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...

Although much attention has focussed on the determinants of firms' innovation performance, the relationship between innovation and business performance is less well defined. In this paper we use data from identical plant level surveys conducted in six regions of the UK, Germany and Ireland to...

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...

To date, little research has focused on female entrepreneurship in the context of transitioning countries. This paper compares from an institutional perspective two countries at different stages in the process of transformation. Lithuania followed a rapid transitional path leading to European...

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...

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,...