The 'imaginary' challenge of remaking subnational governance: Regional identity and contested city-region-building in the UK

With the structuring of subnational governance driven primarily by economic goals, an issue that has become increasingly overlooked is that of identity. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders from the Sheffield City Region, the paper builds on Jones and Woods’ framework of 2013 of ‘material’ and ‘imagined’ coherence, demonstrating the ‘imaginary’ challenge of remaking subnational governance in the context of rescaling from regions to city-regions. It shows that historical regional identities can persist even in the absence of associated material components of governance, and that rescaling can create asymmetries between material and imagined coherence, resulting in competing imaginaries that hinder the new subnational arrangements

Distinguishing micro-businesses from SMEs: a systematic review of growth constraints

Purpose – Micro-businesses account for a large majority of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). However, they remain comparatively under-researched. This paper seeks to take stock of the extant literature on growth challenges, and to distinguish the growth constraints facing micro-business as a specific subset of SMEs from those facing larger SMEs. Design/methodology/approach – The study consists of a systematic review of 59 peer-reviewed articles on SME growth. Findings – Micro-businesses distinguish themselves from larger SMEs by being owner-manager entrepreneur (OME) centric and are constrained by a tendency to be growth-averse, underdeveloped capabilities in key business areas, underdeveloped OME capabilities, and often inadequate business support provision. Research limitations/implications – The use of keywords, search strings, and specific databases may have limited the number of papers identified as relevant by the review. However, the findings are valuable for understanding micro-businesses as a subset of SMEs, providing directions for future research and generating implications for policy to support the scaling up of micro-businesses. Originality/value – The review provides a renewed foundation for academic analysis of micro-business growth, highlighting how micro-businesses are distinct from larger SMEs. At present, no systematic literature review on this topic has previously been published and the study develops a number of theoretical and policy implications

Resilient research in the field: Insights and lessons from adapting qualitative research projects during the COVID-19 pandemic

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen the implementation of unprecedented social distancing measures, restricting social interaction and with it the possibility for conducting face-to-face qualitative research. This paper provides lessons from a series of qualitative research projects that were adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure their continuation and completion. By reflecting on our experiences and discussing the opportunities and challenges presented by crises to the use of a number of qualitative research methods, we provide a series of insights and lessons for proactively building resilience into the qualitative research process. We show that reflexivity, responsiveness, adaptability, and flexibility ensured continuity in the research projects and highlighted distinct advantages to using digital methods, providing lessons beyond the COVID-19 context. The paper concludes with reflections on research resilience and adaptation during crises

The challenges of entrepreneurship in peripheral post-industrial places

The UK has a long history of spatial disparity in economic prosperity across its regions which, despite periodic shifts in its geographies of economic development governance, have persisted. As such, a key question that continues to preoccupy economic geographers is why some local and regional economies are more capable of renewal and transformation than others which remain locked in decline or underperformance. Research has hitherto highlighted the importance of ‘place’ and institutional context in shaping the outcomes of economic development. At the same time, the role of entrepreneurship as an engine of economic development is widely acknowledged, yet there is significant heterogeneity in the nature and level of entrepreneurial activity across places, with previous research highlighting the key role of institutions in shaping its outcomes. The thesis addresses these debates through a focus on entrepreneurship in peripheral post-industrial places (PPIPs), with the aim of examining the institutional challenges to fostering more entrepreneurial and resilient PPIPs

Implications and impacts of the crisis on micro businesses and their future resilience

Small businesses are widely regarded as an important aspect of the productivity puzzle in the UK, representing over 98 per cent of the business base. At the start of 2019 SMEs under 250 employees accounted for 61 per cent of total employment and 52 per cent of turnover in the private sector, with micro businesses and sole traders employing under 10 accounting for 33 per cent and 22 per cent respectively. The concept of this long tail of less productive businesses is one that has come to capture the imagination of researchers and policymakers alike. Current analysis of the productivity puzzle suggests that this tail is considerably longer in the UK when compared to elsewhere. The long tail of companies was described by Haldane (2017) as those firms with low and slow productivity growth which are unable to keep up, much less catch up with frontier companies. However, the composition of the long tail is contested. As these numbers imply, it is true that small businesses are inevitably less efficient than their larger counterparts which benefit from scale and specialisation. However, the highly heterogenous base of small unproductive firms is not responsible for all of the UK’s productivity issues. Many of the smallest businesses have borne the brunt of the immediate economic shock resulting from the Covid-19 global health crisis. However, this diversity of small businesses means that while some have experienced very dramatic reductions in turnover and needed to make temporary or possibly permanent adjustments to employment, others have found themselves presented with new opportunities with potential for productivity enhancement. Furthermore, supporting sole traders and micro businesses is not straightforward – a fact borne out in small business policy over the past three decades. The first section of this chapter begins by reflecting on the nature of sole traders and micro businesses, before the second section reviews emerging evidence and insights as to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on micro businesses. A third section discusses the immediate responses and experiences of these businesses. A fourth section discusses the wider economic outlook and the prospects for recovery in a post-Covid world where productive sole traders and micro businesses continue to be important to the economy

Technological trajectories as an outcome of the structure-agency interplay at the national level: Insights from emerging varieties of AI

Development studies have paid less attention to the role of technological innovations and we are yet to understand how, and more importantly why, technological trajectories differ across countries. This gap becomes sharper as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly important in addressing many world development challenges. Drawing on insights from institutional work literature, this paper develops a structure-agency interplay framework to unravel the various trajectories of emerging technologies at the national level and examines the development and diffusion of AI in Canada and China. The findings show that Canada’s stable institutional environment, reinforced through institutional work by various actors, generated a national AI trajectory driven by technology development through a strong focus on scientific research and ethics, with slower organic commercialisation of AI. In China, a dynamic and loose institutional structure characterised by lax regulations, low entry barriers, and high openness to novelties has resulted in a market-driven AI trajectory focused on technology commercialisation, with domestic digital giants and the government as dominant players. National-level dynamics in formal institutions, informal institutions, technologies, and actor strategies determine heterogeneous approaches to technology development and diffusion, giving rise to varieties of technological trajectories. The levels of institutionalisation exert different forces and create different spaces for institutional work across different geographical contexts

An institutional taxonomy of adoption of innovation in the classic professions

The study of technical innovation in Professional Services has attracted growing interest among scholars, who have sought to analyze the process of organizational change and service transformation. However, very little attention has been devoted to understanding the process of adoption and diffusion of technical innovation in professional sectors. In this paper, we suggest that the relevance and peculiarity of institutional dynamics at play in the professional sectors warrant a specific focus aimed at laying out how they affect adoption and diffusion of technical innovation. In particular, we highlight that cultural-cognitive and normative pillars, embedded in the classic or regulated professions, may significantly insulate professionals from efficient-choice lenses and act as either drivers or barriers of adoption of technical innovations depending on the nature of the technology in question. Our proposed hypothesis is that institutional mechanisms act as drivers for the adoption of trajectorial innovations i.e. technologies that improve existing sets of practices and routines, and as barriers for paradigmatic innovations i.e. technologies that substantively alter existing practices and/or strip away certain tasks from the hands of professionals. Finally, we illustrate the role that social norms play as transmission mechanism of cultural-cognitive and normative pressures