Standard explanations of the decisions made by new firm founders when acquiring financing to start ventures tend to refer to the efficiency and economic rationales underpinning such choices. In this paper, a pecking order approach is applied to twenty-six cases of new venture creation to test...

We explore patterns of take-up of Business Link services in Northamptonshire, a county in the East Midlands region of the UK. Our findings indicate a relationship between small firm growth and use of Business Link. The results suggest that newer firms that are larger and experiencing growth are...

Scenarios represent future possibilities or descriptions of ‘what might be’. This paper generates a series of possible futures based on an identified policy priority, namely the encouragement of increased levels of small business activity. Counterfactual thinking is used to challenge this...

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...