This paper applies and extends the 'adaption' perspective on chronic illness by arguing that, in the case of moderate childhood asthma, an important aspect of the process may be found in the ways in which children and parents construct a sense of their ordinariness. It is suggested that medicines may play a role in this process. Reporting an intensive and detailed qualitative study of the management strategies of nine English families, it is shown that household members did not generally regard asthma as a major problem. Regular medication, usually in the form of inhaled drugs, was their main response. Few other strategies were followed and little attention was paid to the non-medicinal preventive actions recommended in asthma management guidelines and educational material. Parents' and children's accounts suggest that they were involved not only in managing a disease but also in maintaining a sense of their own ordinariness. Paradoxically, medicines, especially inhalers, were the main resource for accomplishing this goal because they supported the ordinariness of the child and the family far more readily than other preventive measures.

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The role of organized peer networks in entrepreneurial support systems has been surprisingly neglected in the literature, despite their undisputed effectiveness in numerous areas outside the entrepreneurship realm. This study explores the efficacy of mutual aid groups for entrepreneurial support, as theoretically distinct from other group‐based mechanisms (such as peer group mentoring and many to one group mentoring). Drawing from respondent data of small, local mutual aid groups within the global entrepreneurship support organization (2,869 responses from members of 540 groups worldwide), we investigate the factors determining the entrepreneurs' satisfaction with the entrepreneur mutual aid groups. Understanding the antecedents of members' subjective satisfaction with the group serves an essential first step toward developing the models explaining the objective effectiveness of these organizations (e.g., performance, survival, and growth), in that the former is an essential, necessary condition for continuing participation in the voluntary mutual aid groups. Our analysis reveals that group climate and leadership are important drivers of group satisfaction.

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