Purpose – This paper aims to consider the methods used by publicly supported business advisers to assess their client businesses. These business advisers are increasingly required to diagnose the problem or opportunities that face their clients before recommending types of business support....

Purpose – Attempts to “Westernize” post-socialist economies of Eastern Europe resulted in little or no progress. This paper aims to incorporate the resource-based view (RBV) paradigm to shed light on the present difficulties and challenges. A shortage of resources, many of which are taken...

Purpose – The paper aims to investigate the problems experienced and problem-solving techniques of very small businesses during growth. Evidence shows that if managers can understand the potential for growth and the barriers in their own business path, they will be able to address the problems...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed light on performance evaluation of small firms' financing schemes with a view to assessing their potential for improving small firms' access to finance. Design/methodology/approach – An integrated methodology based on five commonly used...

Purpose – The paper aims to investigate the problems experienced and problem‐solving techniques of very small businesses during growth. Evidence shows that if managers can understand the potential for growth and the barriers in their own business path, they will be able to address the...

Purpose – With the objective of trying to understand and assess the status of delivering business development services (BDS) and identifying the constraints, the Ethiopian Development Research Institute conducted a survey of randomly selected 974 MSEs (551 micro and 423 small enterprise...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the variables affecting firm profitability, applying the seemingly unrelated regression method to a large sample of approximately 87,000 observations covering 12,530 non‐financial micro firms operating in four industry sectors, from 2006...

Purpose – To review empirical contributions to the small business growth literature since the mid‐1990s. Design/methodology/approach – Narrative review of the literature using the framework adopted in previous reviews: management strategies; characteristics of the entrepreneur;...

Purpose – This paper seeks to evaluate the cultural variables which influence the growth of Turkish speaking ethnic minority businesses in London, UK. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reports and analyses the findings of 227 face‐to‐face structured interviews with Turkish small...

Purpose – Research to date has identified incubator units as an effective mechanism for supporting the growth and development of small entrepreneurial firms. Advantages are gained not only from the provision of appropriate facilities and external managerial expertise on site, but also from the...