prevalent when there …


Starting-Up Unregistered And Firm Performance In Turkey, Colin C. Williams Mar 2018

Starting-Up Unregistered And Firm Performance In Turkey, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Recent years have seen a questioning of the negative representation of
informal sector entrepreneurship and an emergent view that it may offer significant
benefits. This paper advances this rethinking by evaluating the relationship between
business registration and future firm performance. Until now, the assumption has been
that starting-up unregistered is linked to weaker firm performance. Using World Bank
Enterprise Survey data on 2494 formal enterprises in Turkey, and controlling for other
determinants of firm performance as well as the endogeneity of the registration
decision, the finding is that formal enterprises that started-up unregistered and spent
longer unregistered have significantly higher …