Entrepreneurial Management in Small Firms
- Ian Chaston - University of Plymouth, UK
Small Business/Entrepreneurship
This original and exciting new text examines the crucial role of innovation and entrepreneurship in achieving growth and ongoing success in the small business sector.
Key Features
- Examines the processes by which small businesses identify new opportunities, evolve appropriate marketing strategies, develop new products/services, and successfully launch these into the market
- Includes a chapter dedicated to social entrepreneurship and family firms
- Explores issues of Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility
- Packed with supporting "real world" case studies including Apple's iPod, Facebook and YouTube to illustrate how entrepreneurial firms succeed
- Offers learning features including learning aims, summaries, points for discussion, and further reading
- Provides a companion website with instructors' manual and PowerPoint slides and access to full-text journal articles for students
Entrepreneurial Management in Small Business will prove a practical and engaging read for all higher-level undergraduate and postgraduate students on entrepreneurship courses, and those with an interest in the broader SME, enterprise and small business management fields.
Recognizes that small businesses are not just "little big businesses", that they define a relatively unique management context … a useful tool for studying entrepreneurial management in small firms, packed with pertinent case studies
Professor Pauric McGowan
Director of the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship (NICENT), University of Ulster
This textbook carefully examines how small businesses identify new entrepreneurial opportunities, undertake effective market research, develop new products and launch them into the market successfully with appropriate marketing strategies...Undoubtably the author has made an effort to arouse the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of business school students in their future careers. In addition they will be convinced that the abstract theoretical concpets in the book are actually adapted by different industrial sectors in the real worlds
Jinmin Wang
The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Good table of contents and structure.
The book does not using a context of asian/develop nation
This book works well as an overview of how popular business theories can be applied to SMEs. The prose style is rather wordy and is more suited to study at the postgraduate level. The case studies are too brief to really explore the concepts - fewer case studies, which are more thoroughly applied would have been helpful.
Echoing the books early reviews, "this text recognises that small businesses are not just little big businesses" and in doing so, Chaston offers an excellent addition to any undergraduate or postgraduate entrepreneurship reading list.
The companion website is one of the most detailed and informative I have seen - with links to 'full-text SAGE journal articles' on a chapter by chapter basis.
Unlike the standard texts designed to help write a business plan, Chaston takes the critical perspective and analyses the realities of small business management. Through the use of short case studies and grounded writing Chaston delivers a practical text that offers both academic rigour and a strong business focus making it ideal for final year undergraduate, postgraduate and professional studies.
Insightful text easy to understand for students with up-to-date examples.
This is a well written book with many valuable insights. However, not enough of the text is relevant to the MBA participants (much really only applies to those working in a small business environment, which is the book's target market) to adopt the book as the core text. I will be recommending the book as a supplementary text and believe that it is a useful toolbox for small business managers.
The content of the course it was inteded to (Principles of Entrepreneurship) will remain the same.
This is a useful text that touches upon many key issues around Small business management. Students have particularly found the case studies to be beneficial.
