The new venture growth: Functional differentiation and the need for human resource development interventions

✍ Scribed by Alexander Ardichvili; Brian Harmon; Richard N. Cardozo; Paul D. Reynolds; Mary L Williams

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 967 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1044-8004
• DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.3920090106

✦ Synopsis

Knowledge of the timing and sequence of start-up teams' delegation of business functions in growing entrepreneurial ventures has significant implicationsfor understanding those ventures' needfor human resource development (HRD) interventions at diferent stages of their development. As afirst step in exploring the evolution offunctional differentiation in growing ventures, we anabze the extent to which 539 new businesses delegate a number of bwiness functions. The start-up teams retain the marketing and marketingrelatedfunctions (marketing, sales, advertising, pricing and bidding, and new product development) in the majority of allfirms with less than $10 million in sales. This group offunctions ranks second only to general planning as a function retained. Three major size groups of emerging small businesses with distinctly different levels offunctional delegation have been identified. There was no difference in the patterns of delegation offunctions between manufacturing and servicefrrms.

Most human resource development interventions today are designed for implementation in larger or established companies. As a rule, formal training or organization development activities do not start until the later, more mature stages in the new-firm evolution. At the same time, a number of business and human resource researchers demonstrate rather persuasively that the need for Note: The initial data collection in Pennsylvania was sponsored by the Appalachia Regonal Commis;