Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures

Leslie E. Palich is an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship and the Ben H. Williams Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University, where he teaches courses in small business management, international entrepreneurship, strategic management, and international management to undergraduate and graduate students in the Hankamer School of Business. He is also associate director of the Entrepreneurship Studies program at Baylor. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from Arizona State University and a B.A. from Manhattan Christian College. His research has been published in the ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, JOURNAL OF BUSINESS VENTURING, JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES, JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, and several other periodicals. He has taught entrepreneurship and strategic management in a number of overseas settings, including Cuba, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the Dominican Republic. His interest in entrepreneurial opportunity and small business management dates back to his grade-school years, when he set up a produce sales business to experiment with small business ownership. That early experience became a springboard for a number of other enterprises. Since that time, he has owned and operated domestic ventures in agribusiness, automobile sales, real estate development, and educational services, as well as an international import business. Frank Hoy is the Paul R. Beswick Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He was most recently director of the Centers for Entrepreneurial Development, Advancement, Research and Support at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), also serves as director of the Collaborative for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (CEI), WPI's nationally ranked entrepreneurship center. Hoy joined the WPI faculty in August 2009, and holds a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso, an MBA from the University of North Texas, and a PhD in management from Texas A&M University. He was a faculty member in the Department of Management at the University of Georgia for ten years, where he founded and directed the Center for Business and Economic Studies, coordinated the entrepreneurship curriculum, and served as director of the Georgia Small Business Development Center. In 1991 he returned to Texas to join UTEP as a professor of management and entrepreneurship and dean of the College of Business Administration. Hoy is a past president of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and past chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. His research has appeared in the ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, JOURNAL OF BUSINESS VENTURING, FAMILY BUSINESS REVIEW, and he is a past editor of ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE. Justin G. Longenecker established SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT as a leader in the market from the first edition of the book 50 years ago. In addition to this market-leading text, he wrote a number of other business books and numerous articles in journals such as Journal of Small Business Management, Academy of Management Review, Business Horizons, and Journal of Business Ethics. He was active in several professional organizations and served as president of the International Council for Small Business. Dr. Longenecker grew up in a family business. After attending Central Christian College of Kansas for two years, he earned his B.A. in political science from Seattle Pacific University, his M.B.A. from Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He taught at Baylor University, where he was Emeritus Chavanne Professor of Christian Ethics in Business until his death in 2005. J. William Petty is professor of finance and the W.W. Caruth Chairholder in Entrepreneurship at Baylor University, and also the executive director of the Baylor Angel Network. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. from Abilene Christian University. He has taught at Virginia Tech University and Texas Tech University, and has served as the dean of the business school at Abilene Christian University. His research interests include acquisitions of privately held companies, shareholder value-based management, the financing of small and entrepreneurial firms, angel financing, and exit strategies for privately held firms. He has served as co-editor for the JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH and editor of the JOURNAL OF ENTREPRENEURIAL AND SMALL BUSINESS FINANCE. He has published articles in a number of finance journals and is the co-author of two leading corporate finance textbooks-BASIC FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT and FOUNDATIONS OF FINANCE. Dr. Petty has worked as a consultant for oil and gas firms and consumer product companies. He also served as a subject matter expert on a best-practices study on shareholder value-based management, funded by the American Productivity and Quality Center, and he was part of a research team for the Australian Department of Industry to study the feasibility of establishing a public equity market for small- and medium-size enterprises in Australia. Finally, he serves as the audit chair for a publicly-traded energy firm.