Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the rationale for supplier diversity, constituent elements of each case study programme, actual performance of the initiatives and key challenges involved in implementing supplier diversity programmes. Design/methodology/approach – This...

Investors in People (IIP), the heavily promoted government initiative to enhance organisations’ training and development practices, is significant for its deliberate intention to influence the conduct of management within the firm. While previous studies of IIP have tended to concentrate on...

The issue of quality remains an integral feature of the discourse on small firm development. Unfortunately, two potentially conflicting approaches to this issue are evident. There is the essentially prescriptive “consultancy” school which often provides technical solutions uninformed by...

It is widely accepted that many ethnic minority firms continue to rely on their own community for their survival, and that growth is only likely to be achieved by tapping into wider markets. In short, ‘break‐out’, which is the focus of this paper, is critical to ethnic minority firms'...

Should enterprise support for ethnic minority firms be configured along ethnic lines? This question has confronted many officers engaged in the “enterprise industry”, as they grapple with the task of supporting the increasingly significant phenomenon of ethnic minority entrepreneurship. The...

Small professional service firms constitute an important segment of the small business population. Explanations of the emergence, employment potential and economic contribution of such firms have been much debated. Yet, comparatively little is known of the “people dimension” in such...