The role of business centres in firms' networking capabilities and performance

Andre Spithoven and Mirjam Knockaert

Science and Public Policy, 2011, vol. 38, issue 7, 569-580

Abstract: An extensive stream of literature has studied incubators, however, few researchers have focused on business centres, which typically host a broader set of firms, including medium- and low-tech firms. This paper studies the role of business centres in the networking capabilities of their residents and the impact of residence at a business centre on performance. While we find the networking capabilities of business centre residents to be more developed than those of non-residents, this mainly seems to originate from a selection mechanism, with business centres attracting residents with greater networking capabilities. The impact of residence at a business centre on a firm's performance is less obvious. While we find that residence at a business centre has a (marginal) positive effect on employment growth, no significant impact was found for revenue growth. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3152/030234211X13070021633125 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:38:y:2011:i:7:p:569-580

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().