Journal of Enterprising Culture

This paper commences by discussing Small Business Assistance Programs (SBAPs) including why they are necessary, how they work and when they should be employed. This sets the fundamental parameters upon which to base the design of SBAPs. But there is little in the literature, apart from rudimentary planning models to help with strategic positioning of SBAPs in a government policy context. The Small Enterprise Environment Matrix (SEEM) is proposed as a conceptually simple yet potentially useful tool to help policy-makers. It is based on the popular portfolio/matrix approach to strategic decision-making.

Since the mid 1980s a steady stream of research studies have examined the marketing/entrepreneurship interface in SMEs. Whilst much of this work has concentrated on specific research issues surrounding the implementation of marketing in entrepreneurial SMEs, a focus of much of this work has been to establish the balance between the marketing and entrepreneurial orientations in such firms. Using a syncretised qualitative methodology the research reported in this paper draws on a sample of entrepreneurial SMEs in the agri-food sector. The research concludes that the entrepreneurial orientation is the dominant one and is particularly manifest in the strong sales focus of the companies studied. This suggests that, in entrepreneurial SMEs, it is perhaps, as so many studies have attempted to do, inappropriate to focus on determining the predominance of either orientation. Future research should instead focus on the interrelationship between the two in what is emerging as a distinctive brand of marketing, that is, entrepreneurial marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a traditional academic research model frequently used in scholarly papers and the implications of this model in restricting growth and quality of new knowledge generation. The paper contends a traditional academic research process (TARP) is evident in business and the other social science research. It identifies concerns about the process and how it restricts new theory development. The paper provides an alternative model, the higher academic research model (HARP) which is characterised by closer interaction between research processes and phenomena under investigation. The paper concludes by demonstrating the increased output achievement of the new model.

This paper describes the characteristics of Chinese female entrepreneurs in Hong Kong. Personal interviews have been used to study the female entrepreneurs' motivations in terms of reasons for start up, and their personality qualities in terms of personality profile and personality type. In order to elucidate the distinct characteristics of the female entrepreneurs in this study, a sample of males is included and the findings of previous studies on female entrepreneurs are also employed for comparisons and contrasts.

Ths findings tend to point out that, although times have changed and the environment may be more accepting of women in the workplace, there are issues, including strong orientation to family and subordination to male family members at work, that continue to be gender specific to Chinese female entrepreneurs. Although gender seems pertinent to understanding the reasons for start up, personality type is not significant. There is no one specific personality type that can be described as a female or male entrepreneurs' personality. But the empirical-based typology of personality types derived from this study is useful in understanding the major types of entrepreneurs.

A dedicated conceptual model was planned and designed for women entrepreneurs training and development in rural China. The model programme involved three phases in its implementation: Phase 1, the training of Chinese national experts by international experts; Phase 2, the trained national experts training township and village enterprise women entrepreneur/managers in a pilot test; and Phase 3, Chinese national experts training the national trainers. The expectation is for the programme to be disseminated into the provinces and subsequently into all rural China. The programme was initiated by the United National Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in collaboration with the All China Women's Federation and its training institutions. The purpose of this Training-of-Trainers Programme was for promoting women's participation in the modernization of China.