Search

This article is an editorial from the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, discussing the need for new approaches to business network development in the face of global disruptions. The editorial introduces a special section of the journal that includes five papers exploring different aspects of business network development. The papers cover topics such as organizational networking processes in emerging markets, the role of guanxi networking in export performance, the influence of informal networking on B2B relational outcomes, the drivers of geographical indication food supply chain networks, and the concept of agency in business networks. The editorial also highlights potential future research directions in the field of business network development. [Extracted from the article]

The latest science news, in brief. The latest science news, in brief., Author Affiliations: Thousand-author papers, lab outbreaks and a prisoner exchange White Island, a marine volcano off New Zealand, erupted while tourists were exploring its crater. Credit: Michael Schade/Xinhua News Agency/eyevine [...]

This article explores the challenges that businesses face in today's uncertain and dynamic organizational environment. It emphasizes the importance of incorporating entrepreneurship into corporate strategies to increase adaptability and create value. The article covers various sources of value creation, such as pricing strategies, innovation, unique selling propositions, market coalitions, and sensing and seizing opportunities. It also discusses the role of business ecosystems and stakeholders in fostering entrepreneurship, the importance of managerial attitudes and characteristics, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and firm performance. The article provides insights from specific papers in the issue, including topics such as modifying entrepreneurial strategies during crises, rural entrepreneurship, unethical attitudes and entrepreneurial intentions, and the relationship between entrepreneurial agility and organizational performance in the IT sector. Overall, the article aims to contribute to the understanding of entrepreneurial and managerial success in vibrant environments. [Extracted from the article]

The objective of this research is to identify the roles performed by managers of incubators and incubated companies, in the light of Mintzberg's studies on the nature of managerial work, as well as to emphasize the administrative functions performed by them. The directors of five incubators located in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, Brazil and thirteen managers of the incubated companies participated in the study through a structured questionnaire. The results show that the most important roles played by incubator managers are monitor, leader, contact and disseminator. The most cited roles performed by the managers of the incubated companies are the leader, entrepreneur, contact and resource allocator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Extensão em Foco is the property of Universidade Federal do Parana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This paper aims to identify complementary strategies for urban freight logistics in a low emission zone (LEZ) that can be implemented in downtown Medellin, Colombia. The strategies will be executed by identifying the characteristics and problems of the business establishments in the area and the entrepreneurs’ opinions. Design/methodology/approach: First, a literature review is performed to identify global and complementary strategies for the future LEZ, which is the study subject. Then, a “pilot” zone (a main corridor) of downtown Medellín is selected, and the business establishments of the area are identified to spot problems and evaluate possible strategies for the future LEZ. This identification and evaluation phase is conducted by interviewing logistics managers in 105 establishments selected in the corridor for analysis. Findings: One of the outstanding findings concerns the specificity of the logistics and mobility problems in downtown Medellin, located in Colombia, a developing country. The main issues are traffic congestion, lack of regulation and control in loading and unloading areas, as well as inadequate infrastructure for these operations. These obstacles significantly impact business activities and air quality in the area. The proposed solutions to complement the LEZ strategy for freight transport focus on improving regulation, establishing specific loading and unloading areas, exploring sustainable transportation options such as the cargo bike, and supporting small and medium-sized businesses. This emphasizes the situation’s complexity and the need for a comprehensive approach to address these logistical and environmental challenges. Originality/value: This study analyses urban freight logistics strategies that complement the traffic flow restriction policies imposed by low-emission zones. Unlike other studies that address these two issues independently, this paper specifically examines how to improve a LEZ as a comprehensive strategy to reduce the environmental impact of freight transport. In addition, it is noted that most publications tend to focus on passenger mobility strategies, which highlights the potential for research in the freight logistics field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to explore whether crowdfunding creators can learn from previous experiences to have a better financing performance of future crowdfunding projects. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses Python to capture the data of 6,267 crowdfunding projects from one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in China (JingDong Crowdfunding) and the author use the negative binomial regression model and the OLS model in this empirical study. Findings: The empirical results show that both the early-stage experience of creating a crowdfunding project and the early-stage experience of supporting projects of other crowdfunding creators can improve the financing performance of their newly launched projects. The social network of the previous projects and the "Blockbuster" projects initiated before can also make the newly initiated projects obtain better financing performance. Originality/value: Current research on entrepreneurial experience shows that serial entrepreneurs have significantly different success rates than novice or inexperienced entrepreneurs but there is limited literature on the learning effect of crowdfunding creators. This study adds to the literature on entrepreneurial learning and provides suggestions to crowdfunding creators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable "effort" that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent's effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate sustainability-led innovation, focusing on the interplay between product and process innovation for sustainability goals and the underlying supplier–customer relationships. Thus, the paper delves into sustainability-led innovation and how it affects supplier–customer relationships, and vice versa, thus providing a twofold perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The textile industry is the empirical context of this study, which is exploratory research based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, managers and experts in the textile industry. Findings: In the textile industry, sustainability-led product innovation concerns mainly product durability and performance, product recyclability and the use of waste for new product development. Process innovation deals with circular economy, traceability and water and chemical use minimization. The paper also shows how sustainability-led innovation is implemented in more technical terms and regarding supplier–customer relationships. Originality/value: The paper adopts an original perspective on how processes take place in the relationships between suppliers and customers, where there is no dominance of one actor, but innovation emerges from interdependence and interaction. Such perspective allows to provide an in-depth analysis of the supplier–customer relationships and underlying dynamics that affect sustainability-led innovation; moreover, the authors study how such innovation impacts supplier–customer relationships and the underlying relational dynamics. The value of the paper also stands in delivering a real representation of the innovation processes grounded in the textile industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retirement planning is viewed as one of the cornerstones of long-term household financial security. The responsibility of retirement planning has now been shifted to the individual and is no longer the responsibility of the employer. This paper examines the link between financial literacy and retirement planning among informal sector traders in the Randburg area of Johannesburg, South Africa. A questionnaire approach was used to collect data from 269 randomly selected informal sector respondents. The data was analysed using ordinal regression. Robustness tests were executed using the Wald test. Findings reveal that financial literacy is linked to retirement planning, and especially with reference to informal sector workers. Additionally, education, income and the informal business sector were observed to have a positive and significant influence on retirement planning. The paper contributes to both theoretical and practical discourses on retirement planning for informal sector entrepreneurs which has not received much attention. These results are important for policy makers in retirement planning as well as curriculum development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdfunding is an Internet-based fundraising method that relies on contributions from a large crowd of investors to fund innovative and risky projects. The aim of this paper is to analyse which combinations of signals commonly studied for crowdfunding success lead to overfunding. Based on the information asymmetries between fund-seeking entrepreneurs and the crowd, this paper draws on signalling theory to explore the elements of campaign design that contribute to overfunding (i.e. raising at least 10 % above the funding target). The paper focuses on the entrepreneur's identity as an individual or corporation, pitch video length, budget explanation length, number of images, project abstract length, and number of updates by the entrepreneur. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is performed using publicly available data sourced from 257 socially oriented projects from a reward-based crowdfunding platform. The results show the importance for entrepreneurs of using images and constantly communicating with the crowd. The results also reveal a series of configurations of design features that result in overfunding. These findings have practical implications for the design of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns and contribute to a better understanding of how economic agents interact within crowdfunding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to introduce a growth comprehensive pattern to explain the phenomenon of individual foreign investment, first at the global level and then at the regional level. The patterns are developed based on a number of main theories with grounded theory (GT) as the foundation, distributed on the two pull and push forces of international business theory and migration theory; simultaneously, it is classified on the three levels (attribute–consequence–value [ACV]) of means-end theory. Design/methodology/approach: An embedded method is applied to generate two complementary datasets from two approaches: in-depth interviews and secondary data analysis. Findings: In this structure, the investor plays a central role as the decision-maker based on the entrepreneur's motives for internationalization (economics-driven and psychology-driven factors) and the householders' motives for emigration (aspiration and access capabilities). The external forces considered are a push from the home country (structures) and pull from the host country (immigrant investment programs [IIPs]), in which the factor of (dis)trust/misconception as a moderator has an additional impact on this mobility. Demographic factors such as gender, region, generation/age, level of education, religion and occupation generally describe the characteristics of each specific target group. Research limitations/implications: This paper is to develop a conceptual framework. Originality/value: The results of this study, in addition to fulfilling its own objectives, will also serve as the foundation for further research in several scientific fields such as economics, sociology and politics. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0786 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational process inequality is an important branch of higher education fairness and the role difference of student leaders is one of the important phenomena of educational process inequality. Based on the employment administrative data of 2018 college graduates in a province in central China, this paper investigates the relationship between family background factors and college students serving as student cadres by using Multiple Logit Regression. The results show that the father's work unit and the father's educational level have a significant impact on college students as student leaders. The students whose father works in a unit within the system and whose father has a college degree or above were more likely to be student cadres. However, the poor students with disadvantaged family economic resources are more likely to serve as student leaders, which is contrary to the expected conclusion. Scholastic attainment can effectively adjust the positive influence of family background factors on the experience of student cadres and promote the relative equality of education process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expressions about opportunities are used unproblematically in everyday contexts. Yet, the question "What is an opportunity?" has posed a difficult riddle in the academic study of entrepreneurship. Drawing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, we explain that such perplexities are common when words are removed from ordinary language and intellectuals try to grasp what they name. Approaching the opportunity riddle differently, we ask, "How do entrepreneurs use the word 'opportunity?'" and elucidate an actualization theory of entrepreneurship attuned to the everyday understandings that underlie the meaningful use of the word. Bringing implicit understandings to the foreground contributes to (a) dissolving the mystification over the nature of "opportunity"; (b) clarifying the conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship theory; and (c) reorienting the field toward more conceptually precise ways of thinking about Knightian uncertainty, entrepreneurial success, and the entrepreneurial process. This paper also contributes to the methodology of management studies by demonstrating how attention to the logic of ordinary language can alert us to theoretical dead-ends and enable the development of theory that bridges academic and everyday understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on entrepreneur, adventurer, and Pennsylvania settler Samuel Wallis. Particular focus is given to his upbringing in a Quaker family and his work as both a debt collector and land speculator on the Pennsylvania frontier. Additionally, a history of the collection and preservation of papers related to Wallis's land acquisitions and his personal and professional life is presented.

Purpose: The paper aims to propose and validate a process-based model to enhance managerial effectiveness among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). It has been observed that business uncertainties and inadequate financial resources that MSME entrepreneurs and managers face require them to constantly engage in strong self-awareness and self-regulating behavior to enhance the efficacy in their roles and, henceforth, their role performance effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach: The approach for data collection was based on the clustering of MSMEs belonging to the clusters machine tool, pump manufacturing, foundry, textile and auto-component clusters in India. The respondents to the study were MSME entrepreneurs and managers who oversee and manage multiple functions like operations, quality, marketing, sales, supply chain management, procurement, personnel and administration and general administration. Findings: The self-efficacy of entrepreneurial managers of MSMEs is observed to play an integral role in enhancing the efficacy of their roles, thus highlighting the use of a process-based perspective while dealing with constant resource constraints and excessive dynamism in their business contexts. The ability to handle multiple tasks effectively and resilience to manage challenges enhances their role-making process, which is significant in achieving and sustaining goal-oriented behavior among MSME entrepreneurs and managers. Practical implications: This paper would serve as an effective model for entrepreneurs and managers to enhance their efficacy in the individual and interdependent role context, which would help achieve their individual and organizational goals. The model emphasizes a process-based perspective that thrusts the need to relate to the organizational context, enhancing individual confidence for goal-related behavior and fulfilling their role-related expectations. Originality/value: This paper presents a model of enhancing managerial effectiveness that discusses self-efficacy as antecedent behavior. Here, personal and environmental factors aid cognition to one's capability to construct reality, self-regulate, encode information and engage in effective managerial action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper shed light on how small cap companies acquire funds. It focuses on a new trend available for small companies and for private investors instead of an old option or traditional way of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) to raise money. The study focuses on changes happening. It justifies it for different reasons like new technology, too many rules for Initial Public Offerings, uncertain stock markets, wanting more control over their business, and thinking about growing for a long time. To understand these reasons better, the research referred to information from financial reports, academic studies, and market analysis. It focuses on small companies and private investors in India. The study suggests that small companies are now looking at other trending options to acquire money, like crowdfunding platforms and Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), instead of just doing Initial Public Offerings. These alternatives have different advantages for the small cap companies like fewer rules to follow, more control over their business, and a focus on long-term growth. The research study focused on new trends or patterns of raising funds for companies like direct listings and using SPACs instead of Initial Public Offerings In nutshell this research helps us to know how small companies are changing their way of acquiring money. It gives insights that can help entrepreneurs, investors, and financial experts make better decisions in today's complex financial world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PURPOSE: Nowadays enterprises operate in a very turbulent environment characterized by frequent, significant, and often unpredictable changes. Such conditions, including crises, force enterprises to take quick actions to adapt to changing conditions. The aim of the paper is to identify chances and timing strategies used by tourism entrepreneurs in conditions of large-scale emergencies (such as COVID-19) and show how they can serve organizational resilience. METHODOLOGY: Qualitative research was conducted in the form of 12 individual in-depth interviews and 4 focus group interviews with 22 representatives of selected industries in the tourism sector. The concept of chance management and timing strategies is used to present how, according to our interviewees, changes in the environment caused by the pandemic contributed to the survival and development of their entities in the tourism market. FINDINGS: The research findings showed that changes caused by the pandemic allowed entities to identify several chances. These chances mainly concerned the introduction of changes to the offer (accelerating previously planned changes and enabling the introduction of unplanned changes). Moreover, they provided the chances to use held digital competences and time to think about the company's development strategy, as well as establishing and developing relationships with stakeholders. Additionally, our research identified four timing strategies used by tourism entrepreneurs in the time of crisis, i.e. chance-grasping strategy, chance-entraining strategy, chance-riding strategy, and chance-creating strategy. IMPLICATIONS: Tourism enterprises are highly exposed to operating in crisis conditions. Therefore, chance management can be very useful in their activity and our research findings can be also useful regarding its theoretical and practical implications. From the theoretical point of view, we show how the concept of chance management (in particular timing strategies) can be useful for analyzing the reactions of tourism entrepreneurs to changes in times of crisis and taking advantage of opportunities arising from crisis situations. From a practical point of view, we show what strategies, depending on entrepreneurs' subjective assessment of the current and future conditions for implementing changes, can serve organizational resilience in times of crisis. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: This paper fills a research gap related to the use of the concepts of chance management and timing strategies from the perspective of tourist enterprises resilience, previously not used in this context and to a limited extent used in the general management literature so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on creative organizations often questions how artistic practices can be squared within the rational decision-making of economic thinking. This paper examines how the relational language, or conversation, between artistic and economic rationales unfolds for creative entrepreneurs. Through ethnographic work with a designer-entrepreneur, this paper presents a fine-grained analysis of the conversation the designer cultivates between artistic and economic rationales through work practices. We contribute to the literature about artistic and economic rationales at work, and more specifically to the concept of conversation. First, we show that high levels of conversing make way for low levels of conversing and vice versa. In the studio, the designer's engagement with either rationale varies as the creative process progresses. Second, on a more global dynamic, we demonstrate the conversation is continuous. It relies on its variations, which ensure the balance between rationales in the long run. We also contribute to the field of creative entrepreneurship research. We identify here one type of creative entrepreneur, with what we call a 'small is beautiful' attitude. Far from the mythical figure of the entrepreneur, this unconventional entrepreneur aims for sustainable use of creative resources rather than growth at all costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Printed Circuit Board (PCB) serves as the fundamental backbone of the modern electronics industry, providing essential support and connectivity for a wide range of electronic components within electronic devices. This research paper provides an overview of PCB defect detection techniques and different categories of defects. Various defects have been identified using current methods; however, certain defects persist undetected. This paper offers insight that can propel researchers towards innovations in this domain, coupled with a thorough exploration of potential enhancements. A total of twelve papers have been taken into account, and this survey examines the papers spanning from the years 2019 to 2023. The goal is to provide a comprehensive review of cutting-edge techniques, the models used, their accuracies, defects detected, and improvements, intending to advance the field of PCB defect detection. It also outlines potential avenues for further research, making it a valuable resource for researchers seeking to enhance this field in the future. The survey encompasses diverse detection techniques, which include algorithms based on the CNN, MobileNet, YOLO, SSD, and FPN models, etc. By comparing their accuracy, researchers can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of each approach for different types of PCB defects. The paper also addresses the limitations of existing methods, identifying areas for improvement and future scope. In conclusion, this study is a valuable resource for researchers, engineers, and business professionals involved in the fields of electronics manufacturing and quality control. By consolidating a diverse range of techniques and insights, it paves the way for the development of more sophisticated, accurate, and cost-effective PCB defect detection techniques that guarantee the performance and dependability of electrical equipment in all industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Increasingly, emerging information technologies such as shared software and continuous accounting are offering alternative ways to perform accounting tasks in a supposedly more efficient fashion. Yet, few studies have investigated how they affect the provision of accounting services, especially in the context of small accounting firms, which provide legal and tax services to entrepreneurs and businesses. Drawing on the service perspective, the paper critically examines how technological innovation challenges and reconfigures the co-production of accounting services in these firms. Design/methodology/approach: The paper answers calls issued in prior studies to conduct empirical research on emerging information technologies for accountants. It focuses on the specific context of small accounting firms and draws on interviews with small accounting firms' managers (n = 20). Findings: The study emphasizes five significant challenges that accounting firm managers face when using information technologies to support the provision of their services (ensuring reliability, factoring in their heterogeneous client base, repricing, training clients to use new technologies and promoting advisory services). Information technologies are shown to have a structuring role in the co-production of accounting services, as they lead to reconfigurations of the relationships between accountants and their clients. A range of four configurations is developed to highlight accountants' strategies to maintain collaborative relationships with their clients while integrating new technologies into their work practices. Originality/value: By conceptualizing accounting services as a co-production process, the paper offers new insights into the implications of emerging information technologies for small accounting firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss the notion of silver entrepre)neurship in the context of the silver economy. Policy-wise knowing who silver entrepreneurs are and what it takes to support them is an essential step to productively managing the ageing population and promoting an age-ready but age)friendly approach to creating a sustainable economy and society in the new demographic reality. The paper provides a theoretical and empirical literature review of silver entre)preneurship to identify the current state of the art. It also identifies selected policies and strategies aiming to foster silver entrepreneurship, representing a more inclusive and age-diverse entrepreneurial landscape. The silver entrepre)neurship proves to be a challenging research field due to the elusive nature of entrepreneurship itself and the lack of universal definitions for this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociology & Technoscience / Sociología y Tecnociencia is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Escuela Universitaria de Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The financing resources play an important role in the economic function of a country, therefore studies related to the financing resources and their impact on enterprises is very popular. This paper elaborates which factors influence the decision of capital structure, when we know the enterprises during their development face numerous and large financing challenges. For more successful coping, they need greater support both at the local and central level, in order to create a more suitable environment for their development. In reviewing the literature, the term capital structure was often mentioned by analysts, investors, and many other enterprise officials. Numerous researchers have noted various factors affecting the capital structure of enterprises. By this research we will try to clarify which factors influence the decision of the capital structure. This study describes the Modigliani and Miller theorem about capital structure and the review of some authors about determinants of capital structure including dependent, independent and control variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How much should an entrepreneur experiment and when should they pivot? Do the answers to these questions change if the entrepreneur is subject to behavioral biases, such as overconfidence? In this paper, we develop a conceptual logic to address these questions. We focus on the design of a "program of experimentation," which we define as a sequentially interdependent set of experiments and pivot decisions an entrepreneur undertakes to develop a viable business idea. This conceptualization highlights two dimensions of program design: the number of experiments to run and the pivot threshold for evaluating experimental outcomes. Our computational model suggests that while experimenting and pivoting can improve new venture performance, it can also be taken too far. Programs of experimentation that generate frequent and early pivots may impede learning and underperform more conservative programs that generate fewer pivots. We also show that an effectively designed program of experimentation can partially remedy an entrepreneur's behavioral biases. Our work informs ongoing scholarly efforts to more fully understand the Lean Startup's strengths and limitations and advances the theoretical apparatus underlying a scientific approach to venturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]