Changes have been made to systems of publicly funded business advice to implement a 'strategic sounding board' role for business advisers. Previous literature has shown how this role could be modelled in a 'coupole'. The 'coupole' administers a programme but does not deliver it. The shifting of...

Sarason et al. [Sarason, Y., Dean, 1, Dillard, J.F., 2006. Entrepreneurship as the nexus of individual and opportunity: a structuration view. J. Bus. Venturing, 21, 286-305] build upon Shane and Venkataraman's [Shane, S., Venkataraman, S., 2000. The promise of entrepreneurship as a held of...

In England, publicly supported advice to small firms is organized primarily through the Business Link (BL) network. Using the programme theory underlying this business support, we develop four propositions and test these empirically using data from a new survey of over 3000 English SMEs. We find...

Purpose – This paper aims to consider the methods used by publicly supported business advisers to assess their client businesses. These business advisers are increasingly required to diagnose the problem or opportunities that face their clients before recommending types of business support....

This paper argues that there have been three distinct phases of enterprise policy in the UK in the past 30 years: the 1970s saw no effective enterprise policy ('policy off'); the 1980s witnessed an attempt to increase the number of start-ups; and the 1990s saw a concentration on 'business...

Sarason et al. [Sarason, Y., Dean, T., Dillard, J.F., 2006. Entrepreneurship as the nexus of individual and opportunity: a structuration view. J. Bus. Venturing, 21, 286-305] build upon Shane and Venkataraman's [Shane, S., Venkataraman, S., 2000. The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of...

Changes have been made to systems of publicly funded business advice to implement a ‘strategic sounding board’ role for business advisers. Previous literature has shown how this role could be modelled in a ‘coupole’. The ‘coupole’ administers a programme but does not deliver it. The...