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Interventions aimed at creating an environment in which businesses can flourish are a central element of public policies (supranational, national, regional and sub-regional/local) concerned with promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship, supporting indigenous industry and fostering regional economic competitiveness. Customarily policies concerned with improving the business environment have been of two types; those concerned with the improvement of the interactions of government with enterprises in terns of regulations, administrative procedures and taxation, and those concerned with the direct provision of various forms of business support such as business incubation. This research explores the rationale for the provision of business support, specifically business incubation as practised by European Business Innovation Centres, and investigates the degree and extent to which their activities impacts the performance of assisted businesses.

In this thesis, I set out to make a contribution to the business entrepreneurship literature by questioning the capacity of the mainstream 'entitativist' mode of thinking (Hosking, 1995) to theorise the variety and creativity of 'entrepreneurial opportunity identification' (EOI) actions. From, a non-mainstream 'relational' perspective (Hosking, 1995), I argue that the environmental determinism implicit in entitativist assumptions has had a simplifying. homogenising and reifying effect on the understanding of context-specific EOI phenomena.

Exploration - "experimentation with new alternatives" - presents an ongoing challenge to large, established firms. A myriad of inertial factors encourages firms, instead. to exploit their existing competences and paradigms, with adverse consequences for their long-term adaptability. Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) may, however, provide one avenue for incumbent firms to pursue exploration.

This thesis investigates how entrepreneurship is influenced by internal organisation in Multinational Corporations (MNCs). It provides fresh theoretical and empirical insights on MNC organisation and strategy, showing how intra-MNC knowledge networks and heterarchical communities enable corporate renewal. This thesis addresses the definition problem in the entrepreneurship field by conceptualising entrepreneurship as a perception-creation-change process. In the MNC context, this renewal process is intrinsically linked with subsidiary management aspects such as role, autonomy, relations and development. A new analytical framework for MNC entrepreneurship is then developed, consisting of two parts: (l) strategic investment and firm behavioural 'focussed entrepreneurship' and (2) emergent subsidiary level 'dispersed entrepreneurship' . Empirical investigation into the interface between subsidiary management and entrepreneurship follows with a mixed-method research strategy using focussed and dispersed operationalisations. For focussed entrepreneurship, cross-sectional resource allocations and longitudinal firm behaviour data show that MNC entrepreneurial stance is determined mainly by internal knowledge network characteristics, with more aggressive MNCs exploiting those networks with a higher risk orientation. Superior performance is shown as a contingency between stance and entrepreneurial obsolescence in the industry. For dispersed entrepreneurship, subsidiary manager perceptions elicited by survey and interview reveal how heterarchically oriented perception and creation variables, such as local initiative and political arena, affect MNC renewal. Entrepreneurial communities, distinct from those of practice and characterised by high boundary porosity and competitive purpose, are identified as critical reconciling mechanisms for mutual knowledge sharing during perception, creation and change. These new insights extend our understanding of MNC entrepreneurship whilst contributing to debates in international business research and theory development. Future research could investigate evolutionary paths of MNC entrepreneurial communities and emergent organisational forms with a multilevel research design. Future research could also analyse external network links and local embeddedness in order to understand how these communities develop and provide benefits and learning to external stakeholders as well as to the MNC. Normative implications of this study suggest MNC leaders should manage knowledge assets in terms of both firm-wide entrepreneurial orientation and boundary-spanning communities at the subsidiary-level to achieve an effective entrepreneurial organisation. Of particular concern to MNC managers is the adequacy of the internal knowledge network for the desired entrepreneurial orientation, requiring assessment and management in structural and relational terms.

In this original thesis I conduct an empirical analysis to determine the role of three forms of capital - social, human capital and financial capital on regional start up levels with 'social capital' as the instrumental resource impinging and impacting upon, influencing and valorising the two other forms of capital. More specifically, I explain the interaction between social and human capital and identify how social relationships C capital) together with human capital influence access to financial capital during the start-up phase of business ventures. The key research question is 'What is the role of local social capital (Se) in fostering entrepreneurship and in what way does the interplay of se, He and Fe affect the start-ups in the regions? The main contribution of this research is to offer a systematic approach to the role of SC in entrepreneurship, which examines not only the impact of SC on entrepreneurship, but also the process of interaction between the three types of capital. I use a cross-sectional data set covering 353 local authorities of EnglaiN"employing Ordinary -I ." Least Squares COLS) estimator and two-staged least squares C2SLS) estimator within the context of the Classical Linear Regression Model development. I create an original SC Index using core constructs of trust, networks and norms to test the relation between social capital and entrepreneurship in the regions of England. Based on the findings I conclude that space bound social capital is a significant determinant of regional level entrepreneurship as it facilitates the interaction of human and financial capital and their collective and several impact on entrepreneurship across regions. My study also contributes to a better and more holistic appreciation of regional policy development through the effective use of social capital.

This research examines the role of entrepreneurial leadership in the public and private sector universities of Pakistan. It was conducted with the aim of fulfilling specific gaps identified during the literature review such as dearth of literature on establishing entrepreneurial leadership in universities, elaborating on the contextual differences of public and private sectors affecting entrepreneurial leadership in universities, and to explore the perspectives of such concepts in an Eastern developing country. This was achieved by comparing universities of two contrasting sectors to highlight how their differences engender different outcomes as well as to reveal the different challenges and critical success factors for entrepreneurial leadership in two types of university organizations. A comparative case study design was adopted whereby six universities from both sectors were compared and contrasted. Semi-structured interviews with the heads of departments and their faculty were conducted for primary data collection while documents, archival records, and non-participant observation were used as secondary sources. Following the findings of Clark (1998, 2001) this study considers those universities to be entrepreneurial which cultivates and establishes links with different public and private agencies and successfully bringing in revenue generating projects from them through utilizing the knowledge and talents of their faculty members and thus actively pursuing the Third Task of universities an idea put forth by Etzkowitz (1983, 2003, 2004) and elaborated by Etzkowitz and Zhou (2007). This study contributes findings that are interesting and in some cases contrary to the literature.