A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management specialising in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation. Johannesburg, 2016 / With a struggling economy characterised by high levels of poverty and unemployment, it makes sense that Swaziland should prioritise the growth of new ventures in a bid to foster economic growth through ensuring accelerated SME growth. However, the country’s SME policy notes significant problems which hinder venture growth, particularly pertaining to SMEs access to finance, markets, entrepreneurship education and training, as well as business support programmes, business regulation and contract enforcement. This study seeks to evaluate the impact these factors have on the growth of SMEs in a bid to ascertain the extent of this impact, and further to make recommendations on how the rhetoric and practice of entrepreneurship can be shaped to foster high growth entrepreneurship within this milieu. This is done based on an analysis of data collected through a quantitative survey conducted amongst SMEs incubated within the country’s only public incubator, SEDCO. The findings are drawn from a correlation and multiple regression analysis, with the latter aiming to ascertain causality between these conditions and venture growth. Through this, the study found that the variables of access to finance, markets, education and training, business support programmes, business regulation and contract enforcement are significant predictors of venture growth, thus more needs to be done to ensure that inefficiencies within these are addressed to bolster levels of SME growth. The study contributes theoretically to the entrepreneurial landscape in that it comes at a point where there is no current research assessing the enablers and inhibitors of venture growth within Swaziland. It is of further practical significance in that it broaches the subject of high growth entrepreneurship in an environment laden with necessity, survivalist entrepreneurs whilst it is the former that is perceived to have a significant impact on the economy. / MT2016

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce (specialising in Taxation) Johannesburg, 2015 / Small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) play a key role in the development of the economy and are a significant contributor to employment. In South Africa (SA), SMMEs employ more than 68.2% of the work force in the private sector. To achieve the objective of economic growth, job creation as well as income redistribution, the government is actively promoting SMMEs. The SMMEs increase the average employment rate in SA by pulling into production unemployed low skilled labour, whose skills level is not sufficient to qualify for employment in larger firms. How do the South African tax compliance burden and tax incentives for SMMEs measure up in comparison to the tax compliance burden and tax incentives for SMMEs in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA)? The research reviews the tax compliance burden and tax incentives of SMMEs in SA in comparison to the tax compliance burden and tax incentives of the UK and the USA. The research was conducted through an extensive review of the literature. The literature review has indicated that tax compliance is one of the main burdens acting as a deterrent to the formalization of SMMEs for tax purposes. The review of the literature also indicated that National Treasury is trying very hard to ease the burden of tax compliance on SMMEs. Key words: Income tax, SMMEs, tax compliance costs, tax incentives, turnover tax, value-added tax, venture capital.

Thesis advisor: Thomas J. Chemmanur / My dissertation is comprised of three chapters. In the first chapter, I analyze the effect of top management changes on subsequent corporate innovation in venture capital-backed private firms using a hand-collected dataset. I find that top management changes are associated with significantly more and higher quality corporate innovation (as measured by their patenting activity). I show that top management changes are likely to be venture-driven and that the effect of top management changes on corporate innovation is stronger for firms where venture capitalists have greater power. An instrumental variable analysis using an exogenous shock to the supply of outside managers available for hire implies a causal effect of top management changes on corporate innovation. I establish that one mechanism through which top management changes enhance corporate innovation is through new management teams hiring more inventors for a given investment size. I also show that both top management changes and corporate innovation have a positive impact on firms' successful exits. In the second chapter, co-authored with Thomas Chemmanur and Karthik Krishnan, we hypothesize that VC-backing garners greater “investor attention” (Merton (1987)) for IPOs, allowing IPO underwriters to perform two information-related roles more efficiently during the book-building and road-show process: information dissemination, where the lead underwriter disseminates noisy information about various aspects of the IPO firm to institutional investors; and information extraction, where the lead underwriter extracts information useful in pricing the IPO firm equity from institutional investors. Using pre-IPO media coverage as a proxy, we show empirically that VC-backed firm IPOs indeed obtain greater investor attention, causally yielding them more favorable IPO characteristics such as higher IPO and secondary market valuations. In the third chapter, co-authored with Thomas Chemmanur, Lei Kong, and Karthik Krishnan, using panel data on top management characteristics and a management quality factor constructed using common factor analysis on individual management quality proxies, we analyze the relation between the human capital or “quality” of firm management and its innovation inputs and outputs. We control for the endogenous matching between firm and management quality using a plausibly exogenous shock to the supply of new managers as an instrument, thereby finding a causal relationship between management quality and innovation activities. We show that higher management quality firms achieve greater innovation output by hiring more and higher quality inventors. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

A presente dissertação analisa a relação entre direito e experimentalismo institucional por meio de um estudo sobre o surgimento de políticas públicas de capital semente no Brasil. A partir de uma pesquisa empírica sobre a colaboração público-privada na criação e execução de fundos públicos de investimentos em empresas nascentes do BNDES e do trabalho de Mario Schapiro, a pesquisa analisa os arranjos jurídicos que procedimentalizam canais de comunicação entre o Estado e os gestores privados e geram aprendizado institucional para revisão dos arranjos contratuais da política. Ainda, a dissertação apresenta uma resenha da literatura de experimentalismo democrático em especial, Roberto Mangabeira Unger e Charles Sabel e a utiliza para analisar criticamente os arranjos jurídicos dos fundos de capital semente do BNDES, que ainda não garantem formas de accountability e controle social das políticas públicas de capital de risco. Ao analisar a experiência do Fundo Criatec, a dissertação a identifica como um exemplo de inovação institucional do BNDES, dotada de flexibilidade e horizontalidade. Entretanto, conclui-se que tais políticas públicas estão distantes do modelo de experimentalismo democrático e que há novas questões para os juristas brasileiros. Sugere-se que o novo ativismo estatal brasileiro incita uma agenda de sociologia jurídica aplicada. / This dissertation examines the relationship between law and institutional experimentalism through a study of the emergence of seed capital public policies in Brazil. Based on an empirical research about the public-private collaboration in the creation and implementation of the Brazilian Development Banks public investment funds in emerging firms, and the studies of Mario Schapiro, the research examines the legal arrangements that proceduralizes channels of communication between the state and private managers, and generates institutional learning to the revision of the policys contractual arrangements. Still, the dissertation presents a review of the democratic experimentalism literature - in particular, Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Charles Sabel - and uses it to critically examine the legal arrangements of seed capital funds from the BNDES, which do not yet provide forms of accountability and social control on venture capital policies. By analyzing the experience of the Criatec Fund, the dissertation identifies it as an example of institutional innovation in the BNDES, endowed with flexibility and horizontality. However, the research shows that such policies are far from the democratic experimentalism model and that there are new issues for Brazilian legal scholars. Furthermore, it suggests that the new state activism in Brazil encourages an agenda of applied socio-legal studies

I investigate if all-equity firms are a heterogeneous group as it relates to agency costs and accounting quality. All-equity firms are a unique group of firms that choose a “corner solution” as their capital structure. Extant research, supported by well-established theories such as trade-off theory, free cash flow theory, and Jensen’s (1986) control hypothesis, generally conclude that agency conflicts motivate such structure. Research also supports the alternative argument that poor accounting quality makes debt so prohibitive that such firms are driven to this capital structure. I propose that an all-equity structure is not necessarily symptomatic of agency conflicts and poor accounting quality overall. I investigate if different motivations, within an all-equity setting, reflected by free cash flows and growth opportunities, result in different levels of agency cost and accounting quality. By anchoring on theories that link implicit costs of debt to free cash flow levels and growth opportunities, I hypothesize that free cash flows and growth opportunities are strongly linked to the justification or lack thereof for the pursuit of such strategy. I hypothesize and show that firms in the extremes of the free cash flow to growth rate spectrum exhibit significantly different levels of agency cost and accounting quality within the all-equity setting. These results support my main prediction that there exists agency costs and accounting quality differences within the all-equity setting which are associated with free cash flow levels and growth opportunities and that the pessimistic conclusions for pursuing an all-equity strategy reached by prior research should not be generalized to all such firms. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:40:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 3 / Nenhuma / Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o desenvolvimento de empresas brasileiras do setor de software que lograram se desenvolver e superar barreiras gerenciais e do ambiente externo, responsáveis por aniquilarem grande parte das pequenas empresas desse setor, após o encerramento do ciclo de vida do primeiro produto. Para tanto, adota como referencial teórico estudos acerca do empreendedorismo e, em especial, do ciclo de vida de organizações. A análise aborda as características do perfil do empreendedor e aspectos da Estratégia, da Gestão de Pessoas, da Estrutura, do Marketing e da Gestão Financeira. A habilitação de uma empresa a investimentos de capital de risco foi tomada como critério para a escolha dos casos investigados. A análise tem como base o estudo de caso de três empresas de software que receberam aporte de capital de risco. O estudo revela que a busca constante por novas oportunidades de mercado, a rápida adaptação mercadológica de produtos e serviços, a profissionalização da gestão, a flexibil / This work aims at analyzing the development of Brazilian companies of the software industry that had the purpose of developing and overcoming managerial barriers and of the external environment, responsible for the elimination of a great part of the small companies of that industry, after the end of the life cycle of the first product. For that matter, it adopts as theoretical studies about the entrepreneurship and, in special, about the organizations life cycle. The analysis addresses the characteristics of the entrepreneur profile and aspects of the Strategy, of the Management of Persons, of the Structure, of the Marketing and of the Financial Management. The qualification of a company for venture capital investments has been taken as a criterion for the choice of the investigated cases. The analysis is based in the case study of three companies of software that received the venture capital support. The study reveals that the constant search for new market opportunities, the quick marketing adaptation of p

<div>Entrepreneurial ventures face a trade-off when receiving corporate venture capital (CVC) financing. They need to give sufficient control rights to motivate and enable corporate investors to provide exclusive resources. However, giving control rights to CVCs whose strategic goals could cause a conflict of interest and lead to opportunism also puts the ventures at risk. This dissertation shows that third-party involvement with the design of passive control rights can be a solution to the trade-off.</div><div><br></div><div><div>By examining venture capital financing contracts in high-tech industries, Essay 1 found that veto power, a prevailing passive control right, of the third party can protect the vulnerable side in the cooperation without hurting the other side’s incentive to contribute. Moreover, two types of veto rights are identified and found to have diverse responses to conflict-of-interest factors in CVC-entrepreneur relationships. The effects of knowledge overlap, CVC parents’ research and development capability, and ventures’ technological quality on the liable third party’s veto power are studied. With a focus on the function of passive control rights, Essay 2 and Essay 3 maintain that allocating control rights can significantly affect the innovation of both CVC corporate parents and CVC-backed ventures under difference contingencies. In particular, as the aforementioned dilemma increases when CVCs’ corporate parents and portfolio firms are competing in product markets, Essay 2 shows that ventures’ innovation performance can benefit from granting CVCs strong active control rights in the condition of low product market overlap and from granting CVCs strong passive control rights within a high product market overlap.</div></div><div><br></div><div><div>On the other hand, Essay 3 shows that CVCs’ control rights will moderate the inverted Ushaped relationship between knowledge overlap and the innovation performance of the corporate parents such that the positive effect of knowledge overlap on CVC parents’ innovation at lower levels of knowledge similarity will be less positive, and the negative effect of knowledge overlap on CVC parents’ innovation at higher levels of knowledge similarity will be less negative, for CVCs with greater control power over their portfolio ventures. Moreover, the moderating effect of active control right is stronger than the moderating effect of passive control right under high degree of technological knowledge overlap between a CVC parent and the CVC’s portfolio ventures. Meanwhile, the moderating effect of passive control rights is stronger than the moderating effect of active control right under high degree of technological knowledge overlap between a CVC parent and the CVC’s portfolio ventures.</div></div>

This thesis deals with venture capital and its impact on business activities. Its goal is to prove that properly executed venture capital investment could be beneficial not only for the recipient but also for the investor. In the theoretical part, the thesis deals with analysis of venture capital, its support in the Czech Republic and its impact on internationalization of business activities. In the practical part, there is an example how venture capital could be a suitable support for company's development in foreign markets.

There has been a continuous interest in academia with regard to the venture capital (VC) as themain flourishing aid to new business. Nowadays, academia and the public consider it ‘hot‘ to argue and invest in business that define their activities with sustainable goals, and callthemselves ‘green’, ‘clean’ or ‘eco’. Furthermore, circles of discussions about sustainability, triple bottom line, green, clean, eco, and other terms related with positive impact towards society environment alongside financial returns have created uncertainty with respect to what defines an entity as green and how this can be used as a competitive advantage in the attractiveness of the business in the very first steps of its existence. However, green startups are considered a strong tool for the emergence of the environmentally friendly solutions needed in order to avoid dangerous and irreversible climate change. Furthermore, venture capitalists (VCs) are a key provider of financial capital for emerging firms. Therefore, given the complex nature of the VC investment decision, it is paramount to understand the VCs perspective on what are the factors andcharacteristics that attract and repel investors toward green startups. By undertaking this investigation, we seek to create an understanding of the evaluation criteria, as well as, characteristics and challenges related to VC investments in green startups. Therefore, contributing to the fields of environmental entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance, by identifying what VCs take in consideration when evaluating green startups. To develop this understanding of the VCs perspective on green startups we first developed an in-depth literature review of the extant research, then we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners from the mainstream and the greenVC industry operating in Sweden. Furthermore, we implemented an interpretative approach which enabled us to analyze the individual perspectives of VC depending on the context in which they operate. This study provided interesting results that complement the existing literature and provide useful insights on the current state of green VC. Combining the findings of our study with the theories discussed in our comprehensive literature review on green entrepreneurs, green startups and venture capital, we provide an understanding of the evaluation criteria and investment thesis relevant to green startups as well as, insight on characteristics, challenges and opportunities related to investments in green startups. Therefore, this study generates new knowledge in this scarcely studied area of research and provide interesting insights for future research. To the end of this continuum, both actors involved - VCs and green entrepreneurs - will benefit from the findings which provide: green entrepreneurs with the tools to develop green startups with more potential to attract investors; and VCs with an understanding of the nature, challenges and opportunities of green startups´ investments.

During the past decade (1984-1994), Australia experienced its worst recession since the depression of the 30's, followed by a no-growth period and an unemployment rate hovering around nine per cent. The awareness of Commonwealth and State Governments of the need for specific policies to stimulate new ventures and support small and medium enterprises (SME's), was increased by a range of reviews which resulted in a variety of initiatives. However, two key national initiatives, licensed Management and Investment Companies (MIC's) and the Second Board Stock Market, which aimed at making access to funds easier for new ventures, failed to provide sustained financial support to new innovative firms. Small businesses in Australia account for some 80 per cent of all businesses and 50 per cent of employment in the private sector. While many factors contribute to the successful establishment and growth of new businesses, a key factor is the availability of and access to affordable finance. The major objective of this study was to identify key success/failure factors in new venture creation and to review in detail the rise and fall of the Second Board Stock Market (1984-1992) - arguably one of the most significant Government initiatives during the 80's to provide access to equity funds. A survey of Melbourne companies listed on the Second Board was to provide valuable information on the success/failure of the Second Board Stock Market and to illuminate desirable Government initiatives meeting SME's survival needs.