This text provides a comprehensive introduction to small businesses: the changing business environment in which they emerge and operate, the nature of entrepreneurship and the practical business of managing a small firm. Acknowledgements, The Small Business Environment, Introduction, Self-Employment and Small Firms, The Enterprise Culture: The Socio-Economic Context of Small Firms, Small-Business Policy and Support and Governance, The Social and Cultural World of Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and the Small Firm, Initiating Entrepreneurship, Business Start-Up: Theory and Practice and Policy, The Psychology of the Entrepreneur, Family and Enterprise, Gender and Enterprise, Ethnicity and Enterprise, Franchising and Enterprise, Technical Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, Entrepreneurship in Transitional Economies, Management and the Small Firm, Strategy and the Small Firm, People and the Small Firm, Training and the Small Firm, Marketing and the Small Firm, Networking and the Small Firm, Information and Communication Technology in the Small Firm, Growth and Development in the Small Firm, Internationalization and the Small Firn, References, Index.