Professor Harry Matlay has stood down as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development (JSBED) after 18 years in the role. Professor Matlay has played a key role in the development of the journal to its current position. Throughout his long career, Professor Matlay research activity has focused on entrepreneurship education, training and learning for which he has an international reputation.
Previously, he held senior positions at the SME Centre, Warwick University Business School, Birmingham City Business School and the University of the West of Scotland Business School. Prior to gaining his PhD in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in SMEs, from University of Warwick, he worked in senior positions in industry and commerce, as an entrepreneur and international business consultant. Professor Matlay has also acted as a Guest Editor of an annual double special issue in Education + Training and an occasional special issue on entrepreneurship education in the Industry & Higher Education journal. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of several international journals and has refereed articles, books and research monographs for major publishing houses, including Edward Elgar, Routledge, Sage, Palgrave and Oxford University Press. Professor Harry Matlay has written, presented and published over 650 refereed journal articles, practitioner features and conference papers, has been shortlisted and won several prestigious national and international awards. In 2003, he was awarded the Golden Pen Prize in the research relevance category for his editorial work on JSBED.
Professor Harry Matlay has been invited to make presentations by four previous UK Prime Ministers and six Chancellors of the Exchequers, and his publications have been widely cited in influential UK government commissioned reports, White Papers, EU Green and position Papers, OECD publications and several SME information reports to US presidents. He has also contributed to a number of national and international curriculum development reports and publications (including QAA) and is routinely consulted on innovative approaches to enterprise and entrepreneurship education developments in the UK and globally.
Professor Matlay has made a significant contribution to ISBE as a regular attendee, researcher, presenter and session chair. For several years, he acted as track leader for one of the largest and influential tracks, which became best known internationally as the ‘Entrepreneurship Realities’ track. In his capacity as Professor and Centre Director, he actively encouraged the professional development of junior as well as more senior colleagues, to become researchers, write seminal and innovative conference papers, convert these into refereed articles and attend, in large numbers, ISBA/ISBE conferences. He and his team were routinely shortlisted and won several Best Paper prizes at ISBE conferences. We sincerely thank Professor Matlay for his significant contribution to ISBE over the years and wish him all the best in his retirement.
