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This article examines access to finance for SMEs in the Baltic States and the South Caucasus countries following the financial crisis of 2007 and is set within the context of the rule of law for businesses.

The article uses the cross-sectional dataset from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) for 2009 to examine access to finance for SMEs and the court system in the Baltic States and the South Caucasus countries. An ordered probit estimation technique is used to model access to finance and the court system in the Baltic States and the South Caucasus countries. The analysis draws upon institutional theory to explain access to finance for SMEs.

The results show variations from one Baltic State and South Caucasus country to another in relation to fairness, speed of justice and enforcement of court decisions. The analysis suggests that if access to finance is not an obstacle to business operations and the court system is fair, impartial and uncorrupted, it determines the likelihood of strength in entrepreneurship. Additionally, the results show that, within the Baltic region, businesses experiencing constraints in accessing finance are more likely to have females as their top managers. However, for the South Caucasus region, there was no gender difference.

This research is based on evidence from the Baltic States and the South Caucasus region. However, the findings are relevant to discussions on the importance of the context of entrepreneurship, and more specifically, the rule of law. The institutional theory provides an explanation for coercive, normative and mimetic institutional isomorphism in the context of access to finance for SMEs. Coercive institutional isomorphism exerts a dependence on access to finance for SMEs. In coercive institutional isomorphism, formal and informal pressures are exerted by external organisations such as governments, legal regulatory authorities, banks and other lending institutions. These formal and informal pressures are imposed to ensure compliance as a dependency for successful access to finance goal.

This research creates awareness among entrepreneurs, potential entrepreneurs, business practitioners and society that reducing obstacles to access finance and a fair court system improve entrepreneurial venture formation. This has the potential to create employment, advance business development and improve economic development.

This paper makes an original contribution by emphasising the significance of access to finance and a fair court system in encouraging stronger entrepreneurship. The institutional framework provides a definition for coercive institutional isomorphism to show how external forces exert a dependence pressure towards access to finance for SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to test the interaction effect of government support in the relationship between business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) survival in post-war communities in Northern Uganda.

Cross-sectional research design was used in the study and quantitative data were collected from 304 SMMEs located in Gulu District using a semi-structured questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) through the use of analysis of moment structures was adopted to establish the interaction effect of government support in the relationship between business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and SMMEs survival in post-war communities in Northern Uganda. Furthermore, Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to show the association between the variables under study.

The results revealed that there is a significant interaction effect of government support in the relationship between business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and SMMEs survival in post-war communities in Northern Uganda. Besides, the results indicated that business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and government support have significant and positive impacts on SMMEs survival in post-war communities in Northern Uganda.

The study employed cross-sectional research design, thus, ignoring longitudinal study approach. Besides, the sample was selected from only Gulu District, therefore, leaving out other Districts located in Northern Uganda.

Advocates of recovery programs and interventions in developing countries should consider government support as a vital factor in promoting business skill, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, and entrepreneurial education in order to enhance SMMEs growth in post-war communities. In addition, governments in developing countries should offer investment incentives and tax waivers to infant SMMEs in post-war communities like in Northern Uganda.

The study examined the interaction effect of government support in the relationship between business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and SMMEs survival in post-war communities in developing countries. Thus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to test the interaction effect of government support in the relationship between business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and SMMEs survival in post-war communities in Northern Uganda. The use of government support as a moderator in the relationship between business skills, capital adequacy, access to finance, access to market, entrepreneurial education, and SMMEs survival is scarce in entrepreneurship literature and theory. This creates uniqueness in this study.

The chapter examines the role of volunteer business mentoring in potentially improving financing and financial management in under-served (i.e. schemes aim to assist deprived neighbourhoods and youth entrepreneurs) youth enterprises.

Youth entrepreneurship (commonly defined as entrepreneurs aged up to 35 years) is regarded by the OECD as under-represented, within entrepreneurship as a general social phenomenon, and young entrepreneurs as disadvantaged through being under-served. Indeed, young people with latent potential for entrepreneurship have been defined as a component of ‘Missing Entrepreneurs’ (OECD, 2013). This under-representation of nascent entrepreneurs within young people under 35 is partly theoretical. While examining entrepreneurship as a social phenomenon and taking a resource-based approach (Barney, 1991), young people are perceived at a particular disadvantage compared with older members of society. That is, however creative, they lack the experience and network resources of older members.

Theoretically, from a demand-side perspective, young people may have aspirations and the required skills for start-up entrepreneurship, but are disadvantaged from a supply-side perspective since financial institutions, such as the commercial banks, private equity investors and other suppliers of financial debt and equity, will see greater risk combined with a lack of track record and credibility (pertaining to information asymmetries and associated agency and signalling problems: Carpenter & Petersen, 2002; Hsu, 2004; Hughes, 2009; Mueller, Westhead, & Wright, 2014). This means that aspiring nascent youth entrepreneurs face greater challenges in obtaining mainstream and alternative sources of finance. Practically, unless such young entrepreneurs can call upon deep pockets of the ‘bank of Mum and Dad’ or family and friends, we can expect them to resort to pragmatic methods of stretching their resources, such as financial bootstrapping and bricolage (Mac an Bhaird, 2010; Mac an Bhaird & Lucey, 2015). Although these theoretical and practical issues have long existed for youth entrepreneurship, they have only been exacerbated in the post-2007 Global financial Crisis (GFC) financial and economic environment, despite the growth of alternative sources such as equity and debt sources of crowdfunding.

There has been an evidence for some time that young people have a higher desire to enter entrepreneurship and self-employment as a career choice, in preference to other forms of employment (Greene, 2005). Younger people are also more positive about entrepreneurial opportunities. For example, a Youth Business International, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (YBI/GEM) (2013) report indicated that in the European Union (EU), ‘younger youth’ were more positive in their attitudes to good business opportunities and in seeing good opportunities than older people. Theoretically, the issues of low experience and credibility can be mitigated by the role of advisors, consultants and/or volunteer business mentors. In corporations and large organisations, mentors are known to be valuable for early career staff (Clutterbuck, 2004; Haddock-Millar, 2017). By extension with young entrepreneurs, business mentors raise credibility, develop personal and professional competence, business potential and entrepreneurial learning. From a supply-side perspective, this reduces risk for financial institutions, potentially increasing the likelihood of receiving external finance and improving the likely returns and business outcomes of such financing.

In examining the role of business mentoring in youth entrepreneurship finance, the chapter poses three research-related questions (RQs):

To what extent is the youth voluntary business mentoring (VBM) associated with access to external finance?

Where access to external finance takes place, does the VBM improve the outcomes of the businesses?

To what extent do VBMs make a difference to the performance of businesses receiving financial assistance?

The chapter draws on primary evidence from an online Qualtrics survey of 491 (largely) youth entrepreneur mentees drawn from eight countries in the YBI network. These were selected for their contrasting high (Sweden and Spain), middle (India, Argentina, Chile, Russia and Poland) and lower (Uganda) income economies, global coverage of four continents and operation of established entrepreneurship mentoring schemes. The study provides collective quantitative data on the current relationship between mentoring and the access and impact of external finance. It surveyed current or recently completed mentees during Autumn 2016 – the typical mentoring cycle being 12 months. Additionally, the chapter draws on further qualitative insight evidence from face-to-face interviews, with current mentor-mentee case study pairings from the eight countries.

In summary, the profile of surveyed mentees demonstrated even gender distribution, with three-fifths currently in mentoring relationships. At the time of commencing mentoring, nearly four-fifths were aged under 35, half being self-employed, one quarter employed, with the remainder equally distributed between education and unemployment. At commencement of mentoring, mentee businesses were typically in early stages, either pre-start (37%) or just started trading (34%), the main sectors represented being business services (16%), education and training (16%), retail and wholesale (12%) and creative industries (8%), with the median level of own business management —one to two years.

For one-third of mentees, mentoring was compulsory, due largely to receiving enterprise finance support, whilst for the remainder, more than a quarter stated that access to business finance assistance was either considerably or most important in their choice to go on the programme.

In terms of business performance, businesses receiving external finance (loans or grants through the programme) or mentoring for business finance performed significantly better than the rest of the sample: amongst those trading 47% increased sales turnover, compared to 32% unassisted (<0.05 level); 70% increased employment, compared to 42% (<0.05); 58% directly attributed improved performance to mentoring, compared to 46% (<0.1).

The chapter provides both statistical and qualitative evidences supporting the premise that youth business mentoring can both improve access to external finance and lead to improved business performance. This provides useful guidance to youth business support, given that in some of the countries studied, external financing in the form of grants and soft micro loans for youth entrepreneurs are not available.

The purpose of this paper is to look at immigrant family business through the framework of social capital by investigating how the social capital of immigrant family business owners helps them obtain network benefits and improve business performance.

This paper presents an empirical investigation of 170 immigrant family business owners. The authors examine social capital as a multidimensional construct and focus on two attributes of social capital: structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness. In addition, this study examines how social capital influences business performance through the mediating effect of network benefits. Finally, the constructs of family capital and immigrant community capacity are also investigated.

The results suggest that the two attributes of social capital differed in their effects on network benefits, and that network benefits mediated the influence of social capital attributes on family business performance. Specifically, relational social capital influenced access to resources and information, and structural social capital influenced access to resources. Family ties affected network benefits and business performance, and immigrant community capacity had the predicted moderating effect on the relationship between immigrant community ties and network benefits.

This investigation has the potential to advance understanding of immigrant family businesses by assessing how the overall social capital of the family business owner influences business performance. The study also furthers the understanding of family capital and immigrant community capacity. In addition, these results serve practitioners by helping identify avenues to increase immigrant family business performance, an issue that is increasingly important today given the contribution of such businesses to the economic vitality of societies.

Our aim is to better understand access to finance and financial inclusion and how this impacts the development of female-run enterprises in Nigeria. In such a way, we can better understand the gendered context of entrepreneurship and the implications for business growth. This chapter adopts an interpretivist paradigm to explore the social reality within which entrepreneurship is enacted. Qualitative data are interpreted from semi-structured interviews of 10 Nigerian entrepreneurs, five males and five females. Findings reveal that, though structural support may be apparent, the entrepreneurial process of financing a business is characterised, in part, by social expectations of gender. It is through this social view of entrepreneurship that we provide an understanding of what it is to be entrepreneurial in practice. This chapter makes recommendations that in practice while financial institutions and policy makers may assume a ‘one size fits all’ approach to financial inclusion through different programmes currently available for entrepreneurs by the various governmental and non-governmental institutions in Nigeria, the context of gender has implications for the nature of business activity, particularly in a society characterised by patriarchy. This study also makes practical contributions for research and for practice.

Describes economic benefits of Ontario public libraries. These benefits include services and information for businesses, lifelong learners and job seekers. Ontario public libraries create work including short‐term construction work and longer‐term information infrastructure work. Provides job multiplier models for library building capital and information infrastructure capital with examples. Ontario public libraries have a direct and indirect impact on the Ontario economy, measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). Suggests a framework to help public libraries promote their economic impact in a time of economic restraint and funding cutbacks. This framework includes an analysis of library jobs, direct and indirect library impact on the GDP, a promotion of public electronic access to information, generation of economic‐oriented patron anecdotes, economic impact surveys and development of an entrepreneurial spirit in public libraries.

This study focuses on the factors affecting equality of access to UK government grant and loan initiatives and the identification of gender differences in the uptake of those initiatives.

A qualitative methodology was adopted as quantitative data is already available regarding the sources and levels of financing accessed. In total 32 interviews were conducted with 18 women and 14 men seeking business start‐up capital. A review of the advice and assistance offered by 31 business support agencies to potential and existing male and female business clients across the region also was undertaken.

The findings revealed that there is a discrepancy in the number of men and women business owners accessing grant and loans schemes. Women do not enter into business ownership with the same amount of capital as men, and women are far more likely to access loans and grants than traditional forms of financing.

This is a preliminary investigation which needs to be extended and the relationship between service providers and small business owners further explored to provide a greater understanding of the complexities that relationship has on accessing government grants/loans.

The grant and loan system is highly complex and fraught with difficulties, which appears to exclude women and more specifically those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, i.e. those they were designed to assist.

Previous research has focused on private sector sources of business finance. This study is the first to look specifically at government grant/loan schemes that are targeted at those business owners who experience discrimination accessing traditional forms of finance.

Although research on the relationship between culture and female entrepreneurship has developed strong insights, to date limited studies have examined the country-specific factors which may account for variance in women entrepreneurs' behaviour and subsequent outcomes. Therefore, this study attempts to close this gap through taking a closer look at the country-specific cultural factors creating differences in female entrepreneurs' behaviour and business strategies within the context of Turkey and the United Kingdom. In light of previous studies examining the impact of social institutions, this chapter adopts a survey approach to examine whether the networking strategies, growth orientation, perceived impediments, lifestyle choices and business structures of well-established female entrepreneurs vary between these two different cultural environments. In total, 240 females participated in this study with 120 from each country. The macro-cultural environments within the case countries are described through the application of Hofstede's Culture Model.

This study aims to develop and test a conceptual model of business students' intention to establish a start-up business that involves attitude, perceived behavioral control (PBC), entrepreneurial competence, financial access, lecture service quality, curriculum program, extracurricular activity and institutional support simultaneously.

An online survey was performed. The respondents were 196 business students in a private university in Indonesia. The data were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Business students' intention to establish a start-up business was positively and significantly influenced by attitude and PBC. PBC was positively and significantly influenced by entrepreneurial competence and financial access. Attitude and entrepreneurial competence were positively and significantly influenced by curriculum program and extracurricular activity, but not influenced by lecture service quality and institutional support. Financial access was positively and significantly influenced by extracurricular activity and institutional support.

This research was conducted in a private university in Indonesia. Therefore, to test the stability of the research findings and the proposed conceptual model, it is necessary to conduct research in different contexts.

Research on the intention to establish a start-up business that simultaneously considers attitude, PBC, entrepreneurial competence, financial access, lecture service quality, curriculum program, extracurricular activity and institutional support is still scarce in the literature. This study addressed the gap.

The purpose of the paper is to present current state of the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Namibia's small and medium‐sized enterprises (SME) sector to access business information services.

The paper is based on a doctoral research project on business information needs, seeking patterns and utilisation of ICTs in the SME sector in Namibia that was carried out at the University of Pretoria from 2005 to 2007. The survey methodology using both qualitative and quantitative approaches was employed to collect data.

The findings revealed that there is a very low level of ICTs utilization among SMEs while among business support organisations it is relatively high.

The study presents baseline data that can be used by governments and business support organisations in the provision of ICTs to the SME sector to access business information services.

The study provides data on which future developments in ICTs in the SME sector could be based.