Twenty years ago Gibb suggested that despite an ‘explosion of research’ into enterprise, there had been ‘a growth of ignorance’. To see if that still applies, this paper looks at the nature of ‘knowledge’ and in particular at how our knowledge about enterprise has evolved. It suggests that to build our enterprise understanding, assumptions were made but not subsequently reviewed and verified. For instance it seems to have been assumed that enterprise is a sub-set of business, with the apparent consequence that big business-based thinking is applied also to small businesses.The paper concludes that there is a prima face case that ignorance about enterprise still prevails and there are examples which support this conclusion. In consequence, until the questionable assumptions are highlighted and their foundations recognised and corrected, we should not claim a leading role for our thinking or promote it as an appropriate basis for enterprise policy.

We show that professional management began to emerge in UK companies during the first half of the twentieth century, a development which was widely theorised and accepted. However, the managerially-led enterprise was accommodated rather than protected by company law, making it vulnerable to changes in the law. The Cohen Report of 1945 paid no attention to these developments, and led to the introduction, in the Companies Act 1948, of important, but previously little appreciated, changes in the name of enhancing the accountability of directors to shareholders. The shareholders’ statutory right to remove the directors by simple majority overturned existing structures overnight and was an important driver of the hostile takeover, which emerged shortly afterwards. This deprived management of the necessary autonomy to balance the competing interests at stake in the enterprise and to foster innovation. The emergence of the current system of shareholder primacy can be traced back to these developments.

Budget Planner is a whole-farm or enterprise budgeting software program that is simple to use for farmers, extension agents, and other budgeters who are sometimes inexperienced, but that also provides the detail necessary to be accurate. Program defaults eliminate repetitive questions that change little from budget to budget. Defaults can be temporarily overridden, or they can be permanently changed with a detailed modify program. The program leads a user through a sequence similar to that a producer might utilize. Input forms were created to enlarge the user clientele and eventually increase computer use by farmers and extension agents.

The Risk-Rating Model is designed to give extension specialists, teachers, and producers a method to analyze production, marketing, and financial risks. These risks may be analyzed either individually or simultaneously. The risk associated with each enterprise, for all combinations of enterprises, and for any combination of marketing strategies is estimated. Optimistic, expected, and pessimistic returns above variable cost and/or total cost are presented in the results. The probability that total return will be equal to or greater than variable cost and/or total cost is also estimated.

Trade associations are a form of business network distinguished by third party coordination and representation of sector-affiliated organisations. In New Zealand, a recent review found that trade associations have made increasing contributions to industry and business development. The possibility that New Zealand's associations benefit from a small country advantage in supporting collective activity is explored. This follows suggestions in the New Zealand survey and Nordic claims that small economies benefit from shared trust that facilitates business cooperation. A matched sample of 13 Australian and New Zealand trade associations reveals that New Zealand's associations tend to have higher levels of membership and are less troubled by ‘free riders’ than their Australian counterparts. There is weak evidence that support for trade associations reduces with increases in enterprise diversity (size and activity specialization) within an industry and that the organisation of industry value chains influences trade association activity. Any advantage in maintaining participation is reduced by the greater resource strength of Australian associations. Further investigations of Trans Tasman differences in business associability are justified.

Over the last decade, the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) approach has gained prominence as a tool of “inclusive” capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa. This approach reframes development as a seamless outcome of core business activities, one that can ameliorate poverty by bringing much-needed products and services to the poor and generating employment opportunities for informal and subsistence workers as “micro-entrepreneurs.” Yet while transnational capital has set its sights on Africa’s “underserved” yet potentially buoyant markets, BoP initiatives do more than seize upon the entrepreneurial talent and aspirations of Africa’s informal economies. This article argues, rather, that these initiatives create BoP economies through a set of market technologies, practices, and discourses that render the spaces and actors at the bottom of the pyramid knowable, calculable, and predictable to global business. The article describes how these technologies extend new forms of market governance over the informal poor, reconfiguring their habits, social practices, and economic strategies under the banner of poverty reduction.