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The purpose of this paper is to explore enterprise diversification amongst wetland farmers in Zambia as a way of reducing poverty and improving sustainability. This paper identifies ways in which such entrepreneurial activities can be supported and applied more widely.

A qualitative study of Zambian farmers, based on a series of workshops and interviews held in Zambia with farmers and farm business advisers.

Despite adopting new technologies most farmers are restricted to the local market where their increased production holds down prices. However, a very small number of farmers are able to progress to production and marketing for markets in major urban centres hundreds of kilometres away, and considerably more are able to use the capital accumulated from wetland farming to diversify their household enterprises to reduce poverty and improve the sustainability and resilience of their livelihoods.

No work has previously been undertaken in diversification strategies of small-scale farmers in Zambia.

Using a sample of some 300 small independent businesses, drawn from Central London, the paper examines how entrepreneurial behaviour affects business performance. It is argued that small businesses motivated by a desire to grow in terms of sales and/or employees and to survive in a dynamic and competitive environment need to be innovative. However, to what extent they will innovate successfully depends on their capacity to plan ahead, their capacity to innovate and their willingness to take risk. It is shown that entrepreneurial businesses are characterised by these competencies that allow them to innovate and thus develop and grow successfully. Not surprisingly, not all small businesses are equipped with these three competencies owing to their diverse array of strengths and weaknesses arising from the diversity in the managerial motives and aspirations of entrepreneurship. These results highlight the importance of the capacity to innovate and the capacity to plan ahead as strong predictors of small businesses’ performance.

The UK Government started Employment Training (ET), a programme for unemployed people, in September 1988. It quickly became established as a major programme; in February 1992 there were 146,000 ET trainees in Britain. Thousands of employers are involved in ET by offering placement opportunities to trainees. Looks at the way British employers participate in ET and considers some ideas for improving the effectiveness of and pay‐off for carrying out training under the programme. Refers to a special survey of 301 London employers in the spring of 1992. This was carried out for the Central London Training and Enterprise Council (CENTEC). Provides evidence that employers participate in ET because of the possibility of recruiting ET trainees to the permanent workforce.

To study the applicability of capacity building as a technique for developing social enterprises.

Two emerging social enterprises, developed within the WestFocus Partnership, a consortium of seven higher education institutions, were studied in a series of capacity building sessions conducted by Brunel University Business School, UK. Reports the gathering of data for the project using participant observation, questionnaire surveys and focus groups, together with a series of capacity building sessions delivered by specialists, addressing the areas of leadership and human resources, marketing, environmental scanning, stakeholder analysis and business strategy where Session 1 addressed “Management and leadership styles”, Session 2 addressed “Strategic marketing and environmental analysis”, and Session 3 addressed “Strategy (in the widest sense)”.

The results indicated that, although capacity building could not resolve a perceived conflict between social ends and profit‐driven motives, it does play an important role in the development of successful social enterprises, even if the role is limited.

Propose that a capabilities approach provides a useful platform for highlighting important links between corporate social responsibility and corporate governance within social enterprises.

In the 1970s there was a growing realisation of a need to prepare young people for work. It was hoped by many that public policy initiatives in vocational preparation would enable Britain to catch up with the more systematic youth training practices of its European neighbours. Ironically, the development of vocational preparation has really been fostered by the employment crisis of the 1980s. As unemployment began to climb in the late 1970s and surged in the early 1980s, the scale of training measures, paid out of public funds, likewise expanded. The YTS programme is a product of these trends.

INTRODUCTION Companies operating in international markets have been told that innovation lies at the heart of success and that they should establish early warning systems to help them see the signals of change (Porter, 1990). At the global level, technological developments and competitive conditions have been seen as ‘increasing pressure on firms to co‐operate along and between value‐added chains’ (Dunning, 1993). However, does this apply only to multinational enterprises competing in world markets? In the early 1990s many small firms in London were also under pressure; they were often in industries characterized by significant technical changes, to which managers had responded by introducing technical developments into their own firms. They had often been severely constrained in their attempts to achieve their business objectives by difficult competitive conditions, notably the poor growth of market demand and the increasing intensity of competition. Of course, businesses everywhere have always faced changes in their competitive environments and it is the responsibility of management to make appropriate responses to these changes. However, firms vary in their ability to identify and understand the competitive environment and in their ability to mobilize and manage the resources needed for a successful response (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1993).

Joint consultation has had a checkered history during the last 50 years. Both in the Second World War and in the late 1940s, consultative committees were widespread in manufacturing companies. Many observers of the industrial relations scene at that time based their great optimism for post war industrial relations in Britain on the efficacy of joint consultation. Subsequently, joint consultation came to be regarded as a failure and as in a state of decline due to the growth of workplace bargaining. In the course of the last three or four years, the results of several surveys have been published which cast light on current arrangements and have led to claims of a renaissance in joint consultation.

Following on from the first part of the article the authors present the results of a survey which shows the continuing popularity of joint consultation during the recession.

Youth unemployment is one of the most serious problems of the early 1980s. In 1981 one in six youngsters under 18 years old were looking for jobs. As the problem has worsened the emphasis of public programmes has shifted from attempts to reduce the level of unemployment to the provision of training alternatives to employment, such as the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) and the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). At present, the Government is committed to employer‐based, on‐the‐job training for school leavers.

The emergence of the global economy between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, with its concomitant intensification of competitive pressures, has been accompanied by a search for appropriate objectives, policies and mechanisms for developing private enterprise in the UK. The current UK Government has attempted to accommodate the varied local needs of the private business sector, and the need for support by public authority, by creating the Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) network. This offers a devolved management structure for the delivery of enterprise support and training services and a means of creating public‐private partnerships in the stimulation of local economic growth. An overall view is given of this initiative, based on an appreciation of the critical interactions between central government, the TECs, private sector organizations and representative forums for local business. Drawing on current theories of governance to suit the new conditions of the 1990s, a contribution is made to discussions of the evolution of public policy and its effect on the development of a healthy and vigorous private enterprise sector.