Value-adding and value-extracting entrepreneurship at the margins

Empirical data is reported from two case studies on the methods used to establish and grow the businesses of two entrepreneurs operating in very different environments: one legitimate, the other illegitimate. Both utilize strong social skills to legitimize their behaviours but neither can be considered as mainstream or conventional entrepreneurial actors. The findings suggest that, despite the very different outcomes associated with their actions, both entrepreneurs exhibit similar enterprising skills and managerial capabilities as found in entrepreneurs engaged in non-marginal activities

In search of Montsalvatch: making sense of interviewing farmers

This paper presents a personal account of how an individualized qualitative research process attempts to understand farmers. A story of how the author interacts with and interviews farmers in order to understand how they and the narrator constructs meaning about what it is to be a farmer and the ‘parallel world’ of the farmer. Explores some methodological issues and problems about framing farmers as entrepreneurs

Statistical properties of inelastic Lorentz gas

The inelastic Lorentz gas in cooling states is studied. It is found that the inelastic Lorentz gas is localized and that the mean square displacement of the inelastic Lorentz gas obeys a power of a logarithmic function of time. It is also found that the scaled position distribution of the inelastic Lorentz gas has an exponential tail, while the distribution is close to the Gaussian near the peak. Using a random walk model, we derive an analytical expression of the mean square displacement as a function of time and the restitution coefficient, which well agrees with the data of our simulation. The exponential tail of the scaled position distribution function is also obtained by the method of steepest descent.Comment: 31pages,9figures, to appear Journal of Physical Society of Japan Vol.70 No.7 (2001

'I've got those empty diary blues': a wee case study of performance management in a Glasgow office

Friedrich Nietzsche's writings are currently threatened in that he is he treated only as a philosopher or a poet, and his relationship with twentieth century politics and latterly Management theory is largely ignored, excepting of course when he is held to be responsible for the growth in Fascism. In this paper an attempt will be made to show that Nietzsche should not simply be considered as the deracine par excellence with no interest with more general humanitarian concerns. This paper presents a background to Nietzsche and his relationship to Managerialism and then provides a story written in Glaswegian argot of the relationship between a recruit to a Law Enforcement Office in Glasgow, Scotland and his new Manager. An interesting tale about performance management, illustrates how the abuse of power hides personal and organizational dysfunctionality. Another key feature in the twist at the end of the tale is the manifestation of simulacra in performance measures relating to inspection tasks, where we see that 'work not done but recorded' becomes more important, more 'real' than 'work done but not recorded'. This is the excess of history. The story is written in the Glaswegian vernacular partly as homage to the renowned author James Kelman, but more significantly in an attempt take us closer to the lived experience of the actors - as opposed to the more usual sanitised accounts which abound in the management literature. The language is surprisingly 'industrial' in what is regarded as a 'professional' setting

Business support for farmers: an evaluation of the Farm Cornwall Project

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an account of a Farm Support Project in Cornwall which provides support, advice and an outreach facility for farmers in the Penwith district of Cornwall. It also discusses how effective such schemes are, particularly in an external environment which poses threats to the farm sector in the UK. Three kinds of questions about the nature of farming and the status of farmers are posed. The first set of questions includes polarisations about the hegemonic position of farmers. Second, macro-economic, and thus policy, questions concerning the economic “footprint” of the farmer and the farm's relationship with the economy are posed in Cornwall. The third set of questions concerns the economic role and entrepreneurial capability of the farmer in Cornwall. Design/methodology/approach – A desk study of the scheme's objectives, a literature review, and interviews with 27 stakeholders were reported on specifically the results of the interviews. Findings – The Penwith Scheme encompasses an integrated approach to providing business support to farmers including: sign-posting specialist advisers, the facilitation of training assistance with major grant applications, the development of “social capital” through to help in accessing sources of social support

Alien Registration- Mcelwee, Agnes G. (Houlton, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/34767/thumbnail.jp

Exploring Entrepreneurial Skills and Competencies in Farm Tourism

Diversification to farm tourism is increasingly seen as a viable development strategy to promote a more diverse and sustainable rural economy and to counter declining farm incomes. However, our understanding of the dynamics of the modern farm tourism business and the entrepreneurial and competitive skills farmers require in making the transition from agriculture to a diversified - and service based - enterprise remains limited. Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore the range of skills and competencies that farmers in the North West of England identify as important when adopting a diversification strategy to farm tourism. With the findings indicating that that whilst a range of managerial skills are valued by farmers, they lack many of the additional business and entrepreneurial competencies required for success. Moreover, this paper acknowledges the need to generate consensus on the requisite skill-set that farm tourism operators require, along with a need for a currently fragmented rural tourism literature to acknowledge the significance of rural entrepreneurship and the characteristics of successful farmers and farm tourism ventures

Identifying patterns of item missing survey data using latent groups: An observational study

Objectives: To examine whether respondents to a survey of health and physical activity and potential determinants could be grouped according to the questions they missed, known as ‘item missing’. Design: Observational study of longitudinal data. Setting: Residents of Brisbane, Australia. Participants: 6901 people aged 40–65 years in 2007. Materials and methods: We used a latent class model with a mixture of multinomial distributions and chose the number of classes using the Bayesian information criterion. We used logistic regression to examine if participants’ characteristics were associated with their modal latent class. We used logistic regression to examine whether the amount of item missing in a survey predicted wave missing in the following survey. Results: Four per cent of participants missed almost one-fifth of the questions, and this group missed more questions in the middle of the survey. Eighty-three per cent of participants completed almost every question, but had a relatively high missing probability for a question on sleep time, a question which had an inconsistent presentation compared with the rest of the survey. Participants who completed almost every question were generally younger and more educated. Participants who completed more questions were less likely to miss the next longitudinal wave. Conclusions: Examining patterns in item missing data has improved our understanding of how missing data were generated and has informed future survey design to help reduce missing data