Books
Christina Abreo et al., Latino Immigrant’s Guide to Starting a Business in Arkansas: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs (2011).
Abstract (from author): This guide is designed to provide information to Latin American immigrants who are considering starting a small business in Arkansas as well as established business owners who want to learn more about successful business practices. Our goal is to help you start a business in Arkansas by providing information about each step of the start-up process. The step-by-step process is also designed to help you develop a business plan by organizing your information through the use of worksheets and activities included in each step. While almost all start-up businesses will eventually need to consider each of the topics we have included in this guide, you may choose to go through each step in a different order than they are listed. Most of the material we have included was developed in direct response to survey results collected from Latino entrepreneurs in Arkansas about special training or information they would like to receive.
Jitendra Ahirrao, Entrepreneurship and Rural Women in India (2013).
Abstract (from Amazon.com): In India, entrepreneurship has assumed prime importance—both in research and in action—for accelerating economic growth. An entrepreneur is a critical factor who strives to reorient the national strategies and bring out the desired changes in the development pattern. Contrary to the earlier belief that entrepreneurs are a special breed and are born with special traits, entrepreneurship can be cultivated through proper training and financial support. An entrepreneur is a catalyst who can mobilize different resources and put them to effective use. In any nation, women constitute the backbone a country's prosperity. However, the role played by rural women in India's economic development has not been assigned sufficient importance. Women face gender-specific barriers in access to education, health, and employment. As well, women have little control over assets. Women are often under-paid or unpaid for their work. Their contribution to society and the economy are often ignored. This book examines at the role of women entrepreneurship in India's rural areas. The book shows that encouraging women to set up small enterprises—particularly in rural areas—is an effective method to promote their welfare, development, and empowerment.
John C. Allen & Don A. Dillman, AGAINST ALL ODDS: RURAL COMMUNITY IN THE INFORMATION AGE (1994).
Abstract (from authors): The authors’ model orients this community in the vortex of contemporary forces, pointing up, for example, the need for face-to-face interaction among residents versus the larger society’s demand for electronic communication. With increasing conflicts between the culture of rural communities and that of the “outside world” occurring, small towns all over the United States are losing their businesses, their doctors, and their sense of community. Yet the town described in this study is thriving. Against All Odds identifies pride, determination, and a sense of belonging that must be nurtured—and the local organization that binds all of these factors together—in order to keep a small town alive in the face of powerful disruptive forces.
John C. Allen & Don A. Dillman, ELECTRONIC BYWAYS: STATE POLICIES FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH TELECOMMUNICATIONS (2000).
Abstract (from product description at Amazon.com): Offers an instructive look at the role modern telecommunications infrastructures play in promoting vibrant rural economies. The authors provide prescriptive policy recommendations for everyone concerned with rural economic development, from state and rural policymakers to telecommunications industry executives.
Gry Agnete Alsos, Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship in Agriculture and Rural Development (2011).
Abstract (from product description at Amazon.com): The agriculture sector around the world has experienced profound changes in recent years. This unique and path-breaking Handbook draws together the best current research in the area of entrepreneurship in agriculture, food production and rural development. Agriculture policy reforms have impacted farm incomes, while demand side changes have required the development of sophisticated market driven strategies. Farmers have demonstrated uneven abilities to adapt and adjust to these ongoing changes. The ability and propensity of farmers to engage in entrepreneurial behaviors is a key explanation of the different patterns of responses within the sector. This book examines these issues through three main themes. The first theme focuses on the firm and the individual entrepreneurs, exploring entrepreneurship within the farm sector. The second takes a sector and industry perspective, exploring new developments in food production and distribution systems. The third theme explores the inter-relationship between agricultural entrepreneurship and its spatial context. Contributions are drawn from international research settings (Scandinavia, Europe, Asia, North America, Australasia) and offer an interdisciplinary approach to the subject This astute Handbook, which will challenge and enrich the current literature, will appeal to academics in entrepreneurship, small business studies, agriculture, rural studies, rural sociology and agricultural economics, food industry economists, policymakers and all those interested in supporting agricultural and rural businesses.
Beatrice E. Avolio Alecchi & Mirjana Radovic Markovic, Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Durability, Persistence and Intuition at Work (2013).
Abstract (from publisher): Women and Entrepreneurship comes from two authors with especially rich experience in this field of research. Embracing experience in a range of developed and developing countries and examining both dependent and independent roles, Beatrice Avolio and Mirjana Radovic-Markovic profile women entrepreneurs and consider their motivations, together with the obstacles and challenges that they face and often overcome. A focus on emerging forms of entrepreneurship leads to a concentration on what is happening in newly developing economies, with a major case study set in a South American context. The authors deal in particular with how rural entrepreneurship, virtual entrepreneurship, and project-based and home-based businesses particularly lend themselves to providing opportunities for women. The authors' findings reveal that increased participation of women in business leadership has brought about completely new ways of business communication; new business strategies and company development models; and is imposing a new behavioral style on businesses. What is particularly encouraging is the evidence that female kinds of durability, persistence and intuition are producing business advantage. This means that the authors can clearly identify success factors and propose guidelines for the benefit of female entrepreneurs, female-led businesses, and business in general. This book will serve the needs of an academic audience of researchers in the growing field of studies into entrepreneurship; as well as those teaching or studying business or women's studies topics. It will of course appeal particularly to women owning and running businesses, or aspiring to do so.
John Belt et al., Learning and Earning: How a Value Chain Learning Alliance Strengthens Farmer Entrepreneurship in Ethiopia (2012).
Abstract (adapted from publisher): As smallholder farmers switch to producing for the commercial market, they face a steep learning curve. To select a product and to market it effectively, they must understand both their immediate market situation and how the whole value chain works. Individual smallholders probably cannot grow enough on their own, so they have to get organized and sell their produce as a group. That takes leadership, organization, mutual trust and a common vision. They need to access a range of business services: inputs, financial services, training, market information, transport, government support, and so on. And they need to plan their businesses: analyse their potential markets, identify customers, negotiate with buyers and suppliers, work out their costs and expected income, look at their longer term position in the value chain, develop a business plan, and put the plan into operation.
Abeje Berhanu & Ezana Amdework, Peasant Entrepreneurship and Rural Poverty Reduction: The Case of Model Farmers in Bure Woreda, West Gojjam Zone (2012).
Abstract (from authors): It is now a decade since Ethiopia started implementing a policy of poverty reduction and eradication. The government's poverty reduction and eradication program stresses the strategic importance of agriculture. The sector, however, is in the hands of millions of peasant producers who depend on traditional methods of cultivation of crops with limited use of green revolution technologies, such as chemical fertilizers. The current package-based agricultural extension service, like its predecessors, uses 'model' farmers to disseminate improved technologies. This group of farmers, because of their entrepreneurial qualities, is expected to positively influence other farmers to adopt improved farming technologies. This research focuses on the entrepreneurial experiences of 'model' farmers in the context of the current agricultural extension package program and their contribution to Ethiopia's poverty reduction efforts by taking the Bure Zuria woreda of the Amhara regional state as case study.
Abstract (from Amazon.com): The Society for Advancement of Villagers' Education and Rural Assistance (SAVERA) is consistently working towards rural development and nation building. This forum encourages manifold developmental activities in the field of research. It is a consortium of professionals, research scientists, social scientists, reformists, technocrats, and agriculturists, which offers critical inputs on development of rural India. One of the objectives of SAVERA is to develop instructional cases on entrepreneurship in Indian and global perspectives.
Community Co-Production: Social Enterprise in Remote and Rural Communities (Jane Farmer et al. eds. 2012).
Abstract (from publisher): Governments around the globe are promoting co-production and community social enterprise as policy strategies to address the need for local, 21st century service provision - but can small communities engage spontaneously in social enterprise and what is the true potential for citizens to produce services?
This book addresses a clutch of contemporary societal challenges including: aging demography and the consequent need for extended care in communities; public service provision in an era of retrenching welfare and global financial crises; service provision to rural communities that are increasingly 'hollowed out' through lack of working age people; and, how best to engender the development of community social enterprise organizations capable of providing high quality, accessible services. It is packed with information and evidence garnered from research into the environment for developing community social enterprise and co-producing services; how communities react to being asked to co-produce; what to expect in terms of the social enterprises they can produce; and, how to make them happen.
This book is an antidote to the rhetoric of optimistic governments that pronounce co-production as a panacea to the challenges of providing local services and by drawing on the evidence from a 'real-life' international study will make policy makers more savvy about their aspirations for co-production, give service professionals practical strategies for working with communities, fill a gap in the academic evidence about community, as opposed to individual, social enterprise and reassure community members that they can deliver services through community social enterprise if the right partnerships and strategies are in place.
Elaine Edgcombe & Tamra Thetford, The Informal Economy: Making it in Rural America (2004).
Abstract (from The Aspen Institute website): This publication examines the experiences of 29 entrepreneurs living and working in several rural counties in Nebraska.
Matthias Fink, Stephan Loidl & Richard Lang, Community-based Entrepreneurship and Rural Development: Creating Favorable Conditions for Small Businesses in Central Europe (2012).
Abstract (from publisher): How can municipalities in Central Europe create favorable conditions for local business? What and how can municipalities learn from each other? How can each individual in the local area contribute? And what requirements have to be met before know-how can successfully be transferred on a communal level? To answer all these questions, the authors of this book draw on results from a six-year research program and comprehensively discuss the manifold opportunities, restrictions and prerequisites of establishing favorable conditions for small and medium enterprises in rural municipalities in Central Europe.
Harold L. Fossum, COMMUNITIES IN THE LEAD: THE NORTHWEST RURAL DEVELOPMENT SOURCEBOOK (1993).
Abstract: Includes ideas for rural development, including some that are entrepreneurship and self-employment oriented.
Stephan J. Goetz, Steven Deller & Tom Harris, TARGETING REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (2009).
Abstract (from product description at Amazon.com): This book builds on a series of workshops and papers organized by The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD) at the Pennsylvania State University and the Rural Policy Research Centre (RUPRI) at the University of Missouri. The authors present an innovative approach through a collection of chapters discussing industry targeting and the relevance of Targeting Regional Economic Development as an important analytical tool for practical targeting purposes. The papers present issues surrounding community economic development, clusters in industry and rural communities and the role of agglomeration economies.
Gary P. Green, Steven C. Deller & David W. Marcouiller, Amenities and Rural Development: Theory, Methods and Public Policy (2005).
Abstract (from Amazon Product Description): While many rural areas continue to experience depopulation and economic decline, others are facing rapid in-migration, as well as employment and income growth. Much of this growth is due to the presence and use of amenity resources, broadly defined as qualities of a region that make it an attractive place to live and work. Rather than extracting natural resources for external markets, these communities have begun to build economies based on promoting environmental quality. Amenities and Rural Development explores the paradigmatic shift in how we view land resources and the potential for development in amenity-rich rural regions. Amenity-based growth can lead to several paths, based largely on proximity to urban areas and the type of development that occurs, whether it be seasonal residents, retirees, or tourism. The distributional implications of amenity-led development are an important consideration for policy, both within and between communities and regions. The contributors conclude that public policy needs to focus on maximizing complementary and supplementary uses while minimizing antagonistic uses of amenities.
Deborah Markley, Don Macke & Vicki Luther, ENERGIZING ENTREPRENEURS: CHARTING A COURSE FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES (2005).
Abstract: Energizing Entrepreneurs is a guide for the rural community leader who is helping to transform their communities into hotbeds of entrepreneurship. It discusses what communities can do to energize entrepreneurship in general, and how to support local entrepreneurs individually. Packed with insightful tips and advice from experts with years of experience in the field, Energizing Entrepreneurs is a “must have” for anyone working to create supportive environments for entrepreneurs, new sources of wealth and sustaining economic betterment.
Micro Finance and Rural Women Entrepreneurship in India (Suman Kalyan Chaudhury et al. eds., 2012).
Abstract: This book contains a collection of articles touching on various aspects of entrepreneurship as experienced by women in rural India.
Henry Asiel Wadsworth, Community Planning and Decision Making to Attract Industry, in Rural Industrialization: Problems and Potentials (Larry R. Whiting ed., 1974).
Abstract (from National Agricultural Library website): This text focuses on some of the pragmatic considerations which need to be taken into account when industry locates to or relocates within a rural community. It centers its attention on the logistics of integrating new industry into rural areas and on the positive effects such location offers. Its purpose is to organize, interpret and communicate existing knowledge on industrialization as a means of empowering communities to both attract and constructively integrate new industry into the social, economic and physical locale. It presents information on what characteristics of a community act as industrial attractants and provides advice on corporate leader/community leader communication. Major sub-topics include: location of industry, national policy, guidance of market forces to achieve benefit maximization, industry's view of rural areas, impact on the community and effects on labor demand and employment.
Kenneth P. Wilkinson, THE COMMUNITY IN RURAL AMERICA (1991).
Abstract: A study of community in rural America that synthesizes the dominant conceptual approaches to the study of community and provides a review of the literature on each conceptual approach. The book discusses the critical variables or measures in the study of community in contemporary rural America.