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Management training is constantly seen as an effective way of providing small‐medium size enterprises with the management expertise they require in order to develop and grow. The SME sector in Canada plays a prominent and essential role in the growth and expansion of the domestic economy through its contribution to the domestic output and job creation. However, this sector suffers from a considerably high failure rate that is largely attributed to the lack of management skills and planning, which can potentially be improved by providing training and education in different business areas. This paper assesses the entrepreneurship education and training efforts in Canada and identifies the common challenges that face this process.

Small family firms represent the predominant organizational form in Canada. They are perceived to be crucial to the development and growth of the Canadian economy. Despite this, scant attention is given to the study of human resource management practices in the specialist family business literature. A key human resource issue in family firms, which has been documented as a potential source of problems, is succession, selection and training. The objective of this research is to explore the qualities that are considered critical to an effective family business successor and discuss the crucial role that education and training could have in enhancing the qualities and skills of a successor. Results suggest that three factors are critical to an effective human resource strategy concerning the selection process of a successor. These include the successor's capacity to lead, his/her managerial skills and competencies, and the willingness and commitment of the successor to take over the family business and to assume a leadership role.

Family firms play an important role in the working of the Canadian economy; despite their importance to the economic activities and job creation it is observed that family businesses have lower survival rates than non‐family firms, some argue that this can possibly be attributed (amongst other factors) to the lack of training. Most of the training activities in Canadian family businesses tend to be limited, and it is argued that family firms tend to perceive training more as an expense than an asset that enhances future growth and development of the business. This paper introduces a training framework and a coherent strategy that provides key elements of a national training agenda for Canadian small family firms, including the role of various relevant organizations.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Small family firms are the bedrock of the Canadian economy, yet only a small proportion last into the second generation. When family businesses fail, the impact on the family is usually severe. However, with around 94 percent of Canadian businesses being categorized as family firms, there is much more than personal financial grief at stake – for the sake of national competitiveness, politicians really need to focus on the family.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This paper focuses upon the role of factoring in small business finance and the profile of firms using it. The analysis refers to a comprehensive survey of UK providers of factoring services. This identifies the relatively focused provision of factoring in terms of size, age, sector and stage of growth of the client base (ie businesses) using this financial service. For those using factoring, the service may provide a valuable improvement to cash flow and working capital position and can possibly contribute to small business growth and development. In its present format, however, factoring is not the potential financial solution for all firms across all industries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence Malaysian manufacturing sector investment in accounts receivable (AR), an asset seen by many as one of the riskiest in any company’s balance sheet.

The authors test several theories, related to AR, using a cross-section of 262 listed manufacturing firms over a period of five years (2007-2011). Both fixed and random effect approaches are adopted to deal with potential heterogeneity across firms.

The results show that investment in AR in Malaysia are influenced by firm size, short-term finance, sales growth and collateral. Profit, liquidity and gross margins have no role in affecting the decision of trade credit granting to customers. The results are inconsistent with previous studies. Size and short-term finance have a negative, rather than positive, impact. Liquidity and gross margins have no, rather than positive, effect. While profit and sales growth are predicted to feature a U-shaped relationship with investment in AR, the former is insignificant while the latter is strictly increasing. The only factor found to be consistent with prior studies is collateral.

The results have two principal implications. First, policy makers should not take a holistic view of the trade credit market. Given that policy makers aim to improve liquidity and trade, they should design policies that are not only country specific but also sector specific. As is clear from our results, what holds for other countries or sectors may not necessarily be true for the Malaysian manufacturing sector. This has important implications for policy makers in emerging economies.

Investment in AR, in the Malaysian manufacturing sector, is impacted by many of the factors implied by either theory or empirical evidence. However, the main finding in this paper is that the Malaysian manufacturing sector is rather different. First, while liquidity and gross margin have been found to have a positive and significant effect on AR helping hand theory in prior studies, the results show that these two factors play no role in influencing the level of AR in the Malaysian manufacturing sector.

Unlike the experience in developed economies, firms in our sample that have access to short-term finance are less likely to grant trade credit. This suggests that the helping hand theory does not hold as far as the Malaysian manufacturing firms are concerned: firm that have better access to short-term finance in Malaysia do not use trade credit to pass on the benefit to their customers by granting them trade credit.

It is unclear why firms invest in AR given the high risks of uncollectability as well as tedious, time-consuming and costly legal process for debt recovery compared to firms from more developed economies. This paper examines the reasons business-to-business lending, through AR, is widespread in Malaysia and investigates the factors that affect this decision despite the risk involved. To our knowledge, this is the first study to date that looks at the factors that influence AR level in the Malaysian manufacturing sector.

This chapter analyzes the efficiency levels of a circular economy (CE) with an emphasis on transaction costs. It examines the governance aspect of CE activities in comparison to the predominant linear value creation. Extant CE research in business studies tends to be descriptive and lacks a theoretical foundation, particularly in understanding CE management. Transaction cost theory explains efficiency in economic organizing, lending itself to the study of arrangements that maximize resource efficiency at continued economic virtue. The conceptualization proposes that CE transaction costs are greater than those within the linear economy (LE), primarily due to the uncertainties about reciprocal dependencies, looping material complexities, exchanging novel information, and increased contracting efforts. Geographically bounded and institutionally homogeneous CE initiatives may curb these rising costs. By bringing efficiency concerns into CE analysis, the chapter demonstrates the applicability of transaction cost theory and highlights CE relevance to international business by pointing out spatial choice implications.

Crisis management has developed as an established field of scholarly research in tourism over the last three decades. More recently, the concept of resilience has emerged within this body of literature as a longer-term planning process. However, important knowledge gaps remain, especially with regards to the strategic responses of small tourism businesses in destinations prone to repeated crises.

This chapter reviews the literature related to crisis management and resilience in tourism.

Key knowledge gaps are outlined and discussed in the context of tourism research related to crisis management and resilience, with a specific emphasis on research related to small tourism businesses.

Although crisis management and resilience are fields of research that continue to generate a considerable amount of scholarly enquiry in tourism, particularly with studies related to the impacts of terrorism on tourism destinations and, more recently, the short- and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism, there is very little research related to the role of small tourism businesses in this context, in spite of their key role in the tourism system of destinations around the world.

Educators are increasingly required to develop creativity and entrepreneurial capabilities amongst students, yet within the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation these are presented as separate processes. We explore the theoretical and conceptual similarities and differences between these processes, and relate this to a range of experiential and digitally enhanced learning activities in formal education settings.

We present a conceptual model of the iterative nature of creativity and entrepreneurship as separate cognitive and social processes leading to aesthetic or sense-making outcomes. This leads to a discussion of how these processes may be experienced by students within an educational setting.

We propose a framework of learning activities which support the development of creativity through teaching entrepreneurially, at primary, secondary, and tertiary education levels. A range of different approaches is critically evaluated according to their relevance, including business planning, simulations, roleplay, co-creation, and flashmobs. Flashmobs are proposed to be most suitable and an outline learning activity design is mapped in detail against creative and entrepreneurial processes.

This chapter supports educational practice and research on learning through entrepreneurship in allowing educators and researchers to evaluate how learning activities may directly contribute to students’ learning through experience and the development of their creative and entrepreneurial mind-set.

This chapter is of value to educators as it explains how creative and entrepreneurial processes may be experienced by students through different forms of learning activity. It is of further value to research on entrepreneurial learning in considering how the creative process may inform entrepreneurial action.