First CREME Seminar on Small Firms Research at DMU a great success
The first session of the CREME seminar series at De Montfort University was formally opened on March the 2nd by Professor David Wilson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law and focused on developments in small firms’ research at DMU. Professor Monder Ram, Director of CREME, introduced the speakers below to a group of approximately 30 attendees:
- Professor Sue Marlow (De Montfort University)
- Professor Allan Macpherson (De Montfort University)
Professor Sue Marlow gave an overview of her primary research interests which include gender, identity, labour management, business incubation and business failure and closure in the field of entrepreneurship. Her research has looked at ‘who or what is an entrepreneur’ in the sense of what exactly influences entrepreneurial behaviour.
In the field of gender, she is critically engaging with the articulation of masculinity for female entrepreneurs. It is has been proven that women business owners do as well as men in running companies. However, women have difficulties fitting into the business environment due to their gender.
Professor Allan Macpherson followed with a presentation that mainly focuses on the field of entrepreneurial learning. He is researching into how small firms learn to grow. Further to this, he is analysing different tenants of small firm development including the influence of leadership style on the firm and the influence of human and social capital.
Professor Macpherson also gave an overview of the evolution of entrepreneurial learning, discussing how the field has evolved from focusing on the behaviour of the person (i.e. what the owner should know) in the 1980s to the manager in role (i.e. the organisation as a whole and its surrounding learning network) in the present.
Professor Monder Ram finished the session by giving an overview of CREME and its research activities. CREME focuses on a social science perspective rather than on an entrepreneurship perspective when conducting its research. Moreover, through the use of an engaged scholarship methodology, CREME has ensured that its work has as much impact on policy and practice as it does in academia (as evidenced by the fact that 5 of its initiatives in the past few years have been commercialised).
CREME is interested in pursuing a participative form of research that involves intermediaries and relevant stakeholders to address a complex social problem. CREME’s current preoccupations included:
- Mixed embeddedness (can’t just look at ethnic minority businesses only in terms of ethnicity, have to embed entrepreneurship within this context)
- Critical realism
- Policy and practice (revamp of the CREME website, continuation of a previous CREME project- MEECOE that has received further funding from the ESRC)
The next CREME seminar will be held on May 4th between 12-2pm and will focus on access to finance for small firms. Talks will be given by Dr Stuart Fraser from Warwick University and by Professor Richard Roberts, the Chief Economist at Barclays Bank Plc. To register to attend this event or for more information, please email efrost@dmu.ac.uk.
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