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The purpose of this study is to generate insight into the effects of entrepreneurship education in China by conducting a preliminary scoping study of the enterprising tendency of university students studying business.

This study used a self-administered questionnaire based on the General Measure of Enterprising Tendency v2 (GET2) test to measure the enterprising tendency of a group of Chinese university students. Decision trees, using the Chi-square automatic interaction detector (CHAID) approach, and multiple regression analyses were used to investigate the enterprising tendency of respondents.

The findings from this study indicate that the students have an overall medium level of enterprising tendency and strengths in some enterprising characteristics. The findings reveal that gender, family business, hometown and entrepreneurship education are significantly related to enterprising tendency but that age, household income, parents’ education and occupation are not.

Although the study is based on a relatively small sample taken from just one university in Beijing, the findings suggest that the enterprising tendency of students can be encouraged by entrepreneurship education. Combined with evidence that entrepreneurship education is at a relatively early stage of development in China, this finding suggests considerable scope to increase student’s enterprising tendency by extending, creating a more favourable environment for and improving the methods used to deliver entrepreneurship education. Enterprising tendency can be argued to naturally result in entrepreneurial intention; however, this extension is beyond the scope of this study, which is restricted to the analysis of enterprising tendency.

This study makes an original contribution to knowledge as it is one of the first studies to explore enterprising tendency among university students in China. It has value for government, policymakers and university program designers in that it provides direction for entrepreneurship education in China.

Discusses the impact of high wages and investment strategies in physical and human capital on eastern Germany post unification. Introduces the concept of learning‐by‐doing as an externality of high quality investment. Provides some eclectic arguments in support of learning‐by‐doing effects which may be used to partly replace costly, publicly financed vocational training programmes.

This paper summarises the institutional arrangements and prerequisites for a new social partnership, necessary for the successful completion of labour market reform in western Germany. It does this by drawing on key policies and proposals highlighted and explored in the papers of this special issue. The paper elaborates further on these issues by outlining the importance of the labour market and its institutions in the German social market economy before turning to the case for reform. The paper addresses both micro and macroeconomic themes, including international experiences of labour market reform, employment and social policies, insider‐outsider and institutionally determined unemployment, the German system of collective bargaining and the importance of tripartite corporatist agreements. The paper concludes that reform in the German labour market should proceed through rather than against the existing institutions of social partnership, possibly with a new role for government in strengthening incentives for both unions and employers to act in a socially responsible way.

Both the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) argue that barriers to market access in the UK brewing industry disadvantage small brewers. They have been actively campaigning for a number of years for a tax concession (progressive beer duty or PBD) to alleviate the situation of small brewers. This paper argues that the disadvantages faced by small brewers are due to a complex monopsony in the beer industry, where the power of the distribution segment of the value chain is paramount. It outlines a model of the structure of the UK beer industry, and undertakes two types of empirical analysis to test the potential impact of PBD on the small brewery sector. The paper finds that control over distribution is the key to profitability and survival in the beer industry, and that small brewers with such control are most likely to benefit from PBD. The findings, however, also have relevance to the position of any small business facing a powerful distribution segment. Finally, for the issue of policy development, the paper indicates that the potential outcomes of a policy change may not be entirely those intended.

Wages in Eastern Germany have risen in excess of productivity growth. The usual argument is that this has been one of the main reasons for the unprecedented level of mass unemployment which has emerged in this decade. This paper argues, however, that the growth of wages, in combination with investment subsidies, has resulted in a period of “creative destruction” which has enabled the economy to embark on a high‐technology convergence path and to benefit from dynamic forces which the usual static analysis is forced to overlook. Such a unique approach to the restructuring necessary in transition was facilitated by the unification of the former GDR with developed social market economy with the ability to shoulder many of the associated costs, at least for a time. The need now is for the recognition of profit as a motivator of indigenous investment in Eastern Germany and this calls for a prolonged period of wage restraint, during which time progress towards lower levels of unemployment can be achieved.

Characteristic successes of Germany’s social market economy include both stability and productivity growth, yet mass unemployment indicates the need for reform. The conventional reform agenda emphasises Germany’s restrictive labour market. However, many targets for reform are elements of an institutional system in the labour market that promotes Germany’s culture of consensus. A model is outlined that synthesises insights from X‐efficiency and business strategy theory to highlight the positive effects of consensus on business performance. The model together with accompanying empirical data suggests that Germany’s consensus culture not only gives rise to negative outcomes associated with labour market inflexibility – in particular, sluggish employment growth – but also helps firms to generate innovation, productivity growth and sustainable competitive advantage. This implies the need for a renewed “social contract”, in which consensus not only generates productivity growth but also sustains a corporatist bias towards employment. Finally, a corporatist reform process consistent with Germany’s cultural and institutional environment is likely to be more effective than top‐down liberalisation in accelerating job creation while maintaining cultural sources of global competitiveness.

This paper surveys the population of independent breweries in the UK to ascertain their Web site usage and accessibility via the Internet. It finds independent breweries have tended to lag similarly sized business in other sectors in the provision or abandonment of company Web sites. Most of their Web sites have intuitively easy URLs and are readily accessible via brewery directories, but are less accessible via popular search engines. Most are corporate Web sites rather than marketing or selling tools. The paper concludes with a discussion of business and policy implications for small businesses and the Internet.

This paper sets out to examine the link between technological change and continuing training at a workplace level.

The paper hypothesises that workplaces subject to technological change have an increased demand for skills, which induces an increased provision of training. UK data from two waves (1998 and 2004) of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) are used to investigate this hypothesis.

Workplaces undertaking technological change are more likely to train their workers and also to provide more days of training per worker. Team working is also associated with a greater number of days spent on training, as are the setting of training targets and the keeping of training records. Training intensity decreases with an increasing share of part‐time and manual employees. Conversely, where workplaces face difficulties in filling skilled vacancies, they provide more days of training.

The WERS training questions refer only to core experienced employees which, since this group may vary from one workplace to another, may not give a completely consistent measure of either absolute or relative training provision. Because the WERS panel (1998 and 2004) excludes both the dependent variable (training intensity) and the variable of interest (technical change), the analysis is restricted to cross‐section estimation. Causal implications of this analysis should be regarded as correspondingly tentative.

The findings suggest that one way to induce firms to provide more training is by enhanced incentives for firms to undertake more rapid technological change. In addition, if the current global economic downturn persists, evidence that operating in a declining market is associated with the provision of fewer training days may be of particular concern to training professionals and policy makers.

The paper provides empirical evidence concerning the interaction between technological change and training.

A number of problems have been highlighted in relation to the roles of marketing and engineering and reported in the Journal of Marketing Management in 1993 (Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 141‐53). This earlier article merely pointed out the problems of this uneasy relationship and hinted at solutions. Much has been researched and reported since then. Attempts to integrate this material over a number of areas including an international dimension, strategic and tactical implications, service and quality improvement issues and product mix decisions. Then goes on to propose solutions based on the researched evidence that is currently forthcoming.

Despite recognition of the importance of emotions and emotion regulation in service encounters, emotion regulation has been generally studied from an employee perspective. This study investigated customer emotion regulation behaviours (CEREBs) in face-to-face service encounters; arguing for a more nuanced approach through an emotion regulation matrix representing the playing up and downplaying of positive or negative emotions. Motivational factors and service-related situational conditions that influence the likelihood of emotion regulation were also examined.

Four focus groups and the critical incident technique method were used to obtain data from people who had interacted with service employees within the previous six months.

There was support for emotion regulation in the four facets of the emotion regulation matrix. Five CEREB dimensions, including verbal behaviours and facial expressions, were evident. Motivational factors and situational conditions that impacted on customer emotion regulation in service encounters were also identified.

The findings were based on two qualitative methods. A quantitative approach should be used to further validate the suggested framework.

Most research on emotion regulation has focused on employees. We examined the phenomenon from a customer viewpoint and in a service encounter context. As customers are not bound by employment rules and conventions, a wider range of emotion regulation behaviours were found. The study used the four-faceted emotion regulation matrix to investigate this, developing a conceptual framework that provides a foundation for future research.