Small business policy has become a major focus of industrial policy initiatives in the OECD countries (Storey and Tether 1998). A range of policy measures are utilised in support of small business, including direct financial support, the provision of advisory services, the education and training...

The literature on state capacity has suggested that state-industry relations are critical in understanding the structure of industry and the capacity for industry transformation within a particular social context. Further, there appears to be a need for science and technology policies that...

Over the last three decades, modern capitalist economies have experienced significant changes in the structure of industry, the nature of production and the organisation of work. There has been a decline in traditional industries such as manufacturing, construction and mining and a growth in...

The methods by which small firms overcome the disadvantages of their size to implement innovation on construction projects are examined here through five case studies. It is found that such methods include working with advanced clients, prioritising relationship-building strategies and using...

Explanations of cross-national variations in the level of small business and entrepreneurial activity have typically not distinguished between different industry sectors and have tended to focus on general framework conditions affecting small business including macroeconomic variables and...

At a broad level, it has been shown that different institutional contexts, policy regimes and business systems affect the kinds of activities in which a nation specialises. This paper is concerned with the way in which different national business systems affect the nature of participation of a...

There is overwhelming evidence that innovation and knowledge intensity are key factors promoting growth in modern economies. Since the early 1990s, OECD analysts have focused increasingly on the growing knowledge intensity of modern economies and the strong links between knowledge intensity and...

Innovation can be defined broadly to include the development and uptake of new technology, the introduction of new products, the utilisation of new market opportunities and the implementation of new business processes including new forms of work organisation or management structures and...

The critical impact of innovation on national and the global economies has been discussed at length in the literature. Economic development requires the diffusion of innovations into markets. It has long been recognised that economic growth and development depends upon a constant stream of...

There are two key approaches to entrepreneurship, each of which has different implications for small business policy (Danson 2002). The first conceives of entrepreneurship as an economic process and can be traced to the work of Joseph Schumpeter who developed the concept of creative destruction...