Social and economic aspects of transition processes have been the focus of theoretical and empirical study for about two decades. After the fall of communism and state-planned economic systems, new market and democratic government systems were introduced with controversial results. There is an abundant literature on institutional issues that emerged during those transition processes. Most researchers have argued that the success of the transformation is country-specific and path-dependent. The countries of the Western Balkans shared some problems with other transitional countries, yet have also been troubled by a series of conflicts with far-reaching consequences. Many Western Balkan problems have been direct products of the complex model of transition that was applied, as well as of the institutional vacuums and democratic deficits created in the wake of the collapse of state structures. The Western Balkan states have been stabilized politically as they put their efforts into accessing international integrations such as the EU and NATO. The integration process speeded up reforms, yet economies across the region still lag behind other transition countries and are losing competitive edge in the world market. The situation in the 1990s resulted in weak national legal structures providing fertile grounds for the emerging class of the ‘entrepreneur-oligarch’ including wartime and political loyalists, and those close to various networks of organized crime. This contributed to the phenomenon of ‘state capture’ in which the business of a country’s elite shapes the rules of the economic game and

Tourism industry in the last three decades has benefited directly from the new economic order that has emerged in post-industrial society in which tourist activity has become a privileged production space as it has turned into one of the sophisticated occupations of the service sector.The changing structure of tourism consumption is, amongst other forces, underpinned by particular social changes of consumers.This new opportunity is a new challenge for these businesses as the volatile and less predictable trading environment places for the owner’s strategies for managing small operations. This book, based on an extensive empirical research offers a rare reference for understanding the position of small tourism firms’ development, with an ultimate aim to advance theory relating to small tourism firms by the synthesis of concepts drawn from the amalgamation of current paradigms evident within the management, small firms, and tourism literature. In the book, the author argues that factors that contribute to small tourism business management practice and performance are rather complex and multi-dimensional in nature, and not solely limited to owner/manager managerial ability.

Business incubation facilities continue to proliferate around the world as governments and institutions seek to derive suggested economic and social benefits, but whether incubators 'add value' translated into the national/regional assets including intellectual capital, remains a vexed question. We contribute to this debate by considering the relationships between incubator outputs, investor objectives and managerial perceptions of the role of incubation in Scottish business incubators. We develop a novel analysis of the portability and tangibility of incubator outputs in the course of our discussion. Case study and interview evidence indicate that a 'multiple investor' model predominates in Scotland; that different investors' objectives are frequently either prima facie or potentially incongruent; and that managers adopt a variety of strategies to deal with incongruities with consequent implications for business incubators' outputs. We discuss the relevance of our approach for the evaluation of business incubation and the implications of our analysis for policy makers.

Jovo Ateljevic and Stephen Page Eds., Tourism and Entrepreneurship: International Perspectives (Oxford: Elsevier, 2009), ISBN: 978 0 7506 8635 8

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial behaviour of small tourism businesses and their ability to contribute to regional development in the context of a transitional economy.Design/methodology/approach – The research, by combining in‐depth interviews and a survey, reports on a case study of Wairarapa, a region of New Zealand that has recently seen a large expansion in the tourism sector.Findings – The paper identifies a number of important criteria for the effective interaction of private‐public sectors as well as illustrating how small tourism firm owners are facing challenges in one of the most liberal economic environments whilst taking action to ensure periphery endurance.Originality/value – Inductive theory or a bottom‐up model for regional development provides the conceptual structure for the research. The paper argues that the related paradigm is increasingly underpinned by entrepreneurial behaviour of a multiplicity of stakeholders in rural localities where tourism i...

As part of ongoing research, this paper attempts to explain how a nongovernmental organization (NGO) engages in activities of social and institutional entrepreneurship in developing capabilities at different levels: social, human, economic and institutional. In this study, tourism provides the empirical context in the cross-border regional tourism development of the eastern part of the Republika Srpska (RS), BiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and western Serbia. The region, known as the Drina Valley Tourism Region (DVTR), encompasses eight municipalities, four from each side of the Drina River which forms the border between the two countries. The DVTR, situated in the Drina River Valley, comprises fragile ecosystems and equally fragile open economies facing unique sustainable development problems and opportunities. The economy is strongly dependent upon agriculture and a few tourism activities with good prospects for tourism rejuvenation and development. A sizeable influx of concessionary finance, official grants and net private transfers from abroad sustain development programmes in some parts of the region, particularly in Srebrenica and Bratunac (RS–BiH). One of the main problems facing all the municipalities is negative population growth and an increasing number of younger people permanently leaving the region. The area provides a specific political and historical context due to its dynamic history associated with perpetuated ethnical and religious struggles amongst the communities along the river since the Ottoman invasion in the 15th century. The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia following the civil war in the early 1990s revived the historical tensions that were controlled in the former Yugoslavia. Bridges over the Drina River have never lasted long. In such a context like BiH