This paper is concerned with small business development in rural areas and the policy approaches currently being used to support them. The key question underlying the paper is the extent to which small businesses located in rural areas have distinctive support needs, associated with the...

The authors investigate the relative roles of a number of influences on workplace health and safety in small firms and, more specifically, the adoption of compliance-related improvement measures. From findings drawn from a survey of over a thousand British small enterprises, marked variations in...

This paper investigates whether or not there is evidence of market failure in the provision of bank finance to Scottish SMEs. The key question is whether SMEs have been experiencing difficulties because of the unsuitability of the business case they were putting to the banks or because of...

This paper presents recent research assessing the impact of the financial crisis on young and established technology-based small firms (TBSFs) and considers whether their ability to contribute to economic growth is being affected by ongoing problems in obtaining external finance. It reports on...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine state promotion of private sector development in China, with particular emphasis on local configurations of support and service provision. Design/methodology/approach – Via analysis of two cases, constraints on the development of small- to...