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The purpose of this paper is to explore the logics that expert entrepreneurs use when faced with a critical incident threat.

Attempts have been made to define “entrepreneurial logic”. This paper is influenced by Sarasvathy’s work on high-performance entrepreneurs, which finds that when faced with uncertainty entrepreneurs employ unconventional logic, and encompasses later research acknowledging social contexts where entrepreneurs operate. A typology of decision-making logics is developed, taking into account the situation of crisis. Seven expert entrepreneurs who faced crisis and, despite this, are still successfully operating businesses were interviewed. The paper develops a critical incidents methodology.

Experienced entrepreneurs were found to tend towards causal logic when “the stakes were high” and the decision may affect the survival of their business. They also weigh up options before acting and tend to seek advice from trusted “others” within their network before or after they have made a decision. A mixture of causal and intuitive logic is evident in decisions dealing with internal business problems.

The decisions that entrepreneurs make shape and define their business and their ability to recover from crisis. If researchers can develop an understanding of how entrepreneurs make decisions – what information they draw upon, what support systems they use and the logic of their decision-making and rationalisation – then this can be used to help structure support.

By exploring decision-making through critical incidents we offer an innovative way to understand context-rich, first-hand experiences and behaviours of entrepreneurs around a focal point.

The Economic and Social Science Research Council’s Innovation Agenda singled out “more innovation” as a key weapon for UK companies to outperform world competitors. This research explores this Innovation Agenda from an HE perspective, and reports on a study of a final year undergraduate course in Creative Management. Students, in syndicate groups, were asked to invent their own business idea. By simulating make‐believe situations in the classroom, we aimed to approximate feelings purportedly experienced by business managers as they innovate, such as “creative tension” and “strategic discomfort”. This article argues that preparedness for creative tension is now a necessity for business graduates. Additionally, it proposes that an awareness of discomfiting strategic effects of renewal is worthwhile. For example, how might students have coped with the shock to IBM during the demise of the computer mainframe market?

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/09555349510101336. When citing the article, please cite: Peter McHardy, (1995), “Mental modelling complexity in EC value chains”, European Business Review, Vol. 95 Iss: 6, pp. 35 - 41.

Presents a method for environmental scanning for small– to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) not familiar with strategic planning. Mental modelling is used to scan the domino effects of patterns of change and relate them to the micro, rather than the macro level. Posits unique opportunities and some threats for SMEs as a result of the single market. Suggests that this method will be of benefit to entrepreneurs, advisers, and students on entrepreneurial business courses.

Using data from the 2013 European Company Survey, this chapter operationalizes the representation gap as the desire for greater employee involvement in decision-making expressed by the representative of the leading employee representative body at the workplace. According to this measure, there is evidence of a substantial shortfall in employee involvement in the European Union, not dissimilar to that reported for the United States. The chapter proceeds to investigate how the size of this representation gap varies by type of representative structure, information provided by management, the resource base available to the representatives, and the status of trust between the parties. Perceived deficits are found to be smaller where workplace representation is via works councils rather than union bodies. Furthermore, the desire for greater involvement is reduced where information provided the employee representative on a range of establishment issues is judged satisfactory. A higher frequency of meetings with management also appears to mitigate the expressed desire for greater involvement. Each of these results is robust to estimation over different country clusters. However, unlike the other arguments, the conclusion that shortfalls in employee involvement representation are smaller under works councils than union bodies is nullified where trust in management is lacking.

This research explored the storytelling (collection, curation and use) in the Cabrach, a remote Scottish glen. This study aims to capture the methodological process of storytelling and curation of heritage knowledge through the lens of the Cabrach's whisky distilling history, a central part of the area's cultural heritage, tangible and intangible. This research was conceptualised as “telling the story of telling the story of the Cabrach”. It was concerned with how the history, heritage, historiography and testimony associated with the parish could be harvested, made sense of and subsequently used.

The study was epistemological in nature and the research was concerned with how heritage knowledge is gathered, curated and understood. It was built around the collection of knowledge through expert testimony from Colin Mackenzie and Alan Winchester, who have extensively researched aspects of life in the Cabrach. This was done using a series of theme-based but free-flowing conversational workshop involving participants and research team. Issues of trust and authority in the research team were crucial. Data were recorded, transcribed and coded. A conceptual model for heritage storytelling in the Cabrach was developed together with a transferable version for other contexts.

The research was conceived around identifying the stories of the Cabrach and grouping them into cohesive narrative themes focused on the most important aspect of the glen's history (the development of malt whisky distilling). The research showed how all crucial narratives associated with the Cabrach were interconnected with that malt whisky story. It was concerned with identifying broad thematic narratives rather than the specific detailed stories themselves, but also from a methodological perspective how stories around those themes could be collected, curated and used. It presents the outcome of “expert testimony” oral history conversations and presents a conceptual model for the curation of heritage knowledge.

This paper reports on research which focuses on the confluence of those issues of heritage-led regeneration, intangible cultural heritage, as well as how stories of and from, about and for, a distinctive community in North-East Scotland can be collected, curated and displayed. It presents methodological conceptualisations as well as focused areas of results which can be used to create a strong and inclusive narrative to encapsulate the durable sense of place and support the revival of an economically viable and sustainable community.

This conceptual model offers a framework with universal elements (Place, People, Perception) alongside a strong core narrative of storytelling. That core element may vary but the outer elements remain the same, with people and place being omnipresent and the need to build an emotional or visceral connection with visitors being crucial, beyond “telling stories” which might be regarded as parochial or narrowly focused. The model informs how communities and heritage organisations tell their stories in an authentic and proportionate manner. This can help shape and explain cultures and identities and support visitors' understanding of, and connection with, places they visit and experience.

The originality lies in two principal areas, the exploration of the narratives of a singularly distinctive community – the Cabrach – which plays a disproportionately significant role in the development of malt whisky distilling in Scotland; and also in terms of the methodological approach to the collection and curation of heritage storytelling, drawing not on first-hand accounts as in conventional oral history approaches but through the expert testimony of two historical and ethnographic researchers. The value is demonstrating the creation of a conceptual model which can be transferred to other contexts.

This chapter draws together three strands of literature on clustering, entrepreneurship and international business, and examines the relationships between these three phenomena in promoting firm formation and growth within clusters. The evidence drawn on includes econometric models based on the unique International Trade in Services Film and Television dataset, an indepth interview survey and other questionnaire survey data. The key conclusions are firstly that strong clusters promote entrepreneurship, which in turn promotes cluster strength in a self-reinforcing manner. Secondly, some firms are better able than others to benefit from cluster locations due to their superior firm competencies and absorptive capacity. Thirdly, cluster strength and internationalisation are mutually reinforcing. Cluster strength contributes to the ability of entrepreneurial firms to expand overseas via export sales, licensing and FDI. Evidence is presented that indicates firms have a greater intensity of export and import activity if they have resource strengths, some of which are derived from their membership of a strong cluster. Strong clusters also attract multinational firms and in the case of the London media cluster, although those multinationals appear somewhat less embedded than non-multinational enterprises (MNEs), they are nevertheless quite strongly embedded. This means that there is a second important cluster feedback loop as spillovers from MNEs to local firms enhance cluster strength, which attracts further multinationals. The acquisition of high performing firms by overseas MNEs does not appear to have reduced either their performance or their embeddedness in a cluster. Fourthly, the nature of internationalisation strategies is conditioned by firm and industry characteristics. In particular, the extent to which tacit knowledge is embodied in a product emerges as being influential in terms of decisions on which internationalisation mode to use. Finally, the resource-based view of the firm emerges as a useful integrative framework for understanding the interplay between clusters, entrepreneurship and internationalisation strategies.

Successive devolved governments have been attempting to address inequalities which are deeply rooted in Scotland, by adapting UK policies or by devising their own solutions. In addition, from 2007, Scottish National Party (SNP) governments have criticised the policies conducted at UK level – especially the austerity policies in response to the Recession from 2010. They have demanded further powers to be able to mitigate or reform them, thus adding a constitutional dimension which has been reignited after the referendum on Brexit. This chapter deals with some of the policies aiming at tackling inequalities related to incomes and capabilities in the fields of education and health. It sheds light on the ongoing debates in Scotland and on some of the results which have been achieved under SNP governments.

In the present European crisis every intelligent individual of British birth must feel that a tremendous debt of gratitude is due to the British Navy, which, by keeping open the lines of traffic across the seas, has ensured the supply of daily food to the country. Although this journal does not concern itself with political matters, it does concern itself with the question of the maintenance of an efficient food supply in this country at all times, and the one question is indissolubly bound up with the other. Few people probably have any idea of the enormous extent to which they are dependent for the very food which nourishes them upon the ships that enter London and other ports of the English coast. Every day in the year nearly three‐quarters of a million pounds' worth of provisions are imported into this country, in addition to what we actually produce ourselves, and last year no less than two and a quarter million tons of grain, 360,000 tons of chilled and frozen beef and mutton, 170,000 tons of tea, 250,000 tons of sugar, and many other foods in proportion, were landed in the port of London alone. These figures, in view of the present crisis, completely shatter the absurd position of the “Little Navy” nincompoops.

Patient handoffs involve the exchange of information between health professionals accompanying a transfer of responsibility for, or control of, a patient. Concerns over the safety risks of poor handoffs have resulted in regulatory pressure to standardize practice and considerable growth in research. But handoffs involve more than information transfer, and their consequences for health care organizations extend beyond the safety of patients. Using an organization theory lens, we review the literature on handoffs and propose a framework that characterizes handoffs as multifunctional, situated organizational routines. We also identify implications for researchers and hospital policymakers. Standardization and improvement efforts run the risk of causing unintended problems if they overlook the complexity of handoff and the larger organizational functions it serves. Deepening our understanding of the multifunctional, situated nature of handoff can lead to improvement efforts that not only safeguard individual patients, but also enhance the capabilities of the larger health care organization.