China’s rapid growth in recent decades can be attributed in large part to the emergence of a vibrant private sector, which now accounts for around three quarters of the economy. Despite government pronouncements in support of private small businesses, public policy and institutions to support...

In this paper we analyse the role of government in relation to the development of entrepreneurship in countries where private business activity was illegal until the beginning of the 1990s. By focusing on Estonia and Belarus we are concerned with countries with an ostensibly similar political...

The advent of the Small Business Service (SBS) has been accompanied by a renewed interest in ethnic minority enterprise. The content, nature, and efficacy of engagement processes with ethnic minority business (EMB) are likely to be important criteria for the granting of local SBS franchises, if...

Poland's membership of the EU will involve economic integration across a variety of fields, with important potential implications for the external environment in which business is conducted in Poland. These implications stem first from the need to adapt Polish legislation, regulatory systems,...

This paper is concerned with small business development in rural areas and the policy approaches currently being used to support them. The key question underlying the paper is the extent to which small businesses located in rural areas have distinctive support needs, associated with the...

The authors examine the provision of enterprise support to ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) in five cities in the United Kingdom. The central focus is on the nature of support provision, including relationship with the commercial banks. It is well established that EMBs are underrepresented as...

In this paper we are concerned with the nature and extent of product and process innovation and adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in manufacturing plants and SMEs. The paper is based on extensive postal surveys conducted in southeast (SE) England, Northern Ireland...

The authors investigate the relative roles of a number of influences on workplace health and safety in small firms and, more specifically, the adoption of compliance-related improvement measures. From findings drawn from a survey of over a thousand British small enterprises, marked variations in...

Launched in 1999/2000, the new high-growth start-up programme is part of a shift in small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policy in the United Kingdom away from a narrow focus on supporting established businesses with growth potential, to include start-ups and other types of SME. In this...