ERC @ISBE 2025
Several members of the ERC team took part in the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) conference in Glasgow on 5th and 6th November. The conference theme this year was “Collaborating across Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: opportunities for inclusion, innovation, sustainability, resilience and growth”
ERC staff presented papers on a range of themes receiving a nomination for best track paper.
- Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mindset through Metacognition: A Gendered and Social Perspective: Anastasia Ri, Kevin Mole, Stephen Roper
A full list of the ERC papers presented can be found below.
Fragmented Fields: A Processual Analysis of Coherence in UK Small Business Support Policy : Kevin Mole
This research explores the persistent incoherence in UK small business support policy through the lens of Andrew Abbott’s processual sociology. It examines how competing institutional logics, temporalities, and jurisdictional claims among actors in the business support system contribute fragmentation and often contradictory policy outcomes.
Follow-the-Grant: A Snowballing Approach to Identify Longer-term Impacts of Innovation Grants: Eugenie Golubova, Stephen Roper, Peter Hutchison
This paper examines how the collaboration between various entrepreneurial ecosystem actors on Innovate UK (IUK) funded R&D grants produces longitudinal impacts on innovation, growth, organisational resilience, sustainability and other areas. The entrepreneurial ecosystem actors covered by our study include universities, research centres, businesses, clinical partners, the NHS and local authorities. Applying a novel ‘follow the grant’ (FTG) methodology, we explore what impacts on organisations, innovation and the wider society publicly funded R&D grants produce in the long-term, how and when the impacts materialise (or why not), how stakeholders collaborate to achieve impact, how long the impacts last and what other factors augment or constrain impacts.
Cyber security vulnerabilities and resilience in small firms: Joanne Turner
Digitalisation across business, the economy and society, i.e., the application of digital technologies and infrastructures has rapidly changed the way firms design and curate experiences, manufacture, distribute and service products. In recent years, the digital sector has experienced strong growth – almost three times that of the total UK economy in real terms since 2015. However, with digitalisation comes an increased reliance on cyberspace which has brought about new digital threats and risks. In this study, we seek to identify important cyber security vulnerabilities in small firms. In addition, we aim to uncover factors that help to build cyber resilience in small firms and ensure business continuity following a cyber breach or attack.
Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mindset through Metacognition: A Gendered and Social Perspective: Anastasia Ri, Kevin Mole, Stephen Roper
This paper examines how metacognitive awareness—defined as the ability to reflect on and regulate one’s own thinking—varies across gender, education, and social interaction among small business owners. It highlights how inclusive and collaborative ecosystems can foster reflective thinking and adaptive learning, particularly for under-represented groups such as women entrepreneurs. The study aims to explore how metacognitive behaviours—such as reflecting on past decisions, learning from experience, and adapting strategies—are shaped by gender, social interaction, education, and firm characteristics. It challenges the dominant prospective and individualistic framing of the entrepreneurial mindset by offering a retrospective and socially embedded perspective, with a particular focus on gendered experiences.
