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This article aims to explore informal entrepreneurial activities in ethno-cultural clusters in the Russian South. It evaluates the agglomeration economy efforts of ethno-cultural communities and the formation of a new operations of the informal sector. The transition of the ethnic project “Obukhovsky Choir” from an informal to a formal enterprise is considered as unfinished. The emphasis is pointed at the barriers affecting the process and extra-economic factors influencing entrepreneurship activities in ethno-cultural clusters in Russia.

For investigation of the informal entrepreneurship in the Southern Russian agglomeration, in-depth interviews method has been used. The paper researched concept of entrepreneurship and cultural entrepreneurship through the interviews, trying to distinguish the core factors influencing activities of Obukhovsky Choir. These questions concern motivation to enter entrepreneurship activity, regional and local policies affecting the overall situation, core values (ideology) of these types of activity, the role of institutional and other contexts, spatial distribution and social capital influence.

The case of the Rostov agglomeration demonstrates the delayed development of ethno-cultural clusters and attempts to closure activities of communities into local political space. Rostov agglomeration has not stepped through the threshold and involved ethno-cultural communities in the formation of the “common good” conception. While Rostov agglomeration is still attractive for labour migration and migrants' entrepreneurial initiatives, local government does not support such intervention into the stable regional market. These steps delay the development of ethno-cultural clusters and contradict communication between ethnic communities, autochthonic population and local administration.

The case chosen for analysis is Cossack music entrepreneurial space as a salient sample of ethno-cultural cluster with powerful economic potential. It could be used for further consideration of ethno-cultural cluster as a source for socio-economic modernization of Russian multicultural agglomeration where established ethnic communities' communicative style strategically provides support or opposition to the local administration initiatives.

This study investigates the origins and elaboration of the managerial “unitary” frame of reference associated with Alan Fox, focusing on unionised firms: the industrial relations context, intellectual roots, elaboration, adaptation by other writers, and international applicability.

Tracing the above requirements through contemporaneous sources.

Fox’s designation of the unitary frame needs to be understood in its 1960s’ context, particularly the promotion of “productivity bargaining”, and its furthering through management training and education. Fox’s specific contribution is identified. Subsequent UK writers have underplayed the importance of the legal dimension of managerial authority, especially relevant in the US context, while other extra-economic factors bolster the managerial unitary frame in authoritarian societies such as China.

The use of Fox's neglected 1960s’ writings; tracking how Fox developed the unitary frame concept and how it was funnelled into the narrow parameters of non-unionism by subsequent writers; identifying its applicability beyond the UK (with the USA as a historical example and China as a contemporary one).

The aim of the paper is to analyze quantitatively and qualitatively requirements of Russian micro‐ and small‐firms in financial sources, along with opportunities and restrictions in the mobilization of investment at the different stages of a firm's life cycle.

In this paper the determinants of the propensity to invest and the supply of funding are investigated by using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data set for Russia in the time period from 2006 to 2011.

The paper provides the analysis of Russian early entrepreneurs' and established business owners' decisions about the preferred structure of financial sources, comprising both statistical and logistic regression approaches for this investigation. The findings indicate that in Russia the structure of financial sources of start‐up entrepreneurs is predominated by “love capital” (mainly private and family savings), meanwhile, the percentage of business angels' financing is low in comparison with innovation‐driven countries. Moreover, there are merely extra‐economic factors, which influence informal investors' decision making on funding: personal relations with a borrower, an optimistic view on macroeconomic perspective and high status of an entrepreneur.

The findings in this paper suggest that this research can help the officials to formulate a program of SMEs' support at different stages of the financial chain in Russia.

In this paper the early and middle stages of a firm's life cycle are examined and some practical advice on a company's development and expansion are given.

The paper argues in favor of reestablishing sociological or social economics as a legitimate discipline of economic science. Conspires toward undertaking analyses of the social co‐determination of economic behaviors, variables and systems. Suggests the need for incorporation of sociological/social economics in the existing semi‐official (JEL) taxonomy of economic fields and subjects. The argument for sociological economics can be made on two grounds: ontological or empirical‐historical and epistemological or theoretical‐methodological ones. The article bases the argument for sociological economics on the former, i.e., the empirical‐historical social co‐determination of the economy. The relations of sociological economics to sociology of economics are specified and the implications of sociological/social economics for modern economic science are also discussed.

Much has been written about the low-wage rates in the pre-industrialized Asian economies. True, in several of those economies in Asia, supply of labor, unskilled as well as skilled, was relatively abundant. Most of these economies enjoy large population bases. The migration of labor from the agricultural sector within a given economy, when the economy's industrial population base was not large enough, helped augment the process of industrialization. However, a more intensive analysis of investment theory teaches us that the cost of labor, wages, and borrowing funds for investment, be it from financial institutions or from individual sources, the rate of interest, are known cost factors to the investors. The principal motivating factor is the expected profit, which remains unknown to the investors, and becomes the subject of speculation. The expected profit factor thus remains to be defined.

One world at one step will be too big a step. For some one in Luxembourg, it will be relatively more convenient to locate Latvia on the map of Europe, but to search for Laos in Asia will be too much of a task. A man or a woman in Nepal can easily guess that Mongolia is somewhere in the continent of Asia, but he or she will have great difficulty in figuring out where Martinique is in South America. A citizen of Chad will have less problem in locating Burkina Faso on the map of Africa, but will struggle hard to find Brunei Darussalam in Asia. The message is simple and straightforward. The map of a continent is easily accessible, but the map of the world is much too large and relatively unfamiliar. Hence, the European Union (EU) covering the continent of Europe and its progress over the past half century toward successfully developing a framework of continental regionalization has become a learning model.

The collective² economic process is always a coherent phenomenon whose lines can be comprehended by the interlocking of its distinguishable elements. Not always, however, does the social whole – be it a modern nation or a “culturally poor” horde – run directly according to a comprehensive, conscious plan, carried out, for the whole, by the whole: Where this is the case – in a completely pure form, it would be in a socialist community – distinguishable tasks, facilities, etc. exist, even if the expression of economic life has not achieved any particular form.³ If, on the contrary, the social whole is leaving the responsibility for economic activity to subgroups or individuals, then the collective production process is separated into units that, seen from the outside, appear independent, autonomous, in principle left to themselves, and forthwith only oriented towards their own concern for survival – enterprises.

This article traces the history of a continuous tradition of Marxian stage theory from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present day. The resolution of the first crisis of Marxism was found in the work of Hilferding on finance capital, Bukharin on the world economy and Lenin on imperialism as a new stage of capitalism. Hilferding's, Bukarin's and Lenin's analysis was carried into the post–World War II era through the work of Sweezy and Mandel. A second wave of Marxian stage theorizing emerged with the end of the post–World War II expansion. Mandel's long wave theory (LWT), the Social Structure of Accumulation Framework (SSAF), and the Regulation Approach (RA) analyzed the stagflationary crises as the end of a long wave of growth. This long wave was underpinned by the emergence of a postwar stage of capitalism, which was analogous to the reorganization brought about by monopoly capital at the turn of the century. These new schools were reluctant to predict the non-resolution of the current crisis, thus opening up the possibility of further stages of capitalism in the future. This elevated Lenin's theory of the highest stage to a general theory of capitalist stages. The last decade has seen a substantial convergence in the three perspectives. In general, this convergence has reaffirmed the importance of Hilferding's, Bukarin's and Lenin's (HBL's) initial contributions to the stage theoretic tradition. The article concludes with some thoughts on the necessity of stage theory for understanding of the current period of globalization.

The key purpose of the paper is to consider the challenges facing local authorities in supporting sustainable rural settlements in their efforts to be enterprising and sustainable in confronted with increasingly severe downward pressure on local authority finances due to the recession; the long-term trend of increased adult social care costs linked to a challenging demographic profile across rural England; and increasing expectations around service delivery arising from more discerning “e-enabled” users of public services.

This paper offers a structured reflection on the responses of a qualitative study of village sustainability, based on case studies of the inhabitants of three villages in Lincolnshire, England. The paper draws on responses by 70 voices to a series of workshops held in village halls and pubs.

Significant work needs to be done at the local level, to support the transition from long-standing, organic practice within communities to the creation of an infrastructure which can support the delivery of more services by communities themselves.

Workshop-based approaches to gathering responses can allow for biased responses, and this study is limited to the views of self-selecting actors in three villages.

The paper examines the barriers and opportunities facing local communities and introduces the concept of community to community learning.