Small and medium enterprise development: borrowing from elsewhere? a research and development agenda – a comment on Allan Gibb’s paper

This paper comments on Allan Gibb’s keynote address to the Small Business and Enterprise Conference earlier this year reproduced in this issue of the Journal. Gibb offers a critical assessment of the ways in which small business theory and research and policy making have handled the transfer of ideas as a basis for small business support policies. The arguments offered are hard hitting and persuasive, especially as an explanation for the poor record of support programmes in transitional economies. This response extends Gibb’s arguments, drawing out some implications. For instance, one of his themes is that small business theorising and research needs to give more attention to cultural and non‐economic phenomena, and this paper suggests ways in which this needs to occur. It concludes that, by accepting Gibb’s arguments, policy making would be more effective and small business theorising and research would be stronger, achieving closer relations with other social science disciplines.