Paving the Way for Micro-, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Southern Mediterranean. CEPS Policy Brief No. 314, 14 January 2014

The upheavals of the Arab Spring in the southern Mediterranean led to domestic and international demands on the governments in the region to implement reforms aimed at enhancing business and investment conditions especially for micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which carry out an overwhelming majority of the region’s economic activity. A comprehensive survey among some 600 high-growth potential MSMEs in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia identified and ranked the key obstacles impeding their high-growth potential. This Policy Brief summarises the main results and policy recommendations that can be drawn from this survey, which has been analysed in depth by Ayadi & De Groen (2014).

Micro-, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises with High-Growth Potential in the Southern Mediterranean: Identifying Obstacles and Policy Responses. CEPS Paperbacks. January 2014

The Arab Spring, which took root in Tunisia and Egypt in the beginning of 2011 and gradually spread to other countries in the southern Mediterranean, highlighted the importance of private-sector development, job creation, improved governance and a fairer distribution of economic opportunities. The developments led to domestic and international calls for the region’s governments to implement the needed reforms to enhance business and investment conditions, modernise their economies and support the development of enterprises. Central to these demands are calls to enhance the growth prospects of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which represent an overwhelming majority of the region’s economic activity.

Big business in the Russian economy and politics under Putin's rule; The Russian power industry shortly before reforms; Ukrainian metallurgy: the economic link in the oligarchical system. OSW Study 5/2002

Big business in Russia: The pace of ownership transfer in the Russian economy has speeded up considerably over the last year. There has been a significant rise in the number of acquisitions of whole enterprises, and large blocks of shares in individual firms and plants. Similarly the number of mergers, bankruptcies and take-overs of failing firms by their strongest competitors has grown. The Russian power industry: This study is an overview of the current condition and principles on which the Russian power sector has been functioning so far. This analysis has been carried out against the background of the changes that have been taking place in the sector since the beginning of the 1990s. This text also contains a description of guidelines and progress made so far in implementing the reform of the Russian power industry, the draft of which was adopted by the government of the Russian Federation in summer 2001. However, the purpose of this study is not an economic analysis of the draft, but an attempt to present the political conditions and possible consequences of the transformations carried out in the Russian power sector. The final part attempts to evaluate the possibilities and threats related to the implementation of the reform in its present shape. Ukrainian metallurgy: The metallurgic sector, like the east-west transit of energy raw materials, is a strategic source of revenue for Ukraine. Over the last ten years, this sector has become Kiev's most important source of foreign currency inflows, accounting for over 40 per cent of its total export revenues. The growth of metallurgic production, which has continued almost without interruption since the mid-1990s, has contributed considerably to the increase in GDP which Ukraine showed in 2000, for the first time in its independent history.

Efficient taxation of multi-national enterprises in the European Union. Bruges European Economic Policy (BEEP) Briefing 5/2003

Current arrangements for multi-national company taxation in EU are plagued by severe conceptual and administrative problems, leading to high compliance costs, considerable uncertainty and ample room for abuse. Integration is amplifying these difficulties. There are two possible approaches in designing an efficient trans-border corporate tax system for the European Union. The first is to consolidate the EU-wide operations of MNEs, using an agreed common base as the reference variable, and then to apportion this total tax base using some presumptive indicators of activity in each tax jurisdiction – hence, implicitly, of the likely benefits stemming from each location. The apportionment formula should respect requisites of neutrality between productive factors and forms of corporate financing. A radically different approach is also available that offers considerable advantages in terms of efficiency, simplicity and decentralisation, including full administrative autonomy of national tax authorities. It entails abandoning corporate income as the relevant tax base and taxing at a moderate rate some agreed measure of business activity such as company value added, sales or employment. These are the variables usually considered in formula apportionment, but they would apply directly without having first to go through the complications of EU-wide consolidation based on a common-base definition. Reference to a broad base, with no exemptions or deductions, would allow to set low statutory rates.

Mixed Public-Private Enterprises in Europe: Economic Theory and an Empirical Analysis of Italian Water Utilities. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 4/July 2006

Mixed enterprises, which are entities jointly owned by the public and private sector, are spreading all over Europe in local utilities. Well aware that in the vast majority of cases the preference of local authorities towards such governance structure is determined by practical reasons rather than by the ambition to implement new regulatory designs (an alternative to the typical “external” regulation), our purpose is to confer some scientific value to this phenomenon which has not been sufficiently investigated in the economic literature. This paper aims at proposing an economic analysis of mixed enterprises, especially of the specific configuration in which the public partner acts as controller and the private one (or “industrial” partner) as service provider. We suggest that the public service concession to mixed enterprises could embody, under certain conditions, a noteworthy substitute to the traditional public provision and the concession to totally private enterprises, as it can push regulated operators to outperform and limit the risk of private opportunism. The starting point of the entire analysis is that ownership allows the (public) owner to gather more information about the actual management of the firm, according to property rights theory. Following this stream of research, we conclude that under certain conditions mixed enterprises could significantly reduce asymmetric information between regulators and regulated firms by implementing a sort of “internal” regulation. With more information, in effect, the public authority (as owner/controller of the regulated firm, but also as member of the regulatory agency) can stimulate the private operator to be more efficient and can monitor it more effectively with respect to the fulfilment of contractual obligations (i.e., public service obligations, quality standards, etc.). Moreover, concerning the latter function, the board of directors of the mixed enterprise can be the suitable place where public and private representatives (respectively, welfare and profit maximisers) can meet to solve all disputes arising from incomplete contracts, without recourse to third parties. Finally, taking into account that a disproportionate public intervention in the “private” administration (or an ineffective protection of the general interest) would imply too many drawbacks, we draw some policy implications that make an equitable debate on the board of the firm feasible. Some empirical evidence is taken from the Italian water sector.

Event monitoring in a small and business enterprise

This paper presents an overview of the role and responsibilities of the system administrator, focusing on the need to monitor its technological infrastructure. The informatics infrastructure monitoring is, nowadays without a doubt, one of the main key points in business support. Large enterprises are no longer the only ones to feel the need to use these monitoring tools, but small and medium-sized enterprises, which also have IT environments of an increasing complexity, feel such a need. This results directly from the operation of how the business is supported on IT platforms as support for people and processes. When a system, which is vital to the organization, fails either at the hardware or software level, compromises the operating capacity and consequently the business continuity. Having this always in mind, it is extremely important to adopt monitoring systems that proactively or reactively, reduce the overall time of breaks caused by failures. A monitoring system is the way to ensure confidence in all components and the operational readiness of IT infrastructure.

Through the lenses of organizational culture: A comparison of state-owned enterprises and joint ventures in China

This study compared state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and joint ventures (JVs) in light of organizational culture practices. Data were obtained via a survey participated by 781 respondents from five enterprises. Factoring identified four cultural dimensions: Participation, Teamwork, Supervision, and Meetings. All four dimensions, except Participation, were rated significantly higher by respondents from SOEs as compared to the ratings in JVs. Based on the findings, this study concluded that culture practices valued in one type of enterprise might be liability in another. The implication for management is to gear culture practices to the characteristics of the organization to make it successful.

Managing the dynamic configuration of enterprises

Due to environmental changes and business trends such as globalisation, outsourcing and virtualisation, more and more companies get involved in business activities that are outside their direct control. This typically occurs by entering into collaborative relationships and joint ventures with specialised companies in order to fulfil the demands of customers quickly (DiMaggio, 2001). Organisational structures that results from such collaborative relationships and joint ventures are referred to in this paper as enterprises and the management of them known as enterprise management. The authors use the definition of the European Commission (2003) that defines an enterprise as “… an entity, regardless of its legal form … including partnerships or associations regularly engaged in economic activities.” Therefore in its most simple form an enterprise could be a single integrated company. However, findings from this research show that enterprises can also be made up of parts of different companies and the structure of the enterprise is contingent upon a variety of different factors. The success of the enterprise as a collaborative venture depends on the ability of companies to intermediate their internal core competencies into other participating companies’ value streams and simultaneously outsource their own peripheral activities to companies that can perform them quicker, cheaper, and more effectively (Lal et al., 1995). In other words, the peripheral activities of one member-company must be complemented by a core competence of another member-company within an overall enterprise.

Strategy, IT and dynamic change in enterprises

This paper explores the importance of collaboration between different types of organizations within an enterprise. To achieve successful collaboration requires both endogenous and exogenous factors of each organization to be considered and a shared meta-strategy supported by shared cross-organizational processes and technology. A rolling business plan would periodically review, assess and reposition each organization within this meta-strategy according to how well they have contributed. We show that recent technological advances have made organizational structures more agile, organizational infra-structure more connected and the sharing of real-time information an operational reality; we also discuss the challenges and risks.