Sandra M. Anglund examines the American national government's small business assistance policy from the passage of the Small Business Act of 1953 onward. She traces the heritage of the policy and shows how American core values, those often referred to as the American Creed, contributed to shaping that policy.

Anglund points out that the American national government is in the business of promoting small business. Government agencies help entrepreneurs develop small businesses through a wide range of programs providing financial assistance such as loans, government contract assistance including set-asides, and management and technical support. Unlike government programs for farmers and big businesses, which are usually invisible to the citizenry, small business aid programs are extremely and intentionally visible.

Congress declared the policy of aiding small business and launched the contemporary era of small business assistance programs in the Small Business Act of 1953. In this study, Anglund traces the heritage of the Small Business Act, probes influences on small business and enactments of the 1953-1997 period, and show how American core values, those often referred to as the American Creed, contributed to shaping small business policy and to the support it received. Scholars, students, and researchers involved with public policy, political culture, business politics and history, and economic development will find this study of particular interest.

Only if they do the right thing at the right time will owners of small businesses succeed. Simple enough, but what are the factors in their psychological makeup that enable them to do it? Frese and his contributors have studied small businesses in four African countries from a psychological perspective--the first time this has been done--and report that it's the psychological aspects of their strategies, not just the strategies themselves, that contribute significantly to their success. They also prove that many of the stereotypes that seem to characterize the owners of microbusinesses are clearly incorrect. Executives, analysts, bankers, international entrepreneurs, and their academic colleagues will discover that many of the conclusions they have drawn from previous studies can not be generalized. Only by separating those that can be generalized from those that can not, can we get a true understanding of the small business entrepreneurial dynamic.

Frese and his colleagues focus on South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Zambia to produce a clear overview of the research on microbusiness and entrepreneurship in developing countries. They find that psychological strategies are closely related to entrepreneurial success, but because conditions in these countries differ widely, the particulars of certain strategies and their effectiveness may also differ. They show that a number of ideas prevalent among professionals and entrepreneurship researchers in developing countries need to be challenged. Among them, that microenterprise owners who started their companies because they were unemployed do worse than those who started for other, more positive reasons. Also, that human capital (education) represents the most important set of variables to be considered for success (it isn't), or that employing family members decreases success (it doesn't). Well written and impeccably researched, the book is an essential contribution to corporate and academic libraries, as well as to the knowledge of individuals in business, psychology, entrepreneurial and regional studies, and related fields.

Business sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult amongst the demands of today's markets. By implementing new and dynamic practices, organizations can optimize their day-to-day operations and improve competitive advantage. Optimal Management Strategies in Small and Medium Enterprises is a key source on the latest innovations in enhancing all main management functions, such as working capital and marketing, and examines how to implement sustainable business management practices. Featuring extensive coverage across a range of relevant perspectives and topics, such as human resources development, market orientation, and knowledge management, this book is ideally designed for business managers, professionals, graduate students, and researchers working in the field of smaller-scale business development initiatives.

Everybody in the bar had to drop a quarter in the jukebox or be shamed by ""Momo"" Villarreal. It wasn't about the money, Mary Ann Villarreal's grandmother insisted. It was about the music - more songs for all the patrons of the Pecan Lounge in Tivoli, Texas. But for Mary Ann, whose schoolbooks those quarters bought, the money didn't hurt. When as an adult Villarreal began to wonder how the few recordings of women singers made their way into that jukebox, questions about the money seemed inseparable from those about the music. In Listening to Rosita, Villarreal seeks answers by pursuing the story of a small group of Tejana singers and entrepreneurs in Corpus Christi, Houston, and San Antonio - the ""Texas Triangle"" - during the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately she recovers a social world and cultural landscape in central south Texas where Mexican American women negotiated the shifting boundaries of race and economics to assert a public presence. Drawing on oral history, interviews, and insights from ethnic and gender studies, Listening to Rosita provides a counternarrative to previous research on la musica tejana, which has focused almost solely on musicians or musical genres. Villarreal instead chronicles women's roles and contributions to the music industry. In spotlighting the sixty-year singing career of San Antonian Rosita Fernandez, the author pulls the curtain back on all the women whose names and stories have been glaringly absent from the ethnic and economic history of Tejana music and culture. In this oral history of the Tejana cantantes who performed and owned businesses in the Texas Triangle, Listening to Rosita shows how ethnic Mexican entrepreneurs developed a unique identity in striving for success in a society that demeaned and segregated them. In telling their story, this book supplies a critical chapter long missing from the history of the West.

This book explains the political origins and evolution of capitalist institutions in developing countries by looking at distinct patterns in the electronics industry in three Southeast Asian countries: Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. An analysis of the political determinants of these patterns has a number of theoretical and practical implications. It includes a new explanation for family business behavior, a unified framework for explaining capitalist varieties, a guide for institutional reform, and a comparative examination of three dynamic Asian economies that provides important insights to students, scholars, and people in business.

This book discusses the ways in which characteristics of innovative firms and innovative talents with core competence in Japanese, Korean, German, and American contexts are developed and nurtured, and compares innovative firms with a long history of business operations from these four countries. Firstly, the book examines innovation practices of long-lived Japanese firms and compares them with those of German, American and Korean firms. Based on extensive interviews with executives and field studies, it identifies the essential qualities of each country in which these innovative firms and innovative talents are found. It then focuses on theoretical and practical aspects, using the theoretical framework to define organizational and technological factors for long-term innovation success. Further, the book provides recommendations based on organizational practices for developing innovative talents in Japanese, German, American and Korean contexts. Intended for academics, students and practitioners in the areas of organizational theory and strategic management, this book clarifies the critical practices of long-lived innovative firms and organizational innovators.

This book explores technological innovation in family firms, seeking to reconstruct the links between the heterogeneous dimensions of family businesses and their innovative behaviour. Building on and examining the traditional view of family firms as conservative, this book contributes to knowledge surrounding the puzzling role of family firms in technological innovation, with particular focus on the Italian pharmaceutical industry. The authors explore technological advances within the industry in connection with various features of family governance. This thought-provoking study is divided into two parts, the first part providing an overview of current literature on the topic, and the second part analysing the findings of empirical investigation in a specific industry setting. Practitioners and academics of business strategy will find this book extremely useful as it combines both solid theoretical reasoning and robust empirical analysis.

This book provides a critical analysis of the current state of knowledge on the relationship between family firms and a wide range of accounting choices, including earnings management, accounting conservatism, and financial and non-financial disclosure. In examining the choices made in family firms, the authors explore and elucidate the relevance of agency, socioemotional wealth, stewardship, and resource-based theories. Readers will also find close consideration of the impacts of a country's culture and societal values on accounting choices. In particular, further evidence is provided on the impact of different cultures on accounting conservatism in family businesses. Finally, avenues for future accounting research on family firms are discussed, highlighting theoretical and empirical challenges. In addition to offering a revealing analysis of the influence of ownership types and cultures on accounting choices within family firms, the book identifies significant practical implications for the management of family firms and policy implications for regulators and standard setters.

This book describes how a deeper knowledge and understanding of cultural differences represents a meaningful and useful tool for management of companies, and in particular SMEs, in the People's Republic of China. After introductory chapters on the internationalization of SMEs and the role played by management in this process, the authors explore the implications of academic discourses on culture and its dimensions for company management. The influence of Chinese cultural roots and the country's current cultural environment on management is then examined, with provision of guidance on response to the identified challenges. A key feature of the book is the presentation of important recent fieldwork in the main economic regions of China. This research further clarifies how business culture and cultural differences impact on company activities in China and casts light on various aspects of the adaptive capability of SMEs within the country, highlighting the value of cultural awareness and intelligence. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike.

This book examines the relationship between family influence and financial performance and non-economic goals in small and medium family-owned enterprises (SME) in Portugal. Research on the performance of family-owned firms is growing but results are mixed, especially for non-listed companies. This book examines smaller family-owned firms that operate in a small, open economy, characterised by a context of relatively weak capital markets and predominantly bank-based financing. Delving into the impact of key variables such as the power dimension, experience and culture on performance establishes, the book goes on to analyse the determinants of performance in such family-owned SMEs. Given the importance of family firms to open economies, this book would be a valuable read to scholars aiming to understand the reasons behind their success, managers seeking out strategic and operational guidance and to regulators and policymakers at the regional and national levels.