|
|
|
|
|
SMALL BUSINESSES, often described as the engine for growth in Southern California, are facing tax, labor and regulatory issues that are prompting one in six to consider leaving Southern California, according to a comprehensive study of the economy done by the Los Angeles Times and the USC Marshall School of Business.
Southern California is known as the nation’s hotbed of entrepreneurial activity, and economic conditions in Southern California often set the trend for the rest of the nation. More than 99 percent of all Southern California businesses are small businesses with fewer than 500 employees.
“Given how strongly the economy has performed over the last several years, it was surprising to find that more than half of the small businesses in Southern California reported flat or declining sales,” says Pat Benson, small-business editor at the Times. “However, Southern California is still a richly diverse and dynamic small-business center that is technologically savvy, productive, export-oriented and primed to compete in the global economy.”
“City and county governments need to reconsider how they regulate and license businesses in their communities,” adds William Gartner, who holds the Henry W. Simonsen Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Marshall School’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
“Small businesses are asking for responsible regulation rather than incoherent forms and policies,” he says.
THE STUDY FOUND that 78 percent of small business owners believe the state is unres-ponsive to their needs. And three of four business owners found their respective counties equally unresponsive to the needs of small businesses in Southern California.
“If we assume that change is part of the life of a business, then government seems to be ill-equipped to cope with this problem,” Gartner says. “It looks like government is only able to deal with larger, more stable businesses.”
The GenX Secret
n March 5, the British newspaper The Independent quoted leadership expert Jay Conger at length on the true nature of Generation Xers, who, he says, are not slackers. “What we are seeing is a different set of attitudes about the workplace. In a nutshell, they distrust hierarchy. They prefer more informal arrangements. They prefer to judge on merit rather than on status.”
|
