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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the barriers confronted by rural women entrepreneurs in Oman. The study focusses on women living in rural and mountain areas who aspire to move beyond their traditional family roles. It identifies several problems including accessing funding for new ventures and innovative activities, a lack of skills-based training and limited family support.

Based on 57 responses to a semi-structured questionnaire, and face to face qualitative interviews with ten women entrepreneurs. Quantitative responses are evaluated and ranked in terms of their mean score, standard deviation and the intensity of each factor shaping rural women entrepreneurship. Five qualitative cases are presented.

Although Oman is arguably one of the more progressive Arab countries regarding gender equality and women empowerment, the findings exhibit socio-cultural concerns which hamper women entrepreneurial venture creations and their subsequent success. The findings of the research are discussed using the three dimensions of entrepreneurship identified by Wenneker and Thurik (1999). The three dimensions are: conditions leading to entrepreneurship, characteristics of entrepreneurship and outcomes of entrepreneurship.

Suggests that Omani policymakers should consider how women entrepreneurs can be better supported so that they can diversify household income by starting new ventures while simultaneously contributing to the socio-economic development of the region. A number of suggestions on how this can be achieved are presented.

Research on rural women entrepreneurship in the context of an Arab country is scarce and the study can provide an overview of the obstacles and the support required for the development of the rural women entrepreneurship in this region.

To study the ways in which the people involve in social enterprises make sense out of what they are trying to do.

The study focused on the issues and concerns of participants in a social enterprise network in Bradford, UK, where the network includes both social enterprises and agencies offering them support. Explains that the study aimed to examine the relationship between the development of social enterprise and organizational identity, processes and problems to determine what shared meanings and sense of shared identity are used by participants to make sense of social enterprise, how these are related to actions and projects within the social enterprise sector, and whether there is network integrity in responding and adapting to changes. Reports on a case study involving exploratory semi‐structured interviews, between November 2005 and February 2006, with 11 key actors involved in social enterprise networks in Bradford, all of which were involved in either delivering services to the community or from agencies tasked with supporting these groups.

Five key themes emerged from the interviews: identifying as a social entrepreneur; organizational identity; common language; growth; and networking. Concludes that the factors involved in the way that actors in social enterprises make sense of their activities include: identity, where most organizations did not identify a heroic leader nor would they choose to become social entrepreneurs; lack of a common metaphor; staying small; and fragmentation.

Provides a useful starting point from which to explore the problems faced by social enterprise organizations.

Competitive success as a nation requires balancing commercial innovativeness and social welfare, which results in a sound basis for socio‐economic development. All potential resources – including entrepreneurial activity and innovations – can be utilized as promoters of competitiveness and welfare. Thus, useful lessons for general national competitiveness can be learned from benchmarking individual innovations and perhaps even more so, from those less glamorized technologies such as human language technologies (HLT). Finnish researchers are considered to be at the leading edge of developments in a number of ICT fields. The main responsibility for the utilization of knowledge is seen, necessarily, to rest with the public sector, while the legislative framework is considered to favour entrepreneurship and innovation. Aims to discuss the issues.

National competitiveness and HLT benchmarking pose a number of interesting questions and issues both macro and micro levels. For example: the extent to which benchmark performance in HLT is consistent with national competitiveness; link between robustness of research effort in any particular language community and effectiveness of technology transfer to market; and fostering and funding of entrepreneurial activity in HLT in the successful (benchmarked) countries and the fit with national vision and innovation policy. For the first two areas, relationships between HLT benchmark and comparative national competitiveness of top countries are examined through comparison of their respective primitive dimensions. Data sources include official and quasi‐official public documents. The final stage is explored using a case study approach and comparative assessment against extant entrepreneurship literature.

There appears to be no direct link between robustness of the HLT research effort in any particular language community and actual effectiveness of technology transfer to market. None the less, success in the Finnish HLT benchmark appears to correlate with the country's international competitiveness standing and “social innovation policy” paradigm. Its knowledge society model has clearly resulted in a sound basis for its socio‐economic development, where all potential resources – including its entrepreneurial base – and innovations, can be utilized as promoters of competitiveness and welfare. Within this entrepreneurial base, HLT SMEs tend to seek scale economies through internationalise at the early stages of development.

The paper shows that Finland is well placed to meet the challenges and to capitalise on the economic and social opportunities, given its strength in ICT/HLT innovation policy country's open self‐criticism of the latter.

The paper aims to present case studies to uncover the reflections of key participants in a social enterprise network in West Yorkshire. It considers how they learn from failure and how they make sense of the variety of messages about, and approaches to, social enterprise.

The approach taken is based upon sense making in organisations. The paper builds upon the concept of ambiguity as well as Sydow's framework of inter‐organisational trust. Participant drawings of these ideas were used to enhance data generated from face to face interviews.

The paper reviews actors' experiences of failure in projects to explore the relationships of those active in social enterprises and support agencies. From this perspective, uncertainty, ambiguity and unexpected insights into mistrust between organisations were identified as underlying themes.

The concepts of uncertainty, ambiguity, trust and mistrust offer rich ways of perceiving the problems faced by social enterprises. They provide a framework to aid discussions of social enterprise development between academics and practitioners. These concepts may go towards improving understanding in resolving problems and be beneficial in formulating policies and practices that improve service delivery within communities.

Little research looks at lessons learnt from failure and associated issues of ambiguity and trust between social enterprises at a network level. If smaller social enterprises are going to work together in co‐ordinated activity to deliver social projects and to offer economies of scale in contract delivery, trust will be essential. This paper suggests that further research in this area is needed to consider the quality of relationships being nurtured.

Book review by Lori Wagner. Henry, Colette, ed. Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9781845426101

To show how social enterprises can take advantage of the growing ethical awareness of financial institutions to finance their work whilst remaining true to their social principles.

The concept of financial intermediation and the growing ethical dimension of financial institutions are discussed to examine the evolving role of ethics within financial intermediation and the opportunities these offer to social enterprises which have hitherto been wary of such finance on principle. Focuses on the fact that many depositors and investors are willing to sacrifice financial return for social results. Reports results of the study, which literature searches and other methods and presents information based on case studies of eight financial intermediaries that provide services to social enterprises and have a strong concern for ethics.

The case studies comprise: Aston Reinvestment Trust (ART), an industrial and provident society; Charity Bank, an FSA regulated bank with a national lending scale; Derby Loans, an industrial and provident society (IPS) and a community development finance institution (CDFI); The Ecology Building Society (EBS), an FSA‐regulated building society with a national lending scale; Industrial Common Ownership Finance (ICOF), a public company limited by guarantee with a national lending scale; London Rebuilding Society (LRS), an IPS with a local lending scale, with borrowers having to be located in London; Triodos Bank, a regulated bank with a national lending scale; and Ulster Community Investment Trust (UCIT), an IPS with a local lending scale limited to specified geographical areas. Concludes that several financial intermediaries now exist that are willing to provide short and long term finance to social enterprises.

Provides valuable information and encouragement for social enterprises seeking finance for their activities.

The purpose of this paper is synthesise social marketing literature over the past fifty years and deliver a set of guiding tenets to propel social marketing’s agenda forward.

Across three strands, this paper amalgamates theoretical and practitioner evidence from social marketing. This synthesis commences with a review, summary and critical discussion of five decades of social marketing research. Across Strands 2 and 3, the authors review 412 social marketing interventions reported across 10 evidence reviews and 238 case studies.

This paper demonstrates social marketing’s use of fundamental marketing principles and capability to achieve behaviour change outcomes. Social marketers have built frameworks and processes that non-profit organisations, government agencies and policymakers seeking to enact change can use. This paper delivers five tenets that summarise the findings of the three strands and delivers research priorities for the next 50 years of social marketing research to drive the field forward.

Drawing on five decades of learning, this paper proposes research priorities that can be applied to refine, recalibrate and future-proof social marketing’s success in making the world a better place.

This paper demonstrates the value of social marketing science and helps bridge gaps between theory and practice, and further strengthens social marketing’s value proposition. This paper provides confidence that money invested in social marketing programs is well spent.

This paper delivers a forward-looking perspective and provides social marketing academics and practitioners with confidence that it can assist in overcoming society’s most pressing issues. The paper encompasses key social marketing literature since it was founded 50 years ago. Five tenets will guide social marketing forward: evidencing marketing principles, operationalisation of processes, principles and activities, implementing systems thinking, creating and testing marketing theory and guiding a new social marketing era.