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C&BA's Lohrke Receives Award for Research on Small Businesses and Internet

Dr. Franz T. Lohrke

Dr. Franz T. Lohrke, assistant professor of management in UA’s Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration has been named the winner of the Best Paper Award on Technology Applications for Entrepreneurship by the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). USASBE, formerly the International Council for Small Business, is an organization of researchers, scholars, teachers, administrators and public policy makers interested in entrepreneurship and small business.

"Entrepreneurship and small businesses are the heart of the nation’s economy," said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the UA business school. "Applying today’s complicated technologies to these two critical areas is crucial and for Franz Lohrke to be recognized for his expertise in this area is immensely gratifying and underscores once again the fact that our faculty members are leaders in their fields."

The paper, titled "The Internet as an Information Conduit: A Transaction Cost Analysis Model of Small Business Internet Use" and co-authored by Dr. Geralyn McClure Franklin, professor of management and dean of the business school at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, explored the idea that small firms can use the Internet to reduce potential inefficiencies that arise from relying on other firms to perform key activities. The researchers hypothesized that because the Internet offers small firms a way to provide in-house customer support that complements or even replaces support provided by traditional outside intermediaries such as distributors, those firms facing potential inefficiencies would be more likely to use the Internet to provide this support. The researchers surveyed 41 small businesses across the country and found that the results generally supported their hypothesis.