Understanding Self-Perceptions of Business Performance

A conceptual model of small business performance is developed to show the determinants of subjective indications of business success and lucrativeness, using a sample of Black American business entrepreneurs.

A framework is constructed for an investigation of how socioeconomic environmental factors as family background, support from the community, assistance from family and friends, and the characteristics of individual strategic decision-making that involved seeking capital, acquiring information external to the community, organizational membership, attracting customers of other ethnicities, providing better service and adopting unique products and services contributed to self-perceptions of business success and a belief that being an entrepreneur is more lucrative than working for wages.

This is an initial step toward a theory of Black American small business performance. This approach allows us to utilize the literature on small business as well as the rich literature on race and ethnic enterprises. In this study an entrepreneur is defined as person who presently operates a small business that he or she started. Read More.....