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This paper discusses how a small business experiences professional management by examining the relationship between organisational networking and cultural organising in the workplace. A network perspective is presented in order to evaluate the ways in which workplace relations are enacted to cultural organising. A social constructionist perspective of organisational networking is proposed which emphasises how individuals attribute value and meaning to the interactions they have with co‐workers in the workplace. A work place ethnography is presented which discusses the recruitment of a “professional” manager and his attempts to introduce new working practices into the family business. The analysis highlights how organisational members shape cultural organising by invoking emotional categories to produce mutuality and a sense of belonging in the workplace. In continually re‐enacting workplace relationships in this way, it is found that individuals attempt to trade away variance, divergent views and new organising practices concerned with change. The paper concludes with a final analysis of the ethnography and its implication for small business research and training.

Examines how entrepreneurs learn from the experience of conducting international business and how they “draw upon” that knowledge when “thinking globally” and enacting international strategies. The findings draw attention to the values, visions and key learning issues that are continually being reproduced as entrepreneurs respond to international opportunities, find partners and build cross‐border networks. International entrepreneuring, it is argued, is about learning from different cross border exchanges and converting that experience into organisational practices that build strategic capability in international markets. Such a perspective also has important implications for the education and training of small business entrepreneurs and managers as they think about and enact their international strategies.

This paper aims to review the educational and support infrastructure for UK family firms in order to further raise the profile/challenges and support needs of family firms in the UK.

Secondary data sources relating to family businesses are reviewed in this article with a view to identifying the current infrastructure of support for family firms. These reports are also supplemented with interview material from respondents in family business associations.

This review indicates that awareness of family business public policy issues has increased in recent years in the UK. There is also an emergent support infrastructure dedicated to the needs of family businesses. There is also a growing body of research helping to overcome the (family business) dualist theoretical legacy that has dominated the field. Greater definitional clarity is also helping to inter‐relate the special needs of family firms to issues of resource, ownership, management, size and life cycle and the propagation of new theories and perspectives as seen above are contributing to better understanding about the special needs. There is still some way to go, however, before family businesses are fully acknowledged for their significant role to the national economy.

This paper reconsiders some of the original insights generated from occupational sociology which fully recognises the intertwining (and absorptive) relationships between family and work, and recognises the important and absorptive role that families in business contribute to the economy and society.

This paper signals that the entrepreneurs of today create the family businesses of tomorrow. This means progressing from a single‐heroic view of entrepreneurship and taking forward of a family embedded conceptualisation of entrepreneurship into educational programmes.

Although there has been some attention to how notions of entrepreneurship and family intersect in the life of family businesses, analysis of these issues in relation to inter‐generational and organisational emergence in small family firms is underdeveloped. In order to redress this imbalance, it is important to undertake analysis of entrepreneurial issues alongside those of family, ownership, management and inter‐generational emergence. A fourth entrepreneurial axis is added to Gersick's developmental life cycle framework to facilitate this. This is then applied to aid interpretive analysis of two second generation owner‐managers and sons‐in‐law of the original founders of a small manufacturing company in the UK. Working with his younger brother‐in‐law, the two family members are responsible for taking a small steeplejack company into its third generation and a new electrical engineering market. As the younger brother‐in‐law takes on an entrepreneurial role within the company and endeavours to develop new opportunities, the chairman gives an account of the struggles involved in achieving a balance between ownership, management and family tensions. The notion of “interpreneurship” whereby family members are interacting and creating new possibilities for themselves, their lives, their organizations whilst drawing upon past events, happenings, experiences and conversations that have gone before, is also considered.

The paper empirically investigates how family firms appropriate acquired resources to become more innovative in the context of merger waves. It draws on resource-based view and the theory of first mover (dis)advantages to examine the implications of the timing of acquisitions on innovation in family firms.

The paper uses a panel data set of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 manufacturing firms followed over a period of 31 years.

The study finds empirical support for the predictions that family firms are more able to utilize acquired resources better than nonfamily firms. Furthermore, targets acquired during the upswing of a merger wave are more valuable to family firms and associated with more innovation than for nonfamily firms.

The paper establishes that resources acquired during the upswing of a merger wave are more valuable, provide better resource synergies and impact innovation positively in family firms than nonfamily firms. Second, the paper makes an empirical contribution that family firms absorb external resources markedly differently and more efficiently than nonfamily firms. Third, the paper enhances a better understanding of the influence of family ownership on the relationship between acquisitions and innovation outputs.

Studies uniformly portray the assistant principal (AP) position as challenging given a number of systemic issues that negatively impact job satisfaction and performance. Mentoring has been proposed as a way to redress these problems. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate an alternative to traditional mentoring and make recommendations for how to utilize this approach in supporting APs and principal interns.

The authors employ a retrospective and conversational approach, sharing incidents and interactions from their professional experience and making connections to existing research literature. The authors explain the relevance of three concepts developed in relational cultural theory (RCT) including: interdependent self-in-relation, growth-fostering interactions, and an exploration of systemic power.

The narrative exposes the ambiguity of school leadership and its toll, as well as how relational mentoring facilitates integration and making sense of challenging experiences for improved coping. Barriers in communication are described and the ways relational mentoring addresses these weaknesses by building trust, recognizing the expertise of mentor and protégé, and encouraging protégé empowerment and judgment.

Potential research limitations such as inaccuracies in recall, reliance on a single method, and hindsight bias are recognized and addressed to reduce their threat.

RCT may provide ways to develop and structure more effective mentoring programs and educate both aspiring leaders and their mentors in their work together to provide for leadership development.

Improved mentoring practices have the potential to help APs socialize into the role more quickly and become more effective school leaders.

The authors describe the use of RCT in a new context. The paper provides insights and guidance for APs, principals, principal interns, and leadership preparation faculty to offer a pathway on which to prepare the next generation of school leaders equipped with the desired competences and experiences to transform schools.