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The purpose of this paper is to identify and map trends in the Canadian apparel industry (in a global context) and, through the application of Porter's models, establish strategies that could be employed by Canadian small and medium enterprizes (SMEs) in response to the move toward trade liberalisation since the phasing out of the multi‐fibre arrangement.

The literature review established trends in the apparel industry both in Canada and globally. Qualitative research in the form of case studies highlighted apparel suppliers' perceptions of Canada's strengths and weaknesses as a business setting and provided preliminary information on possible supplier activities which provide value and competitive advantage. The analysis of the primary data also allowed the development of preliminary questions, answers to which will further enhance the understanding of clusters and their applicability to Canada's apparel SMEs.

Canada's apparel manufacturing industry is winding down while imports are continuing to grow. At the same time, the Canadian market is not large enough to sustain all the suppliers, thus forcing those who are competitive to export, primarily to the USA, which is Canada's major apparel export destination. The morphology of related and supporting industries to apparel suppliers is changing. The findings suggest that Canada's apparel supply is becoming more of a service and less of a manufacturing industry.

This paper provides an understanding of Canada's position in the global apparel map and ascertains whether competitive cluster strategies exist for the Canadian apparel industry. Furthermore, it sets the stage for further research by identifying knowledge gaps pertaining to the applicability of clusters to the apparel industry and providing data and findings to bridge these gaps.

The purpose of this exploratory research is to analyse the marketing activities of software companies in the UK educational software sector. The paper aims to explore the marketing environment and to investigate whether there are differences in experiences, attitudes and approaches between different sizes of firms.

Semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews were undertaken with key respondents who had responsibility for marketing, marketing managers or owner/managers. Themes were identified alongside contextual social and organizational effects.

The marketplace is dominated by several large firms and heavily influenced by government. Overall, five factors were identified that were experienced by all businesses in the sector: challenges in identifying the “customer”; school's budgetary constraints; the IT competence of teachers; the importance of word‐of mouth recommendations; and, the use of partnerships. Differences between small and large firms centred on: understanding of competitive structure; perception of their business's marketing strengths; and, approaches to communication and interaction with customers.

Proposals for further research are offered.

The paper offers a profile of the educational software marketplace and indicates that a number of marketing issues similarly have an effect on all businesses. Differences in behaviour and attitudes are associated with company size and respondent professional/work expertise. In particular, smaller businesses tend to be customer oriented, but often not market oriented.

Concern about the equity gap in the UK has existed for more than 60 years. Despite various government measures and institutional responses (e.g. the development of a venture capital industry) an equity gap still persists. Current debate has recognized the role of the informal venture capital market as a source of risk capital for SMEs. Argues that this market is both inefficient and underdeveloped, due largely to information deficiencies which hinder contact between potential investors and entrepreneurs seeking finance. Against this background, identifies the role of business angel networks (BANs) as a key means of stimulating the flow of informational venture capital in the UK. In particular, a government scheme to provide pump‐priming assistance to establish five local BAN demonstration projects is shown to have achieved impressive results. However, with the recent emergence of a number of private sector BANs, the continued role of government is now being questioned. Further demonstrates that public sector BANs, operating on a local scale, are filling a different market niche from that of private sector BANs, which operate predominantly on a national scale. Concludes that the top priority for policy is to ensure that all parts of the UK are served by local BANs. An appropriate way forward might be to build on experimental networking arrangements between local, public sector BANs and national, privately operated BANs.

This paper aims to explore a health at work initiative (“Fair Chance at Work”) for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and identify opportunities for improving engagement of businesses in such activities.

A case study approach is used

Two problems are identified ‐ engagement and participation. A model of engagement incorporating aspects of Prochaska and DiClemente's transtheoretical model of behaviour change is proposed based on findings from the case study and existing literature. It is concluded that improving the engagement of SMEs requires a greater understanding of their current needs, perceptions and attitudes towards health at work. Schemes such as the Teaching Companies Scheme could be useful in testing the model.

The Teaching Companies Scheme could be useful in testing the model.

These findings may inform the development of health promotion projects to SMEs using an applied model behaviour change.

This paper is useful to health promotion workers when developing projects in SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of product management as a set of organizational capabilities. It aims to investigate product management as a set of boundary spanning capabilities, by empirically relating these to firm performance.

A measurement instrument is developed and validated based on the extant product management literature. Using a heterogeneous sample of 63 Atlantic Canadian SMEs in the manufacturing and professional/technical services sectors, data are collected to test the survey instrument and establish preliminary construct validity.

Both firm performance and product management measures demonstrate internal consistency. Several product management sub‐constructs demonstrated reliability and in some cases validity, substantiating the product management literature. These included product pricing, sales support and forecasting.

This research builds upon the literature and indicates that a relationship exists between product management capability and firm performance. This leads to the conclusion that product management, as a set of boundary spanning firm capabilities, warrants future research with a larger more homogeneous population. Limitations include geographic bias, treating the population as homogeneous and lack of relationship to established firm orientations.

This research may have practical significance and managerial implications, based on the relationship between product management capabilities and firm performance. This could lead to an increased understanding of how to allocate scarce resources in order to improve performance.

The paper introduces the concept of boundary spanning, product management capabilities and their relationship to firm performance, by providing preliminarily validation of a measurement scale for product management capabilities of small to medium‐sized enterprises.

Successful technology adoption in an SME is often dependent on a concomitant upgrade in management skills. This report assesses the impact of various marketing, finance, human resources and production management techniques on performance among SMEs in Thailand. The findings have numerous implications for public policy makers and business educators attempting to design management training programs.

The goal of this paper is to develop a model which may be used to demonstrate costs and benefits of risk management investments in the context of value-based management.

This paper answers the question of how to quantify changes in company value caused by risk management measures on a theoretical basis. First, a review of empirical studies allowing assertions about the cost and utility of risk management investments is presented. The results of these studies point to a nonlinear shape of the curve and form a basis for the development of a seemingly plausible cost/utility correlation.

In this paper, a model will be developed which can be used to demonstrate costs and benefits of risk management investments in the context of value-based management. It is assumed that at first, risk management expenditures without measurable monetary utility will have to be made. Furthermore, it is assumed to increase more than proportionally, then less than proportionally, until further investments in risk management activities yield only minimal increases in utility and cannot improve company value any further.

By inserting the yet-to-be-determined actual cost/benefit relationship for a company or industry sector into the EVA equation, it is possible to display the effects of risk management measures on the company value. This procedure is principally combinable with the analysis of other value-based control parameters, that is, the Discounted Cash Flow concept or the Cash Value Added methodology.

Risk management is increasingly gaining scientific and public interest, especially since the global financial crisis. Scientists and practical users espouse the benefits of risk management systems in this context. However, the extent to which investments in risk management systems can improve the value of a company remains still unclear.

We could determine that at first risk management expenditures will not result in a monetarily measurable benefit. The remaining slope of the curve is derived as increasing more than proportionally at first, then less than proportionally, until further investments into risk management activities yield almost no additional increase in benefits. In this paper, three different functions are offered to describe the shape of the curve identified. They differ in regard to their free parameters and hence in their flexibility of application. The higher flexibility of functions #2 and #3 is balanced by the disadvantage of increasing formal complexity, possibly leading to an increased effort for implementation and application.

To harness the relationships developed in this paper for practical use, further research should target the identification and empirical verification of dependencies between the parameters and principal company index values.

In line with the slogan “Africa rising”, the paper responds to the calls to shed light on the management knowledge of Africa, especially on the internationalisation of process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Africa. This paper aims to explore the critical incidents that trigger the export initiation of SMEs from the garment and textile sub-sector of Ghana.

The study is based on the qualitative multi-case study research approach, coupled with the critical incident method and uses 36 case firms from the garment and textile sub-sector of Ghana.

From the interview transcripts, it was found that being in the receipt of unsolicited order, wining government award and having international orientation are among the critical incidents that catapult SMEs in the garment and textile sub-sector of Ghana to initiate export business.

The study is based on the interpretivist qualitative method; therefore, future studies could extend the results by improving the sample size and use statistical methods.

Based on the findings, it is recommended that what is needed to improve export participation of SMEs from Ghana is entrepreneurial orientation. Implicitly, public policy must promote entrepreneurship education, i.e whether the government expects to see improvement in export involvement of SMEs from Ghana. Such initiatives will catapult most entrepreneurs from their comfort zones to take advantage of the various critical incidents in the external business environment and become exporters.

The contribution of the paper is that unlike previous studies that use objective quantitative measures to examine the issue from other settings, the present paper uses the critical incident method which is proven to delve deeper into the phenomenon. Another contribution is that it sheds light on the internationalisation process of manufacturing SMEs from an under-researched and a new geographical context.

The purpose of this article is to measure knowledge management (KM) implementation and determine KM strategy by assigning KM instruments into KM orientations.

Information is collected from ten SMEs in Spain and ten in Austria taking part in a KM audit project.

Results show that instruments can be used to diagnose KM strategy. Besides, some firm's characteristics as industry, national culture, size and age act as contingent factors. Personalisation strategy is predominant probably due to be more feasible in first KM stages.

Besides the increase of cases, business strategy could be introduced to explore relationships with KM instruments and strategy.

This study helps management to auto‐diagnosis its KM implementation and strategy

Instead of sophisticated measures, KM strategy is revealed considering knowledge instruments use.

This study seeks to address a gap in the literature by investigating product management (PM) as a set of firm‐level activities, distinct from the behaviours embedded within the market orientation (MO) construct. This research establishes PM as a set of organizational activities, which lie at the boundary between the traditional functions of the firm.

A model is proposed and tested using a heterogeneous sample of 316 Canadian small and medium‐sized enterprises, where PM mediates the relationship between MO and firm performance. Data were analyzed using a partial least squares, structural equation model.

PM behaviour is found to fully mediate the MO – firm performance relationship. Two of the three PM constructs, namely channel analysis/support and market/technical integration account for this effect.

These results support the PM literature, which infers that more emphasis on external boundary spanning activities and internal coordination should positively influence firm performance. Limitations include the heterogeneous nature of the sample, time frame and geographic bias.

Managerial implications include the establishment of an empirical link between PM practices and how firms ultimately perform. This could assist practitioners in enhancing coordination activities between the marketing and technological factions within the organization.

This research establishes PM as a set of activities, which lie at the boundary between the traditional functions of the firm. These activities are found to fully mediate the MO – firm performance relationship and introduce the hereto untested link between PM and firm performance.