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The growing participation of ethnic minorities in self‐employment has been a conspicuous feature of the small business scene in many European countries. Reports on a comparative examination of entrepreneurship among ten Maghrebian businesses in Lyon, France and ten mainly Pakistani businesses in Birmingham, England. Considers the motivating factors for entrepreneurship, the financing of the firms and their markets. The division of labour by gender in each firm was also considered as well as the wider institutional and political contexts in which they operate in the two countries. Of overriding significance are the similarities between the firms in terms of motivation, markets and the importance of family labour, despite differences between national policies towards “ethnic minorities”.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

At issue in the debate over home employment is whether paid work performed in the home exploits workers or enables them to decide when and where to do their work. Converting the terms of the debate into a set of variables, I compare blue‐collar workers in manufacturing industries by work location. Although observed differences are open to varying interpretations, I conclude that as a group the home workers in this sample may be choosing to work at home. However, my analyses also demonstrate the diversity of home working arrangements, and that worker's ‘choices’ are socially shaped such that home employment has different meanings and consequences for different groups of workers. I further argue that the exploitative potential in home work cannot be dismissed because the findings are controversial, and the sample most likely underrepresents home workers, especially those most vulnerable to exploitation. Evidently, more research is necessary on the diversity of home working arrangements and their implications.

The international division of employment in the clothing and textile industry has been changing in the last 20 years. Such employment has declined in developed market economies but increased in developing countries and centrally planned economies. It is a widely held view that this is a result of the internationalisation of the Babbage principle. This theory and other forces that may be operating are discussed and illustrated with a case study of the UK textile multinational, Tootal. The case of Tootal suggests a need for a more multidimensional analysis than is produced by relying on the Babbage principle. The company's contribution to the new international division of labour has been to shift its emphasis much more towards its circuits of money capital and commodity capital and to internationalise these circuits. Tootal is a better example of the international centralisation of capital through financial and marketing lines than of the international fragmentation of products.

Much research claims that immigrant women's entrepreneurship in Western capitalist societies is embedded in the structural and cultural attributes of receiving societies. Other studies maintain that the structural and cultural traits of immigrant groups explain women's entrance into this type of business activity. Together, this body of research underestimates those individual attributes embedded in human agency, in the personalities of immigrant women, that encourage them to engage in this type of business enterprise.