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This chapter aims to explore the means by which rural food business networks can contribute to sustainable rural development.

This chapter explores the role of rural food business networks in sustainable rural development. This is conducted initially through a literature review. This is followed by presentation of case studies of two Irish rural food business networks; a discussion of the evident rural development brought about by the actions and activities of these networks; and an exploration of some of the factors that influence the capacity of the networks to bring about rural development.

This chapter presents evidence that demonstrates the important contribution rural business networks can make to rural development. It also finds that factors such as autonomy, embeddedness and place can influence the effectiveness of a network in bringing about and sustaining rural development.

Despite several interesting findings emerging from this research, the level to which these findings can be generalised is limited. Future research of aspects of network operation such as access to infrastructure and services would assist in ascertaining the importance of place for rural business networks and their ability to bring about rural development.

Given the significant role that networks now play in the rural development strategies of place-based organisations, this chapter has important implications for how those organisations initiate and structure those networks.

This chapter can serve as an encouragement to rural entrepreneurs to engage in networking activities to reduce rural isolation, create stronger links with their consumers and to sustain their businesses.

The focus of this chapter on factors such as embeddedness, autonomy and place and their impact on rural business networks, provides a rare opportunity to the reader to appreciate the influence of these factors on networks and their capacity to bring about and sustain rural development.

Women entrepreneurs face gender‐specific barriers surrounding access to: networks of information, assistance, finance and investment funds, in addition to socio‐cultural barriers. Business incubation literature indicates the supports provided to tenant incubator companies (including: assistance from incubation managers, access to academic institutions and facilities and access to contact networks), generally increase survival rates and can accelerate growth in turnover, employment levels and export sales. Business incubators could, therefore, offer an ideal environment for women entrepreneurs to overcome many gender‐related barriers. The Irish Government has invested, via “Enterprise Ireland”, over €46 million in campus‐incubators but the gender composition of incubation tenants accessing this state funding has not been explored.

A study of all “Enterprise Ireland” funded campus‐incubators in Ireland was undertaken between November 2006 and March 2007. A survey of 100 per cent of centre managers explored their background, demands on time, the contact networks and relationships with the academic host in each centre and services provided. For cross‐referencing purposes, some tenants and prospective tenants were also surveyed in relation to tenant expectations and service delivery; the culture of incubation centres; incubation centres' policies are: tenant recruitment and selection.

This paper highlights the under‐representation of women‐owned businesses in Ireland's campus incubation centres.

These findings highlight key areas requiring attention from researchers, policy makers and incubation managers to facilitate best practice.

This paper contributes to current knowledge as there has, to date, been no comprehensive study or evaluation of gender equality, or suitability of services provided, in campus‐incubators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine travellers' experiences with public houses in Colonial Victoria, to determine how the hospitality industry in the colony was transformed from primitive hospitality provision to sophisticated, well managed hotels in a relatively short time.

The article reviews public records, newspapers of the period, eye‐witness accounts and key texts to chart the development of the hospitality industry in Colonial Victoria and to demonstrate how primitive inns became modern hotels within the space of three decades.

This paper highlights how the discovery of gold in 1851 prompted an unprecedented influx of travellers whose expectations of hospitality provision led to the transformation of existing hostelries from crude and primitive inns to modern, sophisticated hotels.

The research is confined to Colonial Victoria and therefore, not necessarily a reflection of the colonies in general or general trends in hospitality provision at that time.

Tracing the roots of hospitality provision and the traditions of hospitality management can provide a greater understanding of modern hospitality practice. As O'Gorman argues “[…] with historical literature contributing to informing industry practices today and tomorrow: awareness of the past always helps to guide the future”.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge in relation to the roots and evolution of commercial hospitality.

Iranian history, with roots in the oldest civilizations in western Asia, has provided significant heritage, both tangible and intangible, allowing the country to be considered as a major cultural tourism destination for both nationals and foreigners. The focus on Iranian history and heritage aims to confirm the country’s potential for attracting international tourists, while a negative image prevails abroad of a radical theocratic regime with a hostile internal political environment, alongside the instable geopolitical situation of the region. However, the changing political situation, now more secure and safe, allows an attempt to remove these prejudices, which may be achieved through the promotion of heritage and cultural tourism.

The aim of this paper is to examine the early history of restaurants, as invented in Paris around 1766, deciding whether a market orientation ruled out genuine hospitality.

Contemporary accounts, such as Brillat‐Savarin's section “On Restaurateurs” in The Physiology of Taste in 1825, are considered against a definition of hospitality as a household's provision of care for non‐members.

The restaurateurs' innovation was selling individualized meals within the emerging consumer market. While Brillat‐Savarin recognized the commercial cynicism of even such brilliant exponents as Antoine Beauvilliers, their enterprises were hospitable to the extent that, emerging from domestic households, they were directed principally at meal‐making rather than money‐making. Highly “McDonaldized” corporations, whose primary purpose is profit, are a largely twentieth‐century development.

Defining hospitality as the provision of care by households to outsiders is a common sense approach that, nonetheless, provides an alternative to the usual characterizations of hospitality, based on ethics, personality, performance or industry.

Owner‐operated businesses are more likely to provide hospitality, certainly as traditionally understood, than corporations.

Since eighteenth‐century France, restaurants have only become more important, and the use of the household definition contributes to their better understanding, both historically and conceptually. The definition should have wide applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore commercial hospitality enterprise and its impact on settlement development in the American West during the 1800s, focussing on the story of the Fanthorp Inn in Texas, USA.

The paper outlines the theory relating to entrepreneurial opportunity and applies it to the historical case of the Fanthorp Inn, Texas, USA. The methodological approach of the paper is based on an in‐depth study into the development of one tavern using multiple sources of evidence.

First, opportunity on the frontier was controlled to the extent that it became objective in the Kirznerian sense. Second, commercial hospitality enterprise was used as a vehicle for settlement development in frontier America.

The paper is limited by its use of one case study and the scarcity of sources of historical evidence. Further studies could engage with different examples of frontier hospitality businesses and develop the method further.

The paper provides deeper understanding of settlement development in the American West during the 1800s and supplies a methodological framework with which further organisational research can engage with historical sources of data. The findings also suggest that opportunity exists relative to its context.

The paper explores hospitality as a context for entrepreneurial activity in the American West and uses a historical case study method.

This case study aims to examine the discourses of Early Children Education (ECE) curriculum and preservice teachers’ teaching practicum in Hong Kong to explore issues of developing preservice teachers as leaders for their future career. Adopting the qualitative case study methodology, semistructured interviews and documentation were mainly used for data collection to address the following research questions: (a) To what extent are preservice teachers in ECE in Hong Kong aware of the needs of leadership development for their future career? (b) To what extent are the preservice teachers in ECE in Hong Kong able to be developed as leaders in the process of teacher education? (c) What are factors influencing the leadership development of preservice teachers in preschools in Hong Kong? Documents such as program handbooks, field experience handbooks, and student participants’ teaching portfolios were collected for analysis. Both teacher educators and preservice teachers were invited for individual interviews to reflect on their experiences of supervising or participating in teaching practicum. The findings revealed that both teacher educators and preservice teachers were aware of the importance of developing preservice teachers as leaders. The teaching practicum provided various opportunities for preservice teachers to develop leadership skills. However, personality and learning experiences provided in the curriculum will also impact on leadership development. This study also informs policymakers, curriculum developers, and teacher educators about possible curriculum changes and potentials of developing preservice teachers as leaders for their future career.

Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.

The emergent paradigm of hospitality studies does not have a coherent philosophical foundation. In seeking to identify a philosophy of hospitality this paper explores Derrida's contribution, along with other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, who are either writing in the field or have developed his works.

Derrida and others are often cited within the context of the emerging paradigm of hospitality studies. In order to examine and critically evaluate the possibility of the construct of a philosophy of the phenomenon of hospitality, the review of the philosophical concepts is set within three perspectives: individual moral philosophy; hospitality and the nation states, and hospitality and language.

Although examining the writings of Derrida and others provides an insight into the phenomenon of hospitality, a coherent philosophy of hospitality seems to be an enigma; possibly because hospitality is not a matter of objective knowledge.

In order to inform the emergent paradigm of hospitality studies there needs to be a continuing multi‐disciplinary study of hospitality; further inter and intra disciplinary research and investigation is required.

The paper illustrates that critical analysis is more important than the unquestioning acceptance of the views of philosophical theorists.