This book adopts a novel analytical approach to understanding how Russia's stalled democratisation is related to the incomplete liberalisation of the economy. Based on extensive original comparative study of Russia's regions, the book explores the precise channels of interaction that create the mutuality of property rights, entrepreneurship, rule of law, norms of citizenship and liberal democracy. It demonstrates that the extent of democratisation varies across regions, and that this variation is connected to the extent of liberalisation of the economy. Moreover, it argues that the key factor in producing this linkage is the relative prominence of small business owners and their supporters in articulating their interests vis-a-vis regional and local administrations, especially through the institutionalisation of networks and business associations. The book develops its key theses by means of detailed analysis of the experiences of four case study regions. Overall, the book provides a major contribution to understanding the path of democratisation in Russia.

The GCBME Book Series aims to promote the quality and methodical reach of the Global Conference on Business Management & Entrepreneurship, which is intended as a high-quality scientific contribution to the science of business management and entrepreneurship. The Contributions are the main reference articles on the topic of each book and have been subject to a strict peer review process conducted by experts in the fields. The conference provided opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and implementation of experiences, to establish business or research connections and to find Global Partners for future collaboration. The conference and resulting volume in the book series is expected to be held and appear annually. The year 2019 theme of book and conference is "Creating Innovative and Sustainable Value-added Businesses in the Disruption Era". The ultimate goal of GCBME is to provide a medium forum for educators, researchers, scholars, managers, graduate students and professional business persons from the diverse cultural backgrounds, to present and discuss their researches, knowledge and innovation within the fields of business, management and entrepreneurship. The GCBME conferences cover major thematic groups, yet opens to other relevant topics: Organizational Behavior, Innovation, Marketing Management, Financial Management and Accounting, Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Green Business.

Family business is the most prominent form of business organization, and its importance to the global economy cannot be under-estimated. Until recently, the impact of the family on entrepreneurial firms has been under-researched, leading to a conceptual gap between the two areas of study, and an underestimation of the contribution of family systems to entrepreneurial success. Starting from the consideration that family is an intimate and essential aspect of entrepreneurship, this book considers connections between family, family members, entrepreneurial behavior, family business, society and the economy. Bringing together a unique range of international contributions, it offers new theoretical perspectives and empirical insights as well as an in-depth consideration of the diversity of contexts and processes associated with entrepreneurship in family settings. Above all, this book opens up a comprehensive research agenda on the linkages between family, family firms and entrepreneurship and will be of interest to researchers, educators and advanced students of entrepreneurship, small firms and family business.

Well-managed employment relationships can be a secret to business success, yet this factor is relatively poorly understood when it comes to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME's). Written by active researchers with teaching experience, this book brings together the fields of entrepreneurship and human resource management for the first time, providing entrepreneurship students with a solid grounding in HRM as well as a platform for further critical engagement with the research. The concise and authoritative style also enables the book to be used as a primer for researchers exploring this under-developed terrain. As the only student-focused specialist book on human resource management in entrepreneurial firms, this is vital reading for students and researchers in this area, as well as those interested in small business and management more generally.

To maintain a competitive edge against other businesses, companies must ensure the most effective strategies and procedures are in place. This is particularly critical in smaller business environments with fewer resources. Knowledge Management Initiatives and Strategies in Small and Medium Enterprises is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly material on the management of knowledge resources in smaller-scale enterprises. Highlighting theoretical foundations and real-world applications, this book is ideally designed for professionals, practitioners, researchers, and upper-level students interested in emerging perspectives on knowledge management.

Focusing on international entrepreneurship, this research book explores the accelerated internationalization of young firms. Known variously as international new ventures (INVs) or "born globals," such firms have come to be viewed as legitimate actors on the global stage alongside large multinational enterprises (MNEs). However, the current approach taken by scholars - studying large MNEs and born globals separately - is questionable. This book explores the crucial MNE/INV interface - a fascinating, yet under-researched relationship in international entrepreneurship. Drawing upon a decade of case-based research, the author argues that the MNE influence on born globals must be considered more carefully and suggests how new ventures can leverage MNE networks in the pursuit of their rapid internationalization. Furthermore, it demonstrates that, as firms enhance their levels of innovation, new pathways emerge via multinational corporation networks, a phenomenon vividly demonstrated in the emerging economy context of the Bangalore software industry. This innovative research text will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students with an interest in international entrepreneurship and business, strategy, innovation, and new ventures.

Think your business is too small to have big safety issues? Not true. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "a serious fire, a permanent injury, or the death of an employee or owner can cause loss of profit or even an entire business." Applying the recognized principles of prevention outlined in this book not only helps reduce accidents, but it may also improve your company's efficiency and reduce insurance claims and other costs. Written with the multi-roled small business manager or owner in mind, this handbook provides a condensed summary of the guidelines and federal laws designed to keep workers safe. It examines the four key elements of a safety and health management system and provides an overview for inexpensively establishing or integrating these elements into a safety program. Special features of this handbook, originally published in 2005, include an overall action plan worksheet, model policy statements, codes of safe practices to help you get started quickly, and a list of additional resources to reference.

The Small Business Administration says that 69% of all business do not last past 7 years and 56% not any longer than four years. There is serious monetary and relationship carnage in all this. What is really going on here? Going Out Of Business By Design will offer up reasons for this as well as compelling solutions. Mr. Pease writes from 29 years of personal experience and continues to operate his office equipment business. Going Out of Business By Design wants to help the Owner Entrepreneur be able to spot dangerous trends before they threaten the business.
Going Out of Business By Design is particularly good at showing correct thought processes and how to creatively deal with all manner of business trouble. The book guides you through important topic such as establishing positive cash flow, correct pricing and selection of products, legal troubles and leadership methods. It also lets you in on what Pease considers to be the great secret to making a small business last and retain employees.
Going Out Of Business By Design can serve as an Entrepreneur's Owner's Manual that you will refer to regularly.

First published in 1973, this title examines the development patterns of small businesses. It considers why people found firms; the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success; problems of management succession and inheritance; the strengths and weaknesses of family firms; the reasons why small firms are taken over; and the social, economic and managerial context of their growth, decline, and revival. Based on a survey of sixty-four firms, each employing fewer than five hundred people, in engineering, hosiery, and knitwear, and on the records of 370 similar organisations, a striking gap in performance and management attitudes emerges as between dynamic, mostly founder-run firms and stagnant, mostly inherited ones. Where many books are either minutely specialised or highly abstract and over-generalised, Jonathan Boswell's work is practical and diagnostic, probing the inner recesses of the small firm sector. With particular relevance to the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in today's economic environment, this title advances selective measures to deal with old firms and inheritance, and a wide range of policies to encourage new entrepreneurship.

This text chronicles a change in epistolary persuasion in the 1230's, crystallized at the imperial chancery of Frederick II, Emperor from 1220-1250. There, traditional appeals, premised on authority and harmony, were challenged by letters in which historical circumstances functioned as an integral part of the strategy of persuasion. Based on the close reading of "Artes Dictandi", as well as a series of letters issued from the papal and imperial chanceries, this book explores the theory and practice of medieval letter-writing. Letters are evaluated as verbal acts intended to persuade, with the public as the ultimate arbiter of success. The author argues that the form, proportion and style of letters were contoured by ideology.

Business consultant Robert Mano has given many business owners hope. Formally a president of a multi-million dollar company but more importantly a small business owner, he has revitalized businesses with an easily understood concept. Successful businesses use it; most do not realize they are doing it. Once you read, "Thinking Beyond the Obvious," you will immediately grasp the simplicity of the concept and quickly recognize the driving factors of a successful business like never before.
You will have an epiphany. Simply said, you will have that, "Wow Why didn't I think about that?" moment. You will see each business, including your own, through a completely different and savvy pair of eyes. It will be like taking off the blinders. Simple yes. Exciting, absolutely.
Thinking Beyond the Obvious will:
* Differentiate your business from every other business in the marketplace.
* Position your business for success.
* Transform your attitude from one of blank to one of "Wow, I can do this."
* Provide simple, proven ideas that you can immediately use to more effectively and efficiently compete in the marketplace.
If you are looking for real world illustrations and practical insights on how to supercharge your business, and you are looking for that million-dollar idea to position your business for success, your search is over.

Does Information Technology matter? This book argues that even as Information Technology hardware, software, data and associated processes are becoming more of a commodity, it has never been more important to manage Information Technology as a strategic asset. However, managing Information Technology as a strategic asset is notoriously difficult, as is studying the impact of Information Technology on firm performance. This book sets out to identify, explain and critically evaluate current research in this area. A unique feature of this book is the use of economic theory to explain management theory and its consequences in professional practice. Beginning with a thorough introduction to Schumpeterian economic theory, the authors re-cast the pre-eminent theory in strategic management research (the Resource Based View) in the light of a Schumpeterian analysis and identify Dynamic Capabilities as an extension of, but also a radical departure from, RBV. The role of Information Technology as an endogenous technology is discussed and it is argued that how we define Information Technology determines not only how we study it but also how we use it and benefit from it. The book is aimed primarily at the academic research market, but should also be of some interest to managers. It is useful more specifically for all those studying business, Information Technology, strategy, management and innovation.

For many, small firms are everyday realities of the economy and visible in every high-street and industrial estate. Their existence and importance is unquestionable. Such beliefs are understandable, but the authors of this new book would suggest they are misguided. The Political Economy of the Small Firm challenges the assumptions regarding small firms that pervade society and political representation. Small firms are not organised into a homogenous sector that has a clear constituency or political influence. In fact, the small firm is shown to be an inconstant political construct that is discursively ethereal and vulnerable to political exploitation. Fusing theories from political science, management and linguistics, Dannreuther and Perren assert that the idea of the small firm is an important discursive resource used by political actors to legitimise their actions, influence their citizens and help sustain regimes of accumulation. On top of this, the authors also empirically test their claims against 200 years of UK parliamentary debate, from the Industrial Revolution to the Blair government. The political construction of the small firm is shown not only to provide rhetorical mechanisms to maintain periods of capitalist accumulation, but also to increase the relative autonomy of the state and to centralise power to elite politicians. For a period of 150 years up to the 1970s, the small firm was an unexplored presence, below the political radar and resonant with poor working standards and extreme forms of competition. During the so-called Fordist period from the 1930s, the small firm was seen as the dirty, out-dated, contrast to the clean, modern future represented by mass production and corporations. The perceived failure of Fordism led to the invention of the small firm and its presentation as an ideal political construct. By fabricating assertions of what small firms are and what they want, frequently out of conjecture, the authors of this book show how political elites have been able to advocate radical reformist agendas since the 1970s in the name of a phantom constituency.

When this book was first published in 1991, political ideology had thrust small-firm issues to the forefront of attempts to revitalize the British economy. In the Thatcher years the emphasis had been on individual enterprise and initiative with the number of small firms increasing rapidly. This was reflected in the growth in the number of specialist studies analysis small-firm revivalism. Small Business and Society clarifies the issues and debates that surround the small business and its place in society. In particular, the complex nature of its social role is examined: on the one hand, the entrepreneur can be seen as the innovator exploiting free-market capitalism to strengthen the economy; on the other, employment conditions and industrial relations are said to suffer. Moreover, the growing importance of 'green' issues now brings into question the extent to which the small firm benefits the environment. This book will be of interest to students of business and sociology.

Recent development experience points to the way business can be the key to a dynamic small business sector, especially where those links are built on high trust co-operative relations. This book reviews different types of small business network, illustrated by an international selection of case studies, including: * Chinese family business networks * ethinic minority business networks * Japanese and South Korean business group networks * Taiwan's subcontracting networks * European industrial districts Network promotion initiatives in Singapore, New Zealand, Scandinavia and the UK are each discussed to provide a comprehensive comparative assessment of small business networks.

For years the small-firm sector of the economy remained an enigma. However, recently researchers have assembled a far better understanding of the economic role of small firms. One of the surprising findings is that small and medium-sized firms, and entrepreneurship, have become increasingly more important to the economies of both developed and developing countries than previously acknowledged. The purpose of these volumes is to bring together for the first time this diffuse and rich literature on the whole subject of small firms and economic growth. This volume will provide a basic resource for all those engaged with the subject as students, teachers and researchers.

Public policy interventions aimed at encouraging, supporting and developing small businesses are an important factor in understanding entrepreneurship and small business management. This textbook is the first to provide teachers and students with a resource that gives an overview of how institutional and policy structures interact with small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures. Beginning with a brief introduction to policy processes, the book also covers the scope for different intervention at different scales: macroeconomic (international, national) and regional/local. The author then applies four lenses to provide different contexts to understand the theory and practice of public policy for small business management: The UK is used to cover long-term historical evolution of small businesses and how this has stimulated different policy approaches. The USA provides greater emphasis on varied approaches within a federal system and the specifics of the SBA. The EU is used as a case to engage with international and varied policy approaches.Emerging economies are used to provide insights into radically different ways of combining understanding of small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures with policy approaches within the context of globalization. Written by a pre-eminent scholar of public policy and entrepreneurship, this textbook provides a concise but thorough introduction to the subject for Master's students internationally.

Starting a new business takes a lot of energy and organization. The failure rate is alarmingly high and the task can look herculean at the outset. This new textbook provides a simple guide to help plan a successful new business, taking entrepreneurs and students through the steps required to avoid pitfalls and get a business going. Unlike most entrepreneurship textbooks, the author avoids dwelling on theories in favour of providing effective and practical guidance on how to start and manage a profitable business, with a focus on new ventures operating in high-growth, innovative sectors. Written by an expert with experience in academia and business consulting, this concise textbook will be valuable reading for students of entrepreneurship, new ventures and small business. The practical focus of the book means that it will be useful both for students in the classroom and for entrepreneurs wanting to start a new business.

Public policy interventions aimed at encouraging, supporting and developing small businesses are an important factor in understanding entrepreneurship and small business management. This textbook is the first to provide teachers and students with a resource that gives an overview of how institutional and policy structures interact with small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures. Beginning with a brief introduction to policy processes, the book also covers the scope for different intervention at different scales: macroeconomic (international, national) and regional/local. The author then applies four lenses to provide different contexts to understand the theory and practice of public policy for small business management: The UK is used to cover long-term historical evolution of small businesses and how this has stimulated different policy approaches. The USA provides greater emphasis on varied approaches within a federal system and the specifics of the SBA. The EU is used as a case to engage with international and varied policy approaches.Emerging economies are used to provide insights into radically different ways of combining understanding of small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures with policy approaches within the context of globalization. Written by a pre-eminent scholar of public policy and entrepreneurship, this textbook provides a concise but thorough introduction to the subject for Master's students internationally.

First published in 1973, this title examines the development patterns of small businesses. It considers why people found firms; the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success; problems of management succession and inheritance; the strengths and weaknesses of family firms; the reasons why small firms are taken over; and the social, economic and managerial context of their growth, decline, and revival. Based on a survey of sixty-four firms, each employing fewer than five hundred people, in engineering, hosiery, and knitwear, and on the records of 370 similar organisations, a striking gap in performance and management attitudes emerges as between dynamic, mostly founder-run firms and stagnant, mostly inherited ones. Where many books are either minutely specialised or highly abstract and over-generalised, Jonathan Boswell's work is practical and diagnostic, probing the inner recesses of the small firm sector. With particular relevance to the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in today's economic environment, this title advances selective measures to deal with old firms and inheritance, and a wide range of policies to encourage new entrepreneurship.

Many professionals today, in a wide variety of fields, find themselves in need of the knowledge and skills that will permit them to build and maintain a successful practice. The current economic climate, changes in the rules of competitive advertising and client relations, and an overabundance of professionals have led to the need for improved skills in practice development. Professional Practice Development gives both practitioners and newcomers the practical information they need to compete for new clients and retain existing ones. With particular focus on traditional and non-traditional channels of communication, this step-by-step guide shows how to develop and implement strategies that lead to a flourishing practice.

Brody begins his study with a discussion of the unique situation professionals find themselves in today. Next, the book discusses planning, the importance of information, and the role of decision-making in building a practice. Further chapters explore the many kinds of communication that make a successful practice. The study addresses office environments, client communication, marketing strategies, envronmental assessment, and professional networking, and concludes with an overview on managing the entire process.

Business creation, or entrepreneurship, is a major source of national economic growth and adaptation as well as an important career choice for millions. In this insightful book, Paul D. Reynolds presents an overview of the major factors associated with contemporary business creation, reflecting representative samples of US early stage nascent ventures, and emphasizing the unique features of the one-third that achieve profitability. This in-depth assessment includes empirical descriptions of a broad range of relevant features of the entrepreneurial process. By using representative samples of nascent entrepreneurs and ventures in the US, it allows extrapolation to US populations of entrepreneurs, pre-profit ventures, and activity in all economic sectors. Outcomes including profitability and disengagement are identified in multiple follow-up interviews. A useful resource for scholars concerned with business creation, this book also makes an engaging supplementary course book for upper division and graduate courses in business plan creation and research methods. Policy analysts emphasizing programs and policies to enhance business creation will also find it enlightening.

A complete how-to guide with ALL you need to know to open and run a successful restaurant. Each month, countless new restaurants open their doors as others fail. Despite continuing industry growth, many new restaurants struggle to succeed. Even established restaurants are challenged to stay open. These businesses may have great food and amazing service, yet some still face uncertain futures. Now, help has arrived for restaurant owners and managers! Food and Beverage Magazine's Guide to Restaurant Success is written by an industry expert who has opened numerous restaurants and provided valuable restaurateur guidance in the role of a trusted consultant. This restaurant success guide provides vital information on how to protect the significant investment--sometimes ranging from $250,000 to $425,000--that's required to open a restaurant and keep it running during the first six months. Author Michael Politz started his career with an ice cream business and went on to found a number of restaurants, a frozen food distribution business, a restaurant consulting service, and a respected online magazine for the food and beverage industry. Politz shares his extensive knowledge gained through both success and failure. With his indispensable guide, you can easily double-check to make sure you're doing things right. Get guidance from a restaurant owner's handbook of what to do and not do Refer to handy tips and checklists that help you launch your business Discover insight into the triumphs of Wolfgang Puck, Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, and more Gain food industry knowledge with a comprehensive restaurant how-to guide Whether you want to open a burger joint or a fine dining restaurant, this advice-filled resource will help you cover all the details that make a difference. You'll be better prepared before, during, and after your restaurant launch! Set your establishment up for rave reviews with Food and Beverage Magazine's Guide to Restaurant Success.

This revised second edition of the best-selling handbook provides practical, actionable insights on how to establish a successful photography business in the current climate. Written from the perspective of a photographer's agent, this book offers the perfect viewpoint to honestly assess what works, what doesn't, and why some photographers succeed where others fail. Packed with useful templates and advice from leading photographers and commissioners working in all areas of the profession today, industry expert Lisa Pritchard covers all of the essentials: preparing the best portfolio and website; marketing yourself; getting clients; costing and producing shoots; finding representation; financing and running your business; navigating contracts and legal obligations; and more. Updated to take account of shifts in the industry and the increasing importance of digital marketing and social media, this book provides fresh insight and inspiration for the budding and established professional. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to be a professional photographer - whether studying to become one, thinking of a change of career, or wanting to know how to improve their existing photography business.