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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, using the case of Finnish small business advisors (SBAs), it aims to clarify a controversy in entrepreneurship policy about using public funds to foster solo and micro entrepreneurship. The study reveals the SBAs’ belief systems to facilitate policy-relevant conclusions about their advisory competence, counseling tendencies and probable impact on nascent entrepreneurs and macro consequences like firm displacement. Second, methodologically, the study’s cognitive perspective and method enable researchers to assess the approach and its potential.

The SBAs’ (n=15) belief systems were elicited by interview-based causal mapping. They are summarized using aggregated causal maps and analyzed to understand the SBAs’ dominant mindset and to draw conditional inferences about their professional competence and impacts.

The SBAs have convergent belief systems about the causes and consequences of micro entrepreneurship. They are generally competent to detect and foster viable solo and small micro firms. From a policy viewpoint, however, they ignore indirect effects like firm replication and appear risk aversive, less inclined to promote their clients’ growth intentions and plans.

For entrepreneurship policy makers, the study clarifies a controversial issue. It finds clear grounds for public funding of SBA type services, but this may depend on policy goals and local conditions. For the SBAs, the study suggests proactive, income-generating services for improved financing and legitimacy. For entrepreneurship researchers, it demonstrates the potential and limits of the cognitive approach and causal mapping.

This study aims to better understand the level of China's regional technological entrepreneurship (TE) and the impact of entrepreneurship policy on TE through an integrated research framework.

The paper uses factor analysis and regression analysis to analyse regional TE and entrepreneurship policy with the data of 30 provinces in China in 2003 and 2004.

The research finds that there are regional variations in the level of technological entrepreneurship in China and that regional entrepreneurship policy has considerable impact on technological entrepreneurship activity. Furthermore, a holistic rather than a fragmented policy is needed to improve the level of regional technological entrepreneurship activity.

The research findings are valuable for policy makers who are responsible for promoting technological entrepreneurship activity and for entrepreneurs who need to be aware of opportunities as a result of entrepreneurship policy.

A new integrated framework is developed for empirical analysis of technological entrepreneurship in China.

Reports and experiences suggest that several developing African economies are faced with entrepreneurial-impeding forces such as lengthy bureaucratic processes and poor regulatory space. The study examines a general trend in “doing business performance” among selected African countries and uses the case of Ghana to explore how particular indicators or forces affect the development and deployment of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policies.

Comparative analysis of six African economies on their ease of doing business score. This is followed by a critical review of the literature to develop a six-point explanatory framework to explore the relative position of the six countries on the ease of doing business scores. Using Ghana as a critical case study, the authors deploy an in-depth case study analysis via in-depth interviews of relevant stakeholders to validate the information from secondary sources.

The study observes that the nature of leadership, socio-cultural imperatives, economic structure and policy and the role of domestic institutional players and international players have implications for the extent to which the state creates an enabling environment for SMEs and entrepreneurial activities. The role of supportive cultural software that will help drive SME and entrepreneurial growth has been established. The study contends that different aspects of national culture do have implications for the tendency for people to be business-minded or to have the ability to take risks. The demand and supply sides are crucial in promoting SME growth.

The study develops a framework that helps explore elements to help explain ease of doing business scores and the viability of SMEs in Africa. These elements were validated through qualitative interviews as well.

This chapter provides an overview of entrepreneurship in Montenegro, through various aspects of the analysis. The chapter begins with an analysis of the role and importance of the development of entrepreneurship in Montenegro, followed by an analysis of the institutional and strategic framework for supporting the development of entrepreneurship. In this sense, a significant segment of the chapter is the analysis of various strategic documents, with a special focus placed on the role of the entrepreneurship development strategy, as well as the institutions responsible for the creation and implementation of entrepreneurship policies in Montenegro. The study also includes state measures, that is, support programs for the development of entrepreneurship, and thus the overall Montenegrin economy, which belongs to the group of less developed countries. In addition, the chapter indicates the importance of entrepreneurial learning in the development of entrepreneurial activity. The analysis shows that entrepreneurship is a concept that is increasingly used in Montenegrin economic theory, but also that it is increasingly present in everyday life, which is confirmed by numerous examples from practice. Therefore, through a multi-context analysis, the study depicts the environment for entrepreneurship development in Montenegro, including an overview of the state support, the influence of various factors, as well as certain forms of entrepreneurship that are current, and those that may be promising. The chapter ends with recommendations and guidelines for the further development of entrepreneurship in this country. With this regard, the key elements for increasing entrepreneurial activity are recognized in multiple support for a greater number of people to get involved in business, as well as in the improvement of a favorable business environment through the strengthening of institutional and infrastructural support.

In the international arena, there is an ongoing debate over the lack of newly started businesses in general and over how to obtain sustainable growth in these businesses in particular. Policy-makers in Europe have sought to ease this problem of paucity of new firm's start-ups, which is mainly caused by a lack of financial resources for new innovative ideas as problematic (European Commission (2007–2013); Groen, Jenniskens, & van der Sijde, 2005). Consequently, during the latest decade, there has been an increase in the number of public sector financial schemes designed to promote entrepreneurship in very early-stage businesses (COM, 2005, 2006). These efforts have, however, escaped criticism. Those who promote public financing believe that with the right tools and governance this type of support is an important complement to the private sector financial market (Oakey, 2003). However, bankers and venture capitalists often state that the main issue is not the lack of available capital but the inability of entrepreneurs to convince investors of the merits of their business ideas (Mason & Harrison, 2002). There have also been arguments against the socioeconomic efficiency (Storey, 1994).

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate researchers’ interest by acquainting them with some aspects of the entrepreneurship literature they may not have known.

The paper is a non‐meta‐analytic literature review of several literatures in entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneurship literature is vast and can be found in every discipline where humans and their behaviour are the object of analysis.

Because the entrepreneurship literature is so large and widespread, the paper reviews only a small, deliberately chosen sample of the literature.

To the authors’ knowledge, no one has previously written a unified review of the market entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, and public choice.

The paper focuses upon the issue of the transfer of ideas between countries and cultures in the field of small and medium enterprise (SME) development. It argues that there has been a neglect of such work in academe. Yet there has been a growing import into the UK of ideas from abroad (mainly from the US). There has also been an extensive export particularly to Transition economies. The results in both respects have been less than satisfactory. There is also greater opportunity for ideas transfer via the new communication technologies. The European Commission is particularly active in the field of transfer. There is therefore a strong case for greater academic interest. The paper explores the concept of transfer by posing four questions: (1) What does the notion of transfer mean? (2) Where are the academic challenges in such processes? (3) Where might there be opportunities for transfer in the future of relevance to UK SME development? (4)How and where might we begin to address the issue? In addressing question one, six key areas are identified: ideology transfer; concept/paradigm transfer; benchmarking; institutional development; programme transfer; and transfer of process insights. The second question looks at the academic challenge through the lens of a number of problems, including those of ideology, culture, language, concept, context, agency, reasoning and rationality, agenda, field of production, and customer. Each of these areas is defined, and examples are given of the kinds of problems that arise and their impact. The third question is addressed by a short and speculative review of possibilities for transfer of ideas to the UK relating to the broad areas of policy, institution development and assistance to SME development. The final question is approached by a brief review of the potential for action by journal editors, academic groups and policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, through the use of a multidisciplinary lens, the policy context and the scope for improvements in university‐based public programmes focused on improving innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The authors use the street‐level bureaucracy (SLB), combined with the systems of innovation approach (SIA) and diagnostic analysis (DA) to understand the context components that impact on public programme services. The study is part of a research programme oriented to the diffusion of information systems in SMEs and which used original interview‐based programme support case studies, interviews with regional policy managers, and documentation relating to the policy system and different public programmes. Although the empirical work was UK and European Union centric the results of the research have wide applicability.

The paper establishes the importance of programme contexts for diagnosing and providing a basis for public programme improvements. It further demonstrates the robustness of the context analysis framework to provide insights into proposed policy changes. The responsibility of improving programme contexts relies on actors that operate outside programme organisations, for instance EU funding bodies, government departments in charge of SME policies, public‐private partnerships, and private evaluators. Given this complexity it is suggested that SME associations have a potentially important role in increasing participation by SMEs in the public programme for innovation and knowledge support policy. Despite possible policy changes the requirement for public programme support for innovation and hence the role of universities as programme providers is confirmed and expanded.

The results demonstrate the value of a multidisciplinary framework to analyse programme interventions at both macro and micro levels and provide a basis for programme policy and policy implementation improvements.

This research is a novel attempt to use the SLB, SIA and DA to public programme university‐based interventions in SMEs and SME policies in general. It complements extant research on open innovation and knowledge exchange by extending the concept of public programme contexts. Beneficiaries of the findings include policy makers, programme organisations, universities, SME associations, and researchers.

This chapter examines the interactions of formal and informal forms of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business support, characterised as interactions within an ‘enterprise industry’. An analysis of the interactions revealed in the existing literature for different forms of business support develops a new conceptual framework for understanding those varied forms of external influence targeted at SMEs that constitute and extend a ‘patchwork quilt’ of provision. This chapter focusses on how different forms of support and advice interact, the centrality of state influence and how such interactions can be considered part of a firm’s regulatory context. This conceptualisation allows the consideration of both business support and state regulations to move beyond conceptions of positive or negative impacts on factors such as firm growth. Instead, it establishes a conceptual lens for considering how the different forms of external influence can shape the practices and attitudes of SMEs and their owner-managers. Policy makers and organisations within the enterprise industry seeking to develop effective forms of support or regulation should not consider such activities in isolation or in simple, decontextualised positive or negative terms.

The study this chapter reports focuses on how network theory contributes to the understanding of the internationalization process of SMEs and measures the effect of network capability on performance in international trade and has three research objectives.

The first objective of the study relates to providing new insights into the international market development activities through the application of a network perspective. The chapter reviews the international business literature to ascertain the development of thought, the research gaps, and the shortcomings. This review shows that the network perspective is a useful and popular theoretical domain that researchers can use to understand international activities, particularly of small, high technology, resource-constrained firms.

The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of network capability. This chapter presents a model for the impact of network capability on international performance by building on the emerging literature on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. The model conceptualizes network capability in terms of network characteristics, network operation, and network resources. Network characteristics comprise strong and weak ties (operationalized as foreign-market entry modes), relational capability, and the level of trust between partners. Network operation focuses on network initiation, network coordination, and network learning capabilities. Network resources comprise network human-capital resources, synergy-sensitive resources (resource combinations within the network), and information sharing within the network.

The third research objective is to determine the impact of networking capability on the international performance of SMEs. The study analyzes 11 hypotheses through structural equations modeling using LISREL. The hypotheses relate to strong and weak ties, the relative strength of strong ties over weak ties, and each of the eight remaining constructs of networking capability in the study. The research conducts a cross-sectional study by using a sample of SMEs drawn from the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

The study supports the hypothesis that strong ties are more influential on international performance than weak ties. Similarly, network coordination and human-capital resources have a positive and significant association with international performance. Strong ties, weak ties, trust, network initiation, synergy-sensitive resources, relational capability, network learning, and information sharing do not have a significant association with international performance. The results of this study are strong (R2=0.63 for performance as the outcome) and provide a number of interesting insights into the relations between collaboration or networking capability and performance.

This study provides managers and policy makers with an improved understanding of the contingent effects of networks to highlight situations where networks might have limited, zero, or even negative effects on business outcomes. The study cautions against the tendency to interpret networks as universally beneficial to business development and performance outcomes.