In the wake of these developments, academics
and policy-makers concerned with rural
development have increasingly taken the view that ‘the bulk of new jobs in rural areas [are]going to come from new and existing small firms, not just in service sectors like tourism, but also in some lighter manufacturing industries’(North & Smallbone 1996, p. 151). Accordingly,considerable research has been devoted to establishing the reasons for small business success in the countryside (Keeble et al. 1992; Cosh & Hughes 1998).