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.

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.

This title was first published in 2000. Since New Labour were elected in 1997, there have been substantial changes made to local and regional economic development policy in the UK. This volume offers an up-to-date overview, setting the new policies within a wider historic context and suggesting future developments. It examines four of these new policies in depth - Regional Development Agencies, New Deal local partnerships, Local Learning and Skills Councils, and the Small Business Service and Business link. In doing so, it offers a critical appraisal of how effective these changes have been in tackling issues such as developing human resources, skills and opportunities, developing land infrastructure and sites, capital formation and development, encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change and enhancing a supportive institutional context.

Local Business Voice provides the first scholarly and systematic history of the Chambers of Commerce from early historical origins in the eighteenth century up to the present date. Based on new archival information, it provides exhaustive coverage of all UK and Irish chambers, as well as detailed examination of early Chambers in the U.S., including New York, Charleston, and Boston, and early Chambers in Quebec and Jamaica. The book traces the importance of early tax protests and anger as motivating forces through interrelation with the American Revolution. It traces the emergence of service bundles, such commercial arbitration, coffee and reading rooms, and information and consultancy services as critical to the Chambers' unique market position. Some of the services had a unique status as trust goods, exploiting the chambers' USP as high status mutual non-profit organisations. It demonstrates the challenges for the Chambers as independent voluntary bodies in increasing partnerships with governments and competition with rival institutions, and also gives critical overview of key lobbies, such as over the Jay Treaty, tax expansion, the Corn Laws, tariff reform and free trade, municipal socialism, and modern regulatory burdens. There is also extensive analysis of chamber membership and motivation, tracking changes in structure by firm size, sector and corporate and management structures. The growth of small firm membership, and the value of business networks and (in the early chambers) religious adherence, are shown as key mediums for recruitment, and maintaining commitment. A definitive account of all local chambers including data appendices and detailed assessment of their significance, the book will be an enduring resource and foundation for research into the Chambers of Commerce's origins, historical development, and modern position.

Academic publisher, Pion, has an outstanding reputation for publishing high quality journals in the fields of geography, physics and experimental psychology. The four geographical journals in the Pion stable - the Environment and Planning series - are committed to publishing innovative, interdisciplinary quality papers which tackle a range of important questions. This collection, edited by a stellar editorial team under the leadership of Stuart Elden and published by SAGE, draws from all four journals to showcase the best of the best on offer in urban and regional research. Volume One: Cities and Regions provides a selection of papers from the original journal in the series, focused on the opportunities and challenges associated with urban and regional transformations around the world. The wide-ranging remit of the journal allows readers to draw on sources from many disciplines - geography, sociology, economics, environmental science, political science, planning, and regional studies. Volume Two: Planning and Design brings together seminal articles that promote research relating to spatial problems and plans concerning the built environment and the spatial structure of cities and regions. It brings an avowedly interdisciplinary approach to urban design, planning, modeling, simulation, GIS and spatial analysis, focusing on new scientific and computational approaches. Volume Three: Government and Policy presents the path-breaking papers that have been at the forefront of research on government, governance, and innovations in public policy. The journal encourages international perspectives and dialogue as illustrated by the varied selection in this volume. Volume Four: Society and Space brings together papers from the pre-eminent journal for interdisciplinary debates around society and space involving, among others, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians and political scientists. It includes articles that exemplify the discussion of the mutually constitutive relation between the social and the spatial. Volume Five: Foundations, edited by the whole team, rounds off the collection with a selection of articles that eloquently demonstrate the theoretically sophisticated and practically relevant focus of this remarkable family of journals.