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The purpose of this paper is to present qualitative evidence on strategies undertaken by 34 innovative small firms.

The sample of innovative firms is solely recruited from the agri-business sector that are located in contrasting environments varying from rural areas with low urban influence to areas with high urban influence and “main” urban or city areas. The authors discuss strategies in the light of a theoretical approach that incorporates a resource-based view, dynamic capabilities (DCs) and social network theory.

Although there is diversity in strategies across the 34 innovative small firms, irrespective of their “rural” or “urban” environment, qualitative evidence sheds light on differences in the way that strategies are pursued.

The study indicates that small firms in rural environments can be just as innovative as their counterparts in urban environments; however, the authors demonstrate that they adopt different strategies, which have been shaped by their environment, to achieve innovation. The authors use the qualitative evidence to develop the theory of DCs and classify the sample into four clusters which marries the environmental context and innovative DCs.

The paper makes a contribution to a research gap on the way that the environment can shape management strategies in innovative small firms. It contributes to a limited literature in this area.

This paper aims to add to the theorization of the gender dynamic in rural areas by investigating the motives of women who join their family firm (or their spouse's family firm) and thereby defy the demographic trend of rural flight. The context of this study is the depopulation of rural areas with the closing of basic services and relocation of the younger population, and educated women in particular, to urban areas. Consequently, rural family businesses risk failing to find successors and suffering forced closure or relocation. The empirical site of the study is rural family firms in Sweden, a context characterized by a high level of gender equality in legislation and culture but gender-conservative business structures in rural regions.

The empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of nine (9) life course narratives of women entrepreneurs in a rural region of Southern Sweden who have returned to rural areas to join their family business. The authors follow the view established by gender scholars that women are active agents in navigating their lives, and their life story narratives offer insight into the considerations that inform their choice to stay or return to rural locations. In Sweden, the setting for the study, gender equality is widely supported by legislation, policy and institutional frameworks and popular understanding of gender relations. In contrast to the gender-progressive policies of Sweden at large, women's entrepreneurship in rural regions of Sweden tends to follow traditional gender hierarchies and face similar constraints as in rural areas of other countries. The juxtaposition of these competing sets of ideals makes Sweden an important and interesting place to study and draw insights from the experiences of women entrepreneurs.

The findings reveal that women who choose to join rural family firms view them primarily in a positive light and see this choice as aligned with their need for professional flexibility and assertiveness, rewarding relationships, and a calm, secure, well-balanced life. Theoretically, the study implies that women choosing to engage in rural family firms seek non-material benefits, such as work–life balance and social support, and may be driven in part by a sense of psychological ownership that extends to the rural community.

The findings provide novel insights on women as active agents in navigating their lives and the intrinsic (e.g. alignment of personal values) and extrinsic (e.g. community support) motives that inform their decisions. The study also raises questions regarding how women perceive themselves as “fitting in” to rural settings and to what extent the sense of security within these settings that the women describe may be contingent upon factors such as their families' embeddedness within the community as well as their conformity to the local social norms.

The purpose of this paper is to explore eco innovation in rural small firms. It looks at the motivations of rural small business owners for eco innovation and the extent to which rurality is important. Owner-managers’ perceptions of how eco innovation had, or would, contributed to growth in the future are also explored.

This is a qualitative study involving micro-level exploration of eight growth-oriented rural small firms and their implementation of eco innovation. These case studies involved semi-structured interviews, observation of practices in the firm and review of documentation and web-based materials.

Within each of the case study businesses, eco innovation involved changing business processes to reduce waste and to reduce the amounts of raw materials consumed. Rurality was described as very important due to closeness to the impacts of climate change and firms’ visibility within their local communities. Although none of the businesses identified growth as a motivating factor, each enjoyed economic benefits as a result of their pro-environmental behaviour.

As a small-scale study of eight atypical firms, the findings cannot be readily generalised. Rather, they provide insight to how eco innovation can address both the environmental and the economic.

The findings may be useful for those wishing to encourage pro-environmental behaviours and eco innovation among rural SMEs.

The paper contributes to the currently limited literature on how and why SMEs are implementing pro-environmental practice, and also in relation to greener operational practice and business growth.

This study explores whether there are differences between established “rural” and “urban” SMEs with regard to the decision to sell goods or services abroad. Several hypotheses were formulated and tested. In 1990/1991, survey responses were gathered from 621 independent businesses located in the UK. In 1997, a follow‐on telephone survey was conducted with 150 surviving firms. Urban exporting SMEs reported superior performance to urban non‐exporting SMEs in 1997. Rural and urban SMEs, however, did not significantly differ from each other with regard to the reasons cited for not exporting, the reasons cited for exporting, and the modes of entry into the largest current foreign market selected by exporters. Nevertheless, some rural SMEs had circumvented local resource constraints and entered foreign markets by engaging in networking. Implications for policy‐makers, practitioners and researchers are highlighted.

Rural entrepreneurship research traditionally focuses on the farmer or rural communities. Little work has been done to examine the ways in which small rural firms operating in and around rural towns develop their service quality priorities. This study seeks to examine the approaches to service quality of 12 such businesses and compare their priorities for service quality with the evaluation criteria of rural service consumers.

The paper adopts a multi‐method approach within the qualitative paradigm. A total of 12 business‐owners were interviewed and the critical incident technique (CIT) was employed with 60 rural consumers.

The service priorities of rural service firms and their customers do not match. The businesses privilege tangible aspects of their service delivery, but the primary cause of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction is found to be the behaviour of service staff. The service quality propositions of the businesses are driven by the competencies and priorities of their owner‐managers and are not informed by market research.

A defining feature of small rural firms is their limited resource base. The businesses prioritise quality features which are not highly valued by customers whilst neglecting those which are. Scarce resources could be employed more productively.

For the first time service priorities of rural small firms are contrasted with the evaluation criteria of rural customers.

This paper reports on the quintessential rural small firm, the tourist service provider and explores the impact of the recent foot and mouth outbreak. A theoretical framework is employed which proposes that many rural small firms capture and commodify the values that are inherent in the countryside. Part of this process is the portrayal of image and is an essential element of the new economy of signs and symbols. This image was critically challenged during the outbreak and thus affords us a unique opportunity to examine what happens, the impacts and effects, on small rural business when the image is tarnished. The findings show that small firms in rural areas suffered badly, even in areas where there was no disease. This leads one to argue that the effects of the disease were generated, less by fact, and more by the production of image. However, it was also found that rural small firms were extremely flexible in their responses to the crisis. In turn this seems to suggest that many small rural businesses may have a particular resilience which augurs well for sustainability.

Those who would establish high-growth businesses (HGBs) in rural settings face significant challenges. We report findings from more than 80 in-depth interviews regarding the obstacles that rural HGBs face and identify approaches for overcoming these obstacles. First, interviews confirm the need for improved access to a full range of financing options to support HGBs across different development stages. Second, HGBs need in-depth, sophisticated technical assistance, which is generally unavailable in rural areas. Finally, cooperation among financial and technical service providers is vital to program success. Based on these findings, a model is proposed for successful development of HGBs in rural areas.

This paper aims to conduct research to examine the impact of Internet adoption on the productivity of firms in non-urban China.

The study investigates the impact of Internet adoption on firms' productivity in non-urban China. More specifically, the authors conduct a comprehensive and rigorous study while addressing concerns related to firm-level endogeneity by utilizing firm-level panel data. Information on firms in non-urban areas is collected from China's Annual Surveys of Industrial Firm data. For robustness, the authors implement the instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching estimations to strengthen the evidence for suggestive causal inference. Furthermore, the authors also examine the mechanisms and group heterogeneity.

Evidence indicate that the adoption of Internet technology positively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in non-urban areas. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the marginal effect of Internet adoption is more significant and pronounced for labor-intensive, private and small-scale manufacturing firms. Moreover, additional evidence suggest that Internet adoption is beneficial for non-urban firms in expanding their business and enlarging their market. It has also been found that the positive effect of Internet adoption on firms' TFP is amplified by expanding public infrastructure.

The current study supports that the informatization strategy benefits non-urban firms and promotes rural revitalization. The findings suggest the possibility of firms borrowing market size from the closest cities and supporting the ongoing policies of investing in broadband infrastructure to narrow the urban-rural digital gap in China.

Entrepreneurship in the rural hospitality and tourism sector (RHT) has received wide attention in the past decade. However, a systematic review on this topic is currently lacking. This study aims to track the progress of the RHT and entrepreneurship literature by examining the various thematic research areas, identifying the research gaps and forecasting avenues of future research on the topic.

This paper catalogs and synthesizes the body of literature from the year 2000–2020 using a systematic literature review methodology. After discussing a brief history of RHT and entrepreneurship, the current study presents a review of 101 research articles.

The review highlights that RHT and entrepreneurship have received relatively limited attention from entrepreneurship journals. The content analysis revealed different gaps and limitations in the understanding of entrepreneurship in RHT, including a predominance of qualitative studies with limited theoretically-grounded and generalizable empirical studies. Furthermore, a high concentration of studies is from European countries. Six main thematic research areas were identified, namely, barriers and enablers, the roles of an entrepreneur, women in RHT, influencers of firm performance, innovation and value creation and methodological commonalities. The review also advances an RHT entrepreneurship ecosystem framework to summarize the findings.

Six promising research avenues are outlined based on the six themes identified. The suggested research questions draw from allied literature on small and medium businesses, innovation, women entrepreneurship and institutions to encourage the interdisciplinary cross-pollination of ideas. The findings are summarized in a novel research framework.

There is much evidence that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are drivers of economic growth. As a result, government is keen to promote ICT take‐up, particularly where there is economic development need. The rural economy in most countries is regarded as that which requires intervention in order to foster sustainability and development, and there have been many empirical studies of both the value and the use of ICTs in rural areas. These are, however, highly disparate, often being industry‐, country‐ and, indeed, type‐of‐technology‐specific. Aims to draw together the highly eclectic literature on the use of ICTs in rural small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in order to provide an overview of generic issues, relevant to policy.

Comprises a literature review, based on academic, government and agency publications, and provides commentary on emergent issues, particularly those relating to policy recommendations.

Finds that there is a lag in rural uptake of ICTs and that the reasons for this include both supply and demand failures. From a policy perspective the review notes that intervention is best directed via a multi‐channel approach.

The value of the paper lies in the provision, for the first time, of a coherent review of findings and implications of the many research studies and informed commentaries on ICT up‐take by SMEs, particularly in rural areas, thus providing a more sound basis for understanding the implications for, and informing, those involved in policy intervention and support.