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John Berger, in his well‐known book ‘A Fortunate Man’, drew an idealistic portrait of a country general practitioner whose high commitment to his vocation and a life of dedicated service to his patients and the community had brought self‐fulfillment and contentment of the highest order. Much of this, it was implied, was due to the traditional role of the GP in society, the implicitly rewarding nature of the helping relationship, the positive bond that grows between a family practitioner and his patients, and the status and rewards that the individual doctor could be assured of as part of his role. It would be interesting to speculate how many of the UK's GPs could recognise themselves in this portrait.

This paper presents new insights into the growth of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in vertical inter‐firm relationships. It adopts a processual and resource‐based perspective and focuses on the experiences of fresh produce businesses which have achieved high rates of growth while supplying the UK’s large multiple food retailers. The context in which these suppliers operate is shown to be a complex and dynamic supply chain, characterised by increasing structural concentration and close vertical linkages. The primary research investigates how certain SMEs have prospered in an apparently “hostile” environment. It includes a programme of matched‐depth interviews, conducted across the retailer‐supplier dyad. Content analysis of transcripts reveals six factors which appear to be strongly associated with the formation of “successful” relationships. In subsequent interactions, securing “developmental” supplier status appears to open the way to a self‐reinforcing cycle of Penrosian learning and reinvestment. This cycle contributes to growth in the supplier firm. The authors argue that, with certain crucial caveats, growth‐oriented SMEs can develop mutually beneficial relationships with much larger “customer” firms. The paper concludes by drawing out wider policy implications and indicating how this contextualised approach might be used in other contexts.

The purpose of this study is to explore food producers' motivations and challenges whilst participating in short food supply chains (SFSCs). This paper compares findings with previous literature and investigates the topic in the context of producers' motivations.

The paper includes a literature review concerning producers' motivations to engage in SFSCs. A case study was designed to investigate motivations underlying producers' engagement in SFSCs, as well as the challenges that they face. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in a farmers' market located in Mexico. Thematic analysis is used to identify the principal issues for producers'. Propositions based on findings are presented.

Findings suggest that small, large, part-time and full-time producers are willing to engage with farmers' markets for diverse primary economic and non-economic motivations. Individual and collective challenges were also identified.

This research helps to explain producers' motivations and challenges within SFSCs in an under-researched context, namely a focus on producers' and in the Global South.

With increasing market pressure and fragmentation Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) must move beyond the change philosophy of Continuous Improvement (CI) and develop a culture of innovation. To find out if SMEs could go beyond CI to achieve effective business innovation as a change management philosophy, a literature survey and a research survey on 15 SMEs was conducted to provide additional relevant information. The main research findings were: the SMEs exhibited a range of Continuous Improvement and innovation characteristics – some had adopted a culture of Continuous Improvement, while others had not; the SMEs which had adopted a culture of Continuous Improvement found that it could provide a solid foundation on which to build a culture of effective business innovation; and these SMEs were found to have embraced all the different components of innovation, as measured, more readily than those SMEs which did not have a culture of Continuous Improvement.

In recent years, we have witnessed a surge in academic interest towards migrants and their entrepreneurial endeavours. This has resulted in valuable insights about immigrant, transnational, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship. By reviewing 158 articles published in the fields of migrant entrepreneurship, transnational entrepreneurship, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship over the last decade, the author maps the migrant entrepreneurship field according to the level of analysis and suggests potential avenues for the development of the field. Blurred boundaries between different streams of literature can potentially lead to duplication of efforts and harm cumulativity of knowledge. Therefore, the author summarises the key findings at each level of analysis, identifies the gaps and most pressing research questions. The author concluded that the field would benefit from (1) more specific definitions and assessment of whether observed findings stem from immigrant-, transnational-, ethnic- or diaspora-related factors; (2) appreciating the multilevel nature of the phenomenon; and (3) clarifying the boundary conditions. This review contributes to the accumulation of knowledge in two ways. First, it synthesises the findings in the fields of transnational, immigrant, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship under the framework of migrant entrepreneurship. Second, it suggests potential research directions across three levels of analysis and in-between those levels.

Small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are coming under increasing market pressures due to larger more agile companies encroaching on their markets and increasing integration in the supply chain. Thus SMEs need to increase their innovativeness to improve and survive. The aim of this paper is to see how quality practices can be used to instill innovation within SMEs. The research methodology involved a statistical analysis of over 60 SMEs to determine their approach to quality and innovation. This approach was followed up with ten in‐depth case studies to determine deep rich data. The case study data, presented in this paper, show that quality is an essential foundation for progressing to large scale innovation and also continues to act as a catalyst for innovation.

We give more space than usual to the Conference of the Library Association, but, even so, our correspondent has attempted impressions rather than factual accounts of the papers read. Good as those papers were, the main effect of our conferences is to provide for every type of librarian a sense of community and of unity with librarianship in general. This was achieved in a large measure at Edinburgh. Moreover, as our correspondent suggests, there was interest in problems that do not affect, at least at present, many who participated. Nearly every session, general or special, was so well attended, that we can infer that the vitality of interest in library matters is as great as it ever has been; indeed, it is possibly greater.