Bill Burpitt, associate professor of business administration, is lead author of a paper accepted for the fall 2005 Southern Management Association conference in Charleston, SC. Burpitt and co-author Sally Fowler of American University wrote “Strategies in a Declining Industry: The Entrepreneurial Alternative.”
The paper explores strategies of small firms in the North Carolina furniture industry, which has suffered significant job loss due to foreign competition. Research by Burpitt and Fowler found that entrepreneurial approaches and strategies seemed to help companies’ financial performance, and suggests that these strategies may be more effective than those empahsizing efficiency and existing products and markets.