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ALMOST EVERY communication we receive from manufacturers or suppliers, whether sent direct or from professional public relations companies, claims that the firm concerned is the most important firm in its category.

This paper is the first in a series that reprints methodological appendices or methods chapters found in workplace and organisational ethnographic books, and provides an opportunity for reflection by the author through an introductory commentary. Simon Down, the author of Narratives of Enterprise (Down, 2006) reflects on the writing and the research underpinning his ethnography. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The reprinting of such chapters will enhance access to key ethnographic texts, and facilitate reflection on methodological choices authors made. In so doing this paper will provide insights into methodological ethnographic writing, and show how sensibilities and fashions change over time.

Narratives of Enterprise (Down, 2006) examined how two small business managers in a single firm construct an entrepreneurial self-identity, and what this process of self-creation means for the individuals and how the firm is managed. The key topics explored in the book, self-identity as a conceptual tool and enterprise as a social and economic reality, have both grown in relevance and importance since the research was conducted. Down also reflects on that nature and dynamism of friendship in research practice.

Reflection on choices made at some distance can provide particular and valuable insights into the development of research practice.

The paper reports upon the findings of a national survey of Personal Business Advisors (PBAs). It examines the nature of the client‐PBA relationship in terms of how relationships are established with growth firms and how they are maintained over the long term. Results show that a range of different approaches are currently used to identify growth businesses. Other findings indicate that the current role of the PBA is a broad one, extending beyond the client focus originally envisaged by the DTI. It is argued that financial targets are an important influence upon the nature of the client‐PBA relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant literature concerning the skills and knowledge of owner‐managers in small firms and to show how these might be enhanced and made more effective through alternative transferral and “teaching” strategies. It is shown that small firms are not isolated from their environment and are interdependently and inexorably linked with other organisations (suppliers, for instance). In this environment, and through these relationships, the majority of owner‐manager learning takes place. The implications for owner‐managers and the support environment are explored and recommendations for further research to explore the empirical reality of owner‐manager learning are presented.

Applying social concepts to the social relations that the entrepreneur maintains, this research seeks to identify the impact of these relationships, and the learning that might result from them, on the decision‐making process. A social and conversational model of experiential learning is put forward, where learning and influence are seen to emerge as part of an ongoing negotiated process. This argument complements Kolb's “fundamentally cognitive” theory of experiential learning, by challenging the view that the learner should be viewed as an “intellectual Robinson Crusoe”, and stating that even when an individual reflects and theorises their thoughts have a social character. Data were collected using critical incident technique through one‐to‐one in‐depth interviews over several weeks. The paper goes some way to confirm the importance of networks in the business development process, helping further to define how networks exist. The learning identified, is understood therefore as part of an ongoing negotiated process within a complex network of domestic, voluntary, commercial and professional relations.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the repertoire of narrative resources relevant in the creation and maintenance of entrepreneurial identity, and to explore the implications for understanding entrepreneurial behaviour.

The empirical research is based on a two and a half year ethnographic study of a small UK industrial firm.

The study describes how clichés used by aspirant entrepreneurs are significant elements in creating entrepreneurial self‐identity. In contrast to entrepreneurial metaphors, the study of which has highlighted and revealed the extraordinary components of an entrepreneurial narrative identity, examination of the clichés provide us with a means by which to understand the everyday and ordinary elements of identity construction in entrepreneurs.

Further qualitative research in other entrepreneurial settings will be required, exploring the generality of cliché use amongst entrepreneurs.

Applying the implications of our findings for pedagogic and business support uses is not explored and will need further development; we do however suggest that narrative approaches that make sense of entrepreneurship as an achievable aim may have some practical use.

The application of cliché as a distinctive linguistic feature of entrepreneurial self‐identity construction is highly original and reflects analogous work on entrepreneurial metaphors. Because of its ethnographic data, the paper develops empirically and conceptually rich insights into entrepreneurship.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that the production of past workplace and organizational ethnographies needs to be better understood in their historical context. Design/methodology/approach – A programme of research work on the history of workplace and organizational ethnography is proposed, and a historiographical discussion outlines the purpose, scope and means by which such a project might be realised. Findings – The article highlights why organizational ethnographers should understand the history of their research practice. Originality/value – The paper suggests that a serious attempt is made to create a body of historical knowledge about workplace and organizational ethnography. The value of this would be to deepen the contribution ethnographic research makes to organization and management studies, and ensure that continuity and change in ethnographic research practices are better understood.

Supply chain management has been defined as ‘the concept of strategically co‐ordinating supply chains made up of businesses owned and run by different people, each with his or her own business objectives’ (Slack, Chambers, Harland, Harrison and Johnston, 1995, p.532) or ‘close, shared destiny relations with suppliers’ (Oliver, Delbridge, Jones, Lowe, 1995, p.54). These and other definitions stress the role of supply chain management as managing value across organisational boundaries, and this mandates new forms of (and new ways of managing) inter firm relationships.

The paper seeks to serve a dual process, first, to raise awareness of the epistemological weaknesses inherent in the ways that visual communications designers address their own practice, and, second, to suggest that cybernetics has some of the answers to these weaknesses.

These objectives of this paper have been addressed through an examination of the cybernetics, critical theory and visual design theory. A comparison of the points of convergence (often of aims) and those points of divergence (often in its ontological reading of the world) is illuminating, especially when post‐structuralist semiotics – as a system of knowledge exterior to both design and cybernetics, yet capable of commenting on both – is used as a point of triangulation.

The literature analysis carried for this paper indicates that in both visual communications design and cybernetics there are areas of overlapping interest (concerns with the cyclic nature of coding and decoding information) and areas that might at first seem divergent but are in fact often complementary (the role of the observer as controller and participant in a system). The paper proposes that cybernetics uncovers principles at the heart of communication that in turn inform visual communication practices, which in a circular fashion informs cybernetics.

The paper suggests that new areas for cyberneticians to use in their study of second‐order cybernetics may be found in the product of visual communications design. It also suggests areas where designers may begin to search for tools that may be useful in evaluating their working practices.

The paper notes that an external investigation of visual communications artefacts presents cybernetics with a potential test‐bed on which to test its theories, in practice, on a global scale. Cybernetics has the potential to define and offer constructive guidance to visual communications design in examining its own practice.