The launch of the Small Business Service in the United Kingdom stimulated a review of small business policy and support in the United Kingdom. The Service inherited a substantial number of policies and initiatives which have been criticised for their poorly stated aims and overall lack of...

The broad focus of this paper is the divergence of implemented policy from intended policy in UK small business support. The Small Business Service (SBS) is the United Kingdom's most recent attempt to provide coherent support for small business. With its structure of local franchisees and...

Investors in People (IiP) plays a central role in the UK government's policies for workforce development. Small firms have been a particular focus of government support with IiP along with claims that the scheme will enhance the performance of these firms. However, it is argued in this paper...

The authors' concern is with the relationship between household income and property value, within the context of the debate about the fairness of council tax-the property-based system of local taxation in England. Although located within this particular debate, the fundamental issue of the...

The provision of advisory support to small firms is almost ubiquitous in OECD countries, although it is organised in different ways and is justified on slightly different grounds. In England publicly supported advisory services are provided through the Business Link (BL) network. Here, we...

The author challenges common assumptions about the nature of the emerging global economy. Rather than being the product of disembedded market forces, this new global political economy is organized by specialized forms of intelligence gathering and judgment determination inside the new global...

Intense global competition and the advent of a raft of employment regulations (notably, the national minimum wage, or NMW) have placed the UK garment industry under severe pressure. The prospects for a significant segment of this sector-ethnic-minority-owned businesses-appear to be extremely...

In recent debates on trade liberalisation the concern has often been expressed that with more competitive international trade governments will be worried that by setting tougher environmental policies than their trading rivals they will put domestic producers at a competitive disadvantage, and...

China’s recent growth of trade and income is routinely characterized as staggering and the like. We zoom in on Shanghai to see which part is hyperbole and which is not taking the long view. The city is ideal for this‐‐Shanghai held more than half of China’s foreign trade in 1850 and is...