Anglia Ruskin University

Situating small business regulation: A longitudinal study of how small firms receive, understand and respond to regulation.

This interdisciplinary research responds to research gaps and adopts a longitudinal, multi-method framework to explore how small firms understand and respond over time to different forms of regulation in contrasting sectoral and geographic contexts. The novelty of the research thus lies in its attention to both the spatial and temporal context in which small firms operate and respond to regulation. The situated, contextually sensitive qualitative data produced has complemented existing statistical-based 'snapshot' surveys and was of empirical and theoretical significance to a range of academic audiences and policy makers in regional and national government, small business support organisations, consultant/lobbying bodies, legal organisations and trade unions.

Click here to read more about the REBEL project

The CURA-B project (acCURAte-Business) is a three year priority 1 EU ERDF PROJECT part-funded through the Joint Technical Secretariat INTERREG IVA 2 Mers programme to promote entrepreneurship and the development of new cross-border initiatives. The project will develop best practice models for the procurement, development and deployment of innovative AT-led service solutions for the social and health care markets.

Click here to read more about the CURA-B project

Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation has awarded competitive funding amounting to 580,000 Euros to Prof Teemu Kautonen (Institute for International Management Practice/CEDAR and University of Turku, Finland) and Dr Henri Hakala (University of Vaasa, Finland) for a two-year project on 'Valuable, Intangible and Prestigious Service Experiences' (2012-2014).

The project examines the role and nature of prestige-based experiences in customers' value-creation processes. Prestige refers to socially constructed value that represents an image that is congruent with the values and norms of the customer's associates and/or the social image that the customer wishes to project. A profound understanding of prestige and its determinants could have major implications for strategic management, and provide a viable alternative, or complement, to cost or technology driven strategies.

For more information about this project, please contact Prof Teemu Kautonen : teemu.kautonen@anglia.ac.uk

Within the socio-economic context of population ageing, the promotion of senior entrepreneurship - understood as business start-ups by individuals aged 50-plus - is a prospective policy option to prolong the working lives of ageing people, increase their social inclusion, reduce older-age unemployment and enhance the innovative capacity of the economy by employing the human and social capital of mature individuals through new innovative start-ups. However, the research on senior entrepreneurship is still at a nascent stage, thus lacking coherent research programmes that account for the full empirical heterogeneity of the phenomenon.

This research contributes to the closure of this knowledge gap by developing an inter-disciplinary research agenda to investigate the characteristics, scope, determinants and socio-economic contributions of senior entrepreneurship. The Academy of Finland funds this research with 500,000 Euros over the period 2009-2014. The principal investigator is Prof Teemu Kautonen (Institute for International Management Practice/CEDAR and University of Turku, Finland).

For more information about this project, please contact Prof Teemu Kautonen: teemu.kautonen@anglia.ac.uk