The changing character of the economies in Eastern and Western Europe are leading more people to start their own businesses. This volume, first published in 1987, highlights the trends developing over the closing decades of the twentieth century. Although business start-up requires financial and marketing skills, it also demands important physchological and sociological inputs. On the basis of detailed accounts of the relevant social processes, this volume describes the varied experiences of entrepreneurship as they are emerging among various groups in both Eastern and Western Europe including the unemployed, women, ethnic minorities and others. This book will be of interest to students of business studies and sociology.
The changing character of the economies in Eastern and Western Europe are leading more people to start their own businesses. This volume, first published in 1987, highlights the trends developing over the closing decades of the twentieth century. Although business start-up requires financial and marketing skills, it also demands important physchological and sociological inputs. On the basis of detailed accounts of the relevant social processes, this volume describes the varied experiences of entrepreneurship as they are emerging among various groups in both Eastern and Western Europe including the unemployed, women, ethnic minorities and others. This book will be of interest to students of business studies and sociology.
In recent years economic activity has become increasingly globalized. One of the main instruments behind this process is the multinational enterprise. In The Globalization of Business, first published in 1993, John Dunning explores the latest issues in the world of international business and looks ahead at the remaining years of this century identifying the likely challenges of the future. What are the challenges posed by the technological, political and economic developments of the 1990s for international business? What are the implications of the opening up of new territories such as in Central and Eastern Europe and parts of China? To what extent are the competitive advantages of nation states increasingly coming to depend on the presence of multinational activity? What are the implications of the globalization of markets and production for the domestic economic policies of governments? This collection of essays will be vital reading to students of international business.
International Business is a well-established research field, in which regionalisation has gained prominence in the last decade. Because Europe is a market that shows specific patterns of highly advanced market integration, European Business is a subject in its own right and with its own research momentum. In particular, firms view Europe as a challenging, mostly – yet not entirely- mature market location that is subject to complexities that help reveal strategic corporate strengths and weaknesses. Europe represents a location that undergoes frequent and rapid change due to its geo-economic and geopolitical position This comprehensive reference volume brings together a global team of contibutors to analyze and overview the key issues, themes and phenomena that affect business in Europe. With interdisciplinary perspectives from key disciplines, the book covers a range of vital themes such as culture, entrepreneurship, identity, human rights and climate change. The selection of authors reflects the international scope of this book, and is drawn from institutions located in 17 countries across Europe. A unique resource, this book covers a region undergoing significant geoeconomic and geopolitical change, and provides a comprehensive guide to research students and scholars of business and the social sciences.
This edited collection, first published in 1991, focuses on the commercial relations, marketing structures and development of consumption that accompanied early industrial expansion. The papers examine aspects of industrial structure and work organisation, including women’s work, and highlight the conflict and compromise between work traditions and the emergence of a market culture. With an overarching introduction providing a background to European manufacturing, this title will be of particular interest to students of social and economic history researching early industrial Europe and the concurrent emergence of a material, consumer culture.
Asking “How alternative are alternative marketscapes?”, Volume 29 of Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth provides entrepreneurs and companies a concise understanding of alternative marketscapes through theoretical arguments and case studies, paving the way for development and success.
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.
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.
Israeli national neoliberalism has promoted innovation policies leading to an ostensible paradox: At the center is a startup nation with a vibrant and successful high-tech entrepreneurial ecosystem, accumulating resources and enabling constant growth. At the geographical and social periphery, there has emerged a parallel society with often-marginalized groups not able to keep up. In one of the most unequal countries with a high rate of poverty, entrepreneurial heroes are celebrated at the center, promoting a myth that all could be self-made successes. At the periphery, entrepreneurs are struggling to survive, often pushed into precarious working and living conditions. Applying critical theory discourse, this book illustrates how neoliberalism and entrepreneurship are intertwined and how the startup nation has evolved in Israel. It explores how national neoliberal state policies have targeted technological innovation as a tool to obtain a competitive advantage in the international arena rather than aiming at increasing economic achievements and well-being for all. It will demonstrate that the Israeli entrepreneurship scene exemplifies the existence of parallel entrepreneurial societal spaces, analyze the positionality of entrepreneurs belonging to a variety of groups that characterize Israeli society, and uncover structural disadvantages and related levels of precarity as well as existing links between entrepreneurial advantages and disadvantages, mobility and varying degrees of social marginality. Dark Sides of the Startup Nation sheds light onto the problematic and sometimes contradictory myth that entrepreneurship is meritocratic and that neoliberal capitalism provides everyone with equal opportunities to succeed. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, policy makers and students in the fields of entrepreneurship and small business management, responsibility and business ethics, and technology and innovation.
Corporate governance is an area of key importance for students of comparative management and international business. This is particularly relevant in analyses of the post-socialist economies of the East, where both governments and enterprises have undergone major structural transformation. This title was first published in 1994, following the Centre for Organisational Studies’ (COS) third Round Table, which discussed East-West business collaboration in relation to the management of organizations. As a result, the edited collection is designed to provide guidance for managers, in the East and West, to the kind of governance issues they might face when working together in the post-Soviet business world. Utilizing a series of case studies, the chapters represent a genuine dialogue between managers, consultants and academics who have worked on both sides of the former ideological divide.
