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The purpose of this paper is to offer a conceptual interpretation of the role business families play in the institutional context of sub-Saharan Africa, characterised by voids within the formal institutional setting. Responding to calls to take a holistic perspective of the institutional environment, we develop a conceptual model, showcasing the emergence of relational familial logics within business families that enable these enterprising organisations to navigate the political, economic and socio-cultural terrain of this institutional context.

The authors undertake a review of extant literature on institutional theory, institutional voids, family business and business families and examine the relevance of these theoretical constructs in relation to the institutional environment of Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors offer tentative propositions within our conceptualisation, which the authors discuss in an inductive fashion.

The review underlines the relevance of informal political, economic and socio-cultural institutions within the sub-Saharan context, within which the family as an institution drives business families engagement in institutional entrepreneurship. In doing so, the authors argue business families are best positioned to navigate the existing Sub-Saharan African institutional context. The authors underline the critical relevance of the embeddedness of social relationships that underpin relational familial logic within the sub-Saharan African collectivist socio-cultural system.

By challenging the assumptions that institutional voids are empty spaces devoid of institutions, the authors offer an alternative view that institutional voids are spaces where there exists a misalignment of formal and informal institutions. The authors argue that in such contexts within Sub-Saharan Africa, business families are best placed to harness their embeddedness within extended family and community for entrepreneurial activity. The authors argue that family and business logics may complement each other rather than compete. The discussions and propositions have implications for future research on business families and more inclusive forms of family organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of academic research in the business and management studies stream to various stakeholders. The stakeholder theory is used to examine the influence of research on various key beneficiaries and investigate the link between the domain of research and locus of impact.

Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF 2014) conducted in the UK provides a useful context and data for our research as REF 2014 encouraged universities to submit the information on research activities and their beneficiaries. This information is in the form of impact case studies which details the research, location of research and beneficiaries.

The findings suggest that research with an international focus has a positive impact on industry stakeholders, especially multinational corporations as well as non-governmental organizations. Second, it shows how research has made a commercial impact in innovation and small and medium enterprises’ growth while having limited impact on other domains such as social, legal, political and healthcare. More broadly, the findings indicate the degree of regional diversity. Also, the wider results-driven agenda in the UK can overestimate the research contribution to some stakeholders in the society.

Self-selection bias as universities might submit only few case studies.

For research to generate long-term benefits for the wider society, it needs to engage more deeply with the whole range of stakeholders.

This study contributes to understanding how research is consumed by stakeholders. The results indicate that while locally relevant research encourages local consumption; it is not assimilated across various stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that different collaborative entry modes play in how international new ventures (INVs) expand into international markets.

The paper’s arguments are based on the INVs and social network literatures. In order to investigate the entry modes adopted by British and Indian small and medium information and communication technology (ICT) firms into each other’s markets, the paper outlines the results of qualitative semi-structured interviews with the key decision makers of ten British and ten Indian ICT firms.

The findings contribute to the relatively under-researched area of how INVs enter foreign markets through collaborative entry mode. The findings suggest that INVs utilize both equity and non-equity modes of collaboration to expand their international operations. The findings also indicate that financial and non-financial resources always limit the market expansion and internationalization of such companies. Against this background, the INVs rely on building collaboration as one of the safest methods for foreign market expansion and successful internationalization. The collaborative entry mode is enhanced by entrepreneurs’ prior experience, social ties and knowledge of the foreign market.

Set against the backdrop of an ever-increasing trend of internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the paper offers important implications for understanding the conditions and factors behind the choice of collaborative and non-collaborative entry modes by INVs in particular and SMEs more broadly.

The paper is one of the few studies that have examined the role of collaborative entry modes choice adopted by INVs from two of the largest economies – the UK and India.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multi-faceted contexts, which influence the motives, decisions and actions that underpin the mundane and lively entrepreneurial practice of migrant youth entrepreneurs (MYEs) within a developing economy context. Moreover, the paper explores the under-researched linkages between migration and informal entrepreneurship.

Inductive, qualitative field data from a migrant destination, the Ashanti Region in Ghana are analysed, comprising 15 interviews with MYEs who hail from 12 communities in the three Northern Regions of Ghana. The authors introduce a narrative-based approach, which has previously been under-employed within empirical studies of informal entrepreneurship.

The findings showcase the complex array of opportunities and challenges, which influence individual decisions to engage in informal entrepreneurship. The findings highlight the importance of not only economic rationales but also non-economic rationales for engaging in informal entrepreneurship. Such rationales emerge from the legitimation of informal practices, the social embeddedness of migrant youth within family and community networks and the precarious nature of informal entrepreneurship.

The fine-grained discussion of the findings contributes explicitly to theory by underscoring the diversity of informal entrepreneurship activities. Theoretically, the article demonstrates the need to look beyond narrow economic explanations for why individuals engage in informal entrepreneurship. Taking a more holistic approach to explaining motivations for engaging in informal entrepreneurship, enables more nuanced understandings of the importance of non-economic rationales for individuals, located in specific contextual settings.

Leeds Polytechnic has been in the vanguard of Teaching Company Initiatives over a number of years. More recently the Polytechnic has employed a small firms adviser to encourage further SME participation in the scheme. This article describes the main criteria necessary to set up a teaching company programme.

This paper represents an editorial for this special issue on “Surviving post‐socialism”, with a particular geographical focus on countries located in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In total, six articles are included in this special issue, which seeks to contribute to the existing body of literature on surviving post‐socialism in general and in particular, across all the papers included, paying particular attention to the role of informal economic relations and practices, as fundamental parts of wider economic relations across the FSU and CEE regions. Whilst the papers included in this special issue demonstrate the richness of empirical data which can be generated, also they demonstrate how authors, located in different academic traditions – sociology, political economy and anthropology – can clearly contribute to debates regarding the role of informal economic relations in a number of theoretical and conceptual ways.

This paper attempts to synthesise the main contributions of the six papers within the special issue and in particular seeks to engage with core questions relating to how the empirical findings in these papers contribute to relevant wider theoretical and conceptual debates.

This paper finds that there is a high degree of linkages between the six papers, in particular relating to the issue of the intermeshing of formal and informal economic spheres.

The value of this paper is that it provides an introduction, overview and clear and concise summary of the remaining six papers in this special issue on “Surviving post‐socialism”, outlining the special issue's core aims and contributions.

Contrary to the view that the subsistence economy is some minor residue persisting in only a few peripheral enclaves of modern economies, the purpose of this paper is to begin to chart the importance and prevalence of subsistence work across the contemporary economic landscape and the reasons underpinning engagement in this form of non‐commodified labour.

To do so, the extent of, and reasons for, subsistence production amongst those living in contemporary Moscow is evaluated using face‐to‐face interviews with 313 households in affluent, mixed and deprived districts.

It was found that subsistence work is a ubiquitous phenomenon which is relied on heavily by Muscovite households. Until now, those participating in such subsistence work have been portrayed either as rational economic actors, dupes, seekers of self‐identity, or simply doing so out of necessity or choice. Rather than depict one as correct and the others as invalid, this survey inductively generates a theoretically‐integrative approach which differentiates between “willing” (rational economic actors, choice, identity seeking) and “reluctant” (economic and market necessity, dupes) participants in subsistence production.

The paper examines only one city. Further research is now required into the extent of, and reasons for, subsistence production in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as beyond.

This is one of the first papers to identify and explain the ubiquitous persistence of subsistence work in contemporary economies.

In the Soviet Union, the official command structure for economic production and distribution gave rise to, and depended upon, what has been described as a “shadow” economy. In the post‐socialist context, the unregulated, often extra‐legal activities of production and exchange, encompassing the survival strategies of the poor, the emergence of post‐socialist “Mafias”, and much entrepreneurial activity, has been described using the concept of the “informal economy”.

The paper is based on long‐term participatory research over a period of three years.

The paper argues that what we might think of as informal economic activity in Uzbekistan cannot be understood in relation to a formal economy, but is rather an expression of a more general informalisation of lifeworlds following the end of the Soviet Union. Unlike the situation in the Soviet Union, the informal does not emerge from and exist in relation to formal political and economic structures. The state itself is experienced in personalised terms, as a “Mafia”, and the informal is all that there is.

This article provides an original perspective on the informal economy and informalised lifeworlds in Uzbekistan.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an important nexus of formal/informal economic activity in Russia: “normative” workers (in waged formal employment) by virtue of a strongly embedded work‐related social identity and characterized by a significant number of weak social ties, move with little “effort” between formal and informal work.

The paper presents extensive ethnographic data from the Russian provinces on workers and diverse economic practices. It utilizes participant observation and semi‐structured interviews from periods of fieldwork over the course of a year (2009‐2010).

This study traces the theoretical debates on the informal economy from 1989 to 2008 and argues for a substantivist position on household reproduction that focuses on the interdependence of social networks, employment, class‐identity and (informal) work. The findings demonstrate significant performative and spatial aspects of embedded worker identity, including the workspace itself as a contested domain, that facilitate movement between formal‐informal work.

The originality of the paper resides in its ethnographic approach to informal economies under post‐socialism and the substantivist evaluation of diverse economic practices in Russia as supported by formal work‐based shared identities.