Informality and employment relationships in small firms: humour, ambiguity and straight-talking

This paper presents in-depth qualitative research on three small professional service firms whose owner-managers sought to introduce greater degrees of formality in their firms’ working practices and employment relationships. We focus on humour as an ambiguous medium of informality, yet viewed by owner-managers as a tool at their disposal. However, while early studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises support such a functionalist view, our findings indicate its significant limitations. We argue that humour obscures but does not resolve disjunctive interests and it remains stubbornly ambiguous and resistant to attempts to functionalize it. Our findings contribute to studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises by challenging its utility as a means of managerial control or employee resistance. They also contribute to studies of employment relationships by exploring humour's potentially disruptive influence within the formality–informality span, especially as small and medium-sized enterprises seek greater degrees of formalization, with implications for how those relationships are conducted and (re)negotiated on an ongoing basis

From entrepreneur to owner-manager

The demands of not only starting but building a business commonly invoke the independence, risk-taking and dynamism associated with entrepreneurs. However it can be argued that, as enterprises grow, mature and become more established, the role of everyday business management requires a different set of skills, or areas of emphasis, from those associated with a start-up. This Chapter focuses on the challenging transformation from the start-up phase to the everyday management of a business with employees. Importantly, this involves adapting to the demands placed upon an owner-manager, the need for demonstrating leadership and for engaging with employment relationships

How to avoid describing your radiological research study incorrectly

This review identifies and examines terms used to describe a radiological research “study” or “trial”. A taxonomy of clinical research descriptions is explained with reference to medical imaging examples. Because many descriptive terms have precise methodological implications, it is important that these terms are understood by readers and used correctly by researchers, so that the reader is not misled

How do regulations affect SMEs? A review of the qualitative evidence and a research agenda

The effects of regulations on SMEs have garnered significant political attention internationally yet, in the academic literature, these effects remain contested. This article presents findings from a systematic literature review of qualitative evidence on the effects of regulation on SMEs. We set out the strengths of qualitative approaches in relation to other, more dominant and influential quantitative approaches. We conduct a thematic synthesis of the qualitative research to develop a conceptual framework that provides a processual, embedded understanding of the effects of regulations on SMEs. The conceptual framework highlights four key, interconnected processes: identification-interpretation; strategisation; negotiation; adaptation. This conceptual framework generates insights into dynamic and potentially indirect effects of regulations in relation to a complex array of influences external to and within the business. On the basis of these insights we propose a new research agenda

Being a Self-Employed Older Woman: From Discrimination to Activism

This article presents an autobiographical account of an older woman’s lived experience of self-employment. Little is known about women who experience ongoing self-employment into their 50s and beyond. Shoshanna’s personal narrative describes her experiences and the challenges she has faced as she reflects upon her attempts to grow and sustain her business and the implications of ageism and gender inequality in laying a claim to entrepreneurship. The narrative proceeds to reflect on her activist work, as it is constructed through the creation of a social enterprise to support older people. Shoshanna’s narrative provides valuable insights into the intersection of age and gender in self-employment moving from discrimination to active support

Radiating black hole solutions in arbitrary dimensions

We prove a theorem that characterizes a large family of non-static solutions to Einstein equations in $N$-dimensional space-time, representing, in general, spherically symmetric Type II fluid. It is shown that the best known Vaidya-based (radiating) black hole solutions to Einstein equations, in both four dimensions (4D) and higher dimensions (HD), are particular cases from this family. The spherically symmetric static black hole solutions for Type I fluid can also be retrieved. A brief discussion on the energy conditions, singularities and horizons is provided.Comment: RevTeX 9 pages, no figure