This chapter considers the partnership model for regional development and how its adoption can result in changes in the role of such institutions as regional development agencies (RDAs). Using the Scottish experience as an example, it examines how networking within a partnership could impact on these institutions and proposes a framework for analysing such developments. The chapter focuses on whether the partnership model developed in the Strathclyde region of Scotland is unproblematic in practice and so whether it can be transferred uncritically throughout the EU to promote regional development. Scotland differs from other European regions in several ways which may have impacted on the success of the partnership model to date. Regional development agencies (RDAs) are set up as a method of reducing the level of localised market failure in accordance with and in support of the government's macro-economic regional policy instruments and objectives.

Part 1 Introduction: regional governance, institutional change and regional development, Mike Danson et al. Part 2 Partnership and regional development: the European partnership model and the changing role of regional development agencies - a regional development and organization perspective, Greta Cameron and Mike Danson developing a culture of collaboration concepts and experiences in a regional context, Thomas Jud et al local development networks in England, Cecilia Wong. Part 3 Networking and regional governance: development bodies, networking and business promotion - the case of North Jutland, Denmark, Henrik Halkier and Charlotte Damborg cohesion policy and the role of RDAs in the making of an intelligent region - lessons from the Southern European periphery, Grigoris Kafkalas and Elisavet Thoidou regional government in the United Kingdom - democratic representation or economic success? Peter Garside persuasive storytelling about the reform process - the case of the West Sweden region, Christian Jensen and Svante Leijon. Part 4 Regional development and multi-level governance: towards the end of a Norwegian regional policy model? Oddbjorn Bukve the regionalisation of Danish regional policy - governance and resource dependencies in transition, Henrik Halkier EU and national regional policies in Austria, Ruth Downes. Part 5 Perspective: institutional change, governance and regional development - problems and perspectives, Greta Cameron et al.

This paper examines the potential of the craft beer sector as a regional development lever. Focusing on three culturally linked but politically distinct small nations, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, it takes a historical journey from the inception of this sector to the present day. Discussion focuses on highlighting the complex interactions between brewing, society, policy and economy. We review current policy and sectoral realities for our Celtic context and propose a grounded and holistic vision of regional craft-brewing policies, particularly around more circular and zero-waste ecosystems.

Assets and enterprise ambitions of rural and island communities are dependent on their context at the margins, “on the edge” where they face greater challenges. Such communities are sites imbued with narratives of place as ‘Romance’ and of people as ‘Resilience’. The sustained, resilient, and emerging enterprise and innovation activity within their commons are indicative of deeper aspects of the contextual foundations of enterprise in social and cultural narratives and the materiality and lived experience of community itself. Case studies exemplify the necessary adaptability of the often ‘romanticised’ geography, environment, and historical economies by the small yet resilient entrepreneurial communities of Scotland's remote rural places, revealing how romance and resilience are experienced by entrepreneurs and their markets. Community empowerment through land reform and animateurs applying forms of social capital are key in the overall framing of entrepreneurial ambition contexts. The narratives of enterprise in these remote rural historical places yet culturally defined spaces speak to a realignment of periphery, the margin, or edge as enterprise arenas of the commons: embedded social foundations of place and people, their expanding ambitions for community assets and the commons. They promise a generative, international and entrepreneurial ‘growth mindset’ of social, economic and symbolic capital ambitions.

This special issue consists of an editorial, a commentary by Professor Gerard McElwee and five empirical papers, as detailed below. To make room for the studies presented below there is no teaching case in this issue. Professor Gerard McElwee is the founder and first Editor of The International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Innovation. This special issue is designed as a ‘Festschrift’ to honour his editorial stewardship of the journal and to mark his own approaches to researching entrepreneurship. Indeed, under his tireless and patient guidance, the journal has gone from strength to strength to become internationally recognised. Gerard continues to have a distinguished academic career, which has included chairs at Nottingham Trent, Sheffield Hallam, the University of Huddersfield and now York St Johns. Through his editorship and his work with his peers and students, Gerard has demonstrated a passion and proven track record of doctoral supervision in several countries, and has examined many PhDs. He has encouraged many early career researchers to publish in IJEI. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) and formerly ran the Rural Entrepreneurship track at its annual conference, while chairing that special interest group. During his career, Gerard became known by peers for his patient approach of encouraging and supporting new scholars and peers, alongside his infectious humour and sagacious advice on all aspects of scholarship. Gerard retired from his editorial role in 2020 and Professor Laura Galloway and Dr Deema Refai are the new joint editors. We at the journal feel it is a relevant time to mark his achievements and editorship.

There is a re-positioning of entrepreneurship towards the sustaining, the frugal, the local, and the everyday. This poses challenges for peripheral policy work, especially around growth, at sectoral and regional levels. Through collaborative workshops with engaged craft brewing stakeholders, this study generated deep new insights into how diverse forms of value can come to be created, shared, stewarded, invested in, grown, given away, and held as a collective resource, in order to both sustain community, and build sectoral growth. As such, we highlight novel entrepreneurial practices and capitals which, taken together, can respond both to critical chorus demands for an urgent repositioning towards frugal sustaining folk enterprise, and yet also retain a strong sense of peripheral socio-economic progress implied by the growth agenda, and its policies.

Interest in universal basic income has mushroomed in recent years in response to increasing employment insecurity and in-work poverty, with pilots and trials conducted or planned in several locations, and support from a growing number of politicians. The Scottish Government recently funded a two-year feasibility study to examine the options for piloting a basic income in Scotland. The Citizens’ Basic Income Feasibility Study Steering Group completed their work in June 2020, and submitted reports on possible basic income pilots in Scotland and how these might be evaluated, along with complementary studies modelling the possible economic impacts of a basic income on Scotland and potential interactions between a CBI pilot and the current social security arrangements. The Steering Group recommended that a Scottish pilot should go ahead, although this is not currently possible under the terms of the devolution settlement. Basic Income Network Scotland strongly welcomed this collection of studies as very significant contributions to the development and progression of Basic Income here and abroad. We highly commend their robust and rigorous work and recognise how much these colleagues and their respective institutions have progressed and supported the many debates and analyses across this country, the rest of the UK and indeed globally since publication. This BINS paper offers a commentary on elements of these publications recording some thoughts and challenges to us all in how a basic income scheme might be introduced, assessed and impact on the economy and society. We hope this is appreciated in the spirit in which it is written as progressing the analytical framework and understanding of this potential instrument for significant change. We wish to thank the three contributors to this paper: Dr Marcia Gibson, Professor Mike Danson and Annie Miller. We welcome all feedback, comments and criticisms.

Scotland has been addressing the highest European concentrations of land ownership through land reform legislation, encouraging communities to buy out the lairds. Collective efforts to take ownership of the commons are explored through application of theories on governance, regional development and institutions. Experiences of Inner and Outer Hebridean islanders under private and then community ownership, paying special attention to the case of the Isle of Eigg, are considered. Their collective tenacity, flexibility and confidence in securing a community future despite continuing challenges to remote small island living are offered as keystone examples from Scotland of small island enterprise, social development and collective community actions.

Analysis of the large rise in the numbers of self-employed in the UK reveals high levels of in-work poverty, especially among those coming off of social security benefits. Policies that are developed to alleviate social and economic risk regularly lead to behavioural responses to perceptions about the nature of such risk and to make individuals more accountable. Informed by accounting, finance and economic theories of risk, interviews with key informants who are experiencing self-employment and poverty, along with professionals from business and community development and poverty alleviation, are used to explore the support available to new entrepreneurs. Findings include that policy push from unemployment to self-employment shifts the social risks and responsibilities of employment from state and employers to those individuals with least capacity to bear them. Measures to mitigate resource disadvantage, including the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme, are found to be wanting and inadequate for the main client groups, and fail to reduce the social and economic risks faced in starting up a new business.

This article is concerned with enterprise policy and its effectiveness when applied to those experiencing social exclusion through unemployment and poverty. In particular, the article focuses on the introduction of the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme designed to support the transition from unemployment to enterprise, and it explores the extent to which knowledge about previous similar schemes has been used to inform this. Findings suggest that lessons learned from previous schemes have had little impact on decisions made in recent years. Scholarly evidence of and knowledge about the relationships between social exclusion, poverty and enterprise are not referenced and this suggests that policy understanding of the connection between social exclusion, unemployment and enterprise has developed little in the time period studied.

This article analyses labour market experiences of migrants of non-Nordic origin who have settled in the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago with a population of about 51,000 people. By examining the experiences of educated migrant workers who are employed in three different blue-collar workplaces: a cleaning company and two fish-processing plants, evidence is drawn from a cross-disciplinary study on language and migration in the Faroe Islands. This study explores the experiences of migrants in acquiring, using and becoming “new speakers” of Faroese and the challenges they face regarding labour market access and participation. In this article, framed within an ethnography of language policy, we highlight the institutional language policies which may be shaping migrants’ experiences, and how migrants enact their own language policy decisions and practices on the ground. We focus in particular on internal communication and language management in the three blue-collar worksites, comprising views and voices of both employers and employees, on the language policies and practices observed in these workplaces, and on workers’ views on language learning opportunities in blue-collar workplaces. Added to this, attention is drawn to implications of limited language learning opportunities in blue-collar jobs (which become the main barrier to accessing skilled jobs), to underutilisation of professional skills, and to long term implications of present macro- and micro-level language policies and practices affecting lived realities of workers of migrant origin.

ABSTRACTThis article reports case study research which addresses the gap in knowledge about dementia in the workplace. Receiving a diagnosis of dementia whilst still in employment may have negative consequences for a person's identity, further compounded by loss of employment. This study is the first to explore the employment-related experiences of people with dementia and their employers to determine the potential for continued employment post-diagnosis. Sixteen case studies centred on a person with dementia who was still in employment or had left in the previous 18 months. Each involved interviews with the person with dementia, a family member and a workplace representative. This triangulation of the data promoted rigour, allowing the experiences to be viewed through a variety of lenses to build a clear picture of each situation. Thematic analysis was carried out and three themes were developed: (a) dementia as experienced in the workplace; (b) work keeps me well; and (c) wider impact of dementia in the workplace. These findings have the potential to initiate changes to policy and practice related to supporting employees with dementia. The implications of this research are multifaceted and need to be considered in terms of the individuals’ wellbeing, organisational support, as well as the wider theoretical, economic and societal consequences of supporting an employee with dementia.

The concept of transformation in relation to climate and other global change is increasingly receiving attention. The concept provides important opportunities to help examine how rapid and fundamental change to address contemporary global challenges can be facilitated. This paper contributes to discussions about transformation by providing a social science, arts and humanities perspective to open up discussion and set out a research agenda about what it means to transform and the dimensions, limitations and possibilities for transformation. Key focal areas include: (1) change theories; (2) knowing whether transformation has occurred or is occurring; (3) knowledge production and use; (4) governance; (5) how dimensions of social justice inform transformation; (6) the limits of human nature; (7) the role of the utopian impulse; (8) working with the present to create new futures; and (9) human consciousness. In addition to presenting a set of research questions around these themes the paper highlights that much deeper engagement with complex social processes is required; that there are vast opportunities for social science, humanities and the arts to engage more directly with the climate challenge; that there is a need for a massive upscaling of efforts to understand and shape desired forms of change; and that, in addition to helping answer important questions about how to facilitate change, a key role of the social sciences, humanities and the arts in addressing climate change is to critique current societal patterns and to open up new thinking. Through such critique and by being more explicit about what is meant by transformation, greater opportunities will be provided for opening up a dialogue about change, possible futures and about what it means to re-shape the way in which people live.