Wapshott, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-9462-0782 (2018) Small and medium-sized enterprise policy: Designed to fail? Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 36 (4). pp. 750-772. ISSN 2399-6544
Abstract
Significant doubts persist over the effectiveness of government policy to increase the numbers or performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK economy. We analyse UK political manifestoes from 1964-2015 to examine the development of SME policy in political discourse. We do this by analysing how the broadly-defined category of ‘SME’ has been characterised in the manifestoes and assess these characterisations in relation to the empirical evidence base. We highlight three consistent themes in UK political manifestoes during 1964-2015 where SMEs have been characterised as having the potential for growth, struggling to access finance and being over-burdened by regulation. We argue that homogenising the broad range of businesses represented by the SME category and characterising them in these terms misrepresents them, undermining policies developed in relation to this mischaracterisation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This is an author-produced version of a paper accepted for publication in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | SME; policy; growth; finance; regulation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 16 Jun 2017 15:35 |
Last Modified: | 19 Apr 2021 13:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/2399654417719288 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:117710 |