Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

We investigate economic and subjective effects of public business advice delivered to nascent entrepreneurs in Germany. We analyze data from the Thuringian Founder Study, an interdisciplinary research project on innovative entrepreneurship. Employing cluster analysis, we first explore the actual scope and intensity of business advice used. Two distinct groups of policy take-up can be identified: (1) use of intense assistance across all areas, and (2) use of less-intensive assistance being limited to operational issues. Then we analyze personal entrepreneurial resources (human and social capital, entrepreneurial personality profile) as predictors of take-up and perceived usefulness taking into account the different patterns of utilized advice. Finally, we assess economic effects by studying subsequent business performance employing propensity score matching. We cannot reveal that business advice translated into better start-up performance, but our results indicate that advice may help founders with fewer resources to overcome barriers in the founding process. We find that a lack of personal entrepreneurial resources predicts take-up of business advice in general as well as perceived usefulness of comprehensive business advice.

This study presents survey evidence on the magnitude and determinants of tax compliance costs in Flemish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Data were obtained from an Internet questionnaire among members of a professional network of Flemish entrepreneurs, called VOKA. Analyzing a sample of 151 Flemish SMEs, we find that the tax compliance costs—exceeding over 7% of gross added value—are relatively high. Value-added tax, labor taxes, and corporate taxes are the main components of tax compliance costs. In addition, our evidence confirms the regressivity hypothesis, according to which smaller companies face relatively higher compliance costs. Furthermore, industry, age, and the proportion of blue-collar workers prove to be determining factors of relative compliance costs. Our study concludes by formulating a number of policy recommendations that might contribute to lower compliance costs.

The vast majority of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across EU and OECD regions are medium-to-low-tech firms, and by far the main type of innovation that SMEs undergo can be described as incremental innovations whereby small changes in processes or management procedures are ongoing over a period of time. Despite this, regional innovation initiatives are recognised to be narrowly focused as well as biased towards high-tech firms and ‘radical’ innovations whilst incremental innovation assumes a secondary role. If SMEs are to achieve their growth potential, and especially manufacturing-based SMEs, we argue that an incremental approach to innovation, at least initially, is crucial. It is our contention that higher education institutions—by virtue of their knowledge base, mentoring capabilities, and access to resources—should seek to position themselves as key ‘practical implementation’ players for this form of regional innovation. On the basis of research and practical implementation projects carried out in medium-to-low-tech SMEs located in the UK North West, we present an interventionist framework to assist manufacturing-based SMEs to develop and implement sustainable agile growth strategies, and consider the policy implications of such an approach.

Government procurement policy in the UK is an uneasy mixture of different policy legacies, where the dominant objectives of cost-efficiency and value for money compete with alternatives which emphasise public procurement as central to innovation policy and/or a critical demand-side instrument in local and regional economic development. Quantitative analysis of which types of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) benefit, and how, from different levels of government as a customer is, however, rare in the UK (and indeed more widely across the EU). Utilising data from the Federation of Small Businesses 2008 biannual survey, we address this important task. Results reveal different patterns of procurement depending on the territorial scale of government, in terms of both the innovativeness of SMEs supported through public procurement as well as demand-side contributions to local and regional economic development, allowing us to judge future possible policy directions with regard to the use of public procurement.

Business start-up is promoted to the labour-market disadvantaged internationally. This policy increasingly draws on the concept of social inclusion. In this paper we define ‘enterprise inclusion’ policy as situating the chance to start a viable business as a right and supporting the multiply disadvantaged to overcome strong barriers to enterprise. We draw on the resource-based view of entrepreneurship to argue that viable business ownership is contingent on access to resources. We explore how access to a primary business resource—start-up finance—relates to intersecting social disadvantages. We report a complex pattern of financial exclusion. Rather than supporting the concept of interconnecting yet separate social divisions, as argued under social inclusion theory, this supports a class-based interpretation of exclusion from enterprise finance. New research and policy agendas are outlined.

Flyvbjerg argues that power often overrides rationality as power wielders frequently portray ‘rationalisation’ as rationality to define ‘truths’ that justify their actions. When power is great, rationality diminishes. In confrontation, rationality yields to power. In this paper I contest these arguments. Through differentiating the concept of power into ‘outcome power’ held by those with privileged access to authority and ‘social power’, the power of resistance vested in everyone, and by distinguishing the concept of rationality into ‘technical’, ‘strategic’ (rationalisation), and ‘value’ rationalities, I assert that, in confrontations, individuals with social power can counteract outcome power and develop their value rationality to reproblematise issues for transformative changes. A study of the reclamation debates in Hong Kong illustrates how social power has augmented value rationality, challenging the government's outcome power and its rationalisation for further harbour reclamation, reproblematising the harbour as a unique natural heritage feature worthy of protection by law.

With this paper we aim to further our understanding of local environmental governing by analysing green inside activists who use expert-based authority, networks, and a professional position within public administration to green government policy and action from the inside. Using new survey data, we identify and analyse who these actors are and whether they matter for local environmental governing in Sweden. The results show that green inside activists operate within 23% of the Swedish municipalities and that these municipalities score higher on three different measurements of environmental governing performance, which supports the conclusion that green inside activists do make a difference. We also show that green inside activists differ from other public officials working with environmental issues in that they are more frequently involved in policy making, have more extensive horizontal and vertical networks, and promote societal changes to a greater degree. We end by raising key questions concerning the democratic legitimacy of these actors.

Do the local labour market policies of municipalities matter? The scientific debate on such policies mainly concentrates on (1) the effectiveness of active labour market policies and programmes in terms of improving the labour market chances of jobless workers, and (2) the organization of labour market policy in terms of governance, management, and coordination or cooperation with neighbouring municipalities, educational institutes, etc. In this paper we explore both dimensions. We start by describing recent reforms in the Netherlands in which the financial responsibility for social assistance was decentralized to 443 municipalities. The effects of the labour market strategies of municipalities on social assistance inflow and outflow are then identified, measured, and compared in an empirical analysis. We find positive effects of control, activation, employment creation, and coordination strategies on social assistance inflow and outflow. This suggests that the activities of municipalities do matter, although the effects are small and differ across labour market strategies.

In this paper territoriality is studied in the context of contemporary spatial development theories and practices in the European Union (EU). Primarily, territoriality is examined as a strategy for governing spatial development, and the focus is on the relationships between different modes of territoriality and governing. Territoriality is conceptualized bounded, networked, and fluid territory, and this is indicated in practice with examples of regional development zones (RDZs) in Finland. Potentially, RDZs could be tools to link the current territorial concepts of EU spatial development and poststructuralist spatial planning theories into practices for governing spatial development. Fluid territories—characterized by flexible boundaries, policy integration, and ‘governance of governance’ – emerge in spatial development theories and strategies. However, it is challenging to find proper tools for implementing them in practice. A broader consideration of agency, participation, and bottom-up development are crucial for fluid territory and its governing.

The problem of water overallocation in many regions of the world involves how to include environmental flow provisions for long-term sustainability of river systems, especially under scarce supply conditions. Market mechanisms have provided pathways for returning water to rivers for environmental use. We argue that it is important to consider how both market mechanisms and initial water allocation models contribute to achieving satisfactory environmental flow outcomes. The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) in Australia has had policy processes applied to it for almost twenty years to address these issues, and provides an excellent basis for case-study analysis. Two MDB case studies are used to consider differences in the interpretation and implementation of environmental flow requirements, and the potential for institutional inertia of the systems within which water markets operate. We identify two simplified models from these case studies—one prioritising environmental rights above consumptive extraction and the other prioritising consumptive and environmental rights equally. However, neither of these case-study models provides the full environmental flow spectrum of base in-stream flows to over-bank flush events. Our findings suggest that combining allocation and market-based rights (a third model) offers an effective means to deliver full-spectrum environmental flows. If governments provide prioritised environmental rights for base in-stream ecosystem benefits, together with targeted temporary and permanent water market acquisitions to meet environmental needs associated with over-bank floods and flushes, there will be lower potential for shortfalls relative to targeted environmental flow outcomes.