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Through a feminist lens, the study explores women’s experiences of entrepreneurial leadership in the UK and how the women manage competing and contrary patriarchal and individualism discourses and associated discursive paradox.

This study follows social constructionism and Feminist Standpoint Research approach, providing space for women to voice and contextualise lived experiences from multiple standpoints. The study comprises five cases of women entrepreneurs in IT, law, construction, beauty and childcare, using a two-stage semi-structured interview process analysed through discourse analysis.

This study provides new insights into the entrenched patriarchal socio-cultural context for women entrepreneurial leaders in the UK. The competing discourses provoke a discursive paradox, which dominates and oppresses women. This is managed through a process of discursive blending, blurring and merging contrary discursive expectations. The women use the individualism discourse to obscure patriarchy’s domination and as a resource to resist patriarchal gender power relations. To blend the discourses, the women use particular tactics: engaging in patriarchal bargains, such as “dressing not to impress”; can sidestep and manoeuvre these bargains and can utilise “patriarchal advantages”, turning gender oppression into benefits by “working it positively”.

This study addresses the lack of research interrogating patriarchy in the Global North and the absence of understandings of how women entrepreneurial leaders manage the competing and contrary discourses of patriarchy and individualism, which actively shape their experiences. The study illuminates the significance and increasing requirement for feminism to disrupt the ever-increasing power of patriarchy in entrepreneurship.

Departing from previous studies, this paper aims to explore the predictive roles of financial indicators on diversity.

Data on all companies that are publicly traded was acquired from the Refinitiv Eikon database. The final list, which comprises 873 worldwide business data from 2021, composed the dataset. We used fundamental forward selection techniques, multiple regression and best subset regression in R programming to look at the data and find the most critical factors.

We found support for the predictive roles of financial indicators on total diversity score and its three components in global companies. In addition, bagging and random forest algorithms were able to find a predictor role of total liability on the diversity pillar score and inclusion score. In contrast, the people development score was best estimated by R. The boosted regression algorithm was also able to find evidence of the predictor role of total liability for people development and inclusion score but not for diversity pillar score.

This study is one of the first to examine financial predictors of firms’ diversity scores using machine learning algorithms. The discussion section offers theoretical and practical implications and directions for further research.

Although literature abounds on lean sustainability (LS), its contributions to manufacturing industries’ triple bottom line performance (TBLP) through top management commitment (TMC) remain scanty. This research explores the mediating role of TMC in the nexus between LS and TBLP.

Given the study’s quantitative focus, the causal design was utilised. The structured questionnaire, a survey instrument, was used to gather primary data from 285 manufacturing organisations in Ghana, a developing country. Data analysis was done with structural equation modelling.

It was found that LS and TMC positively influence TBLP, whereas TMC partially mediates the connection between LS and TBLP of Ghanaian manufacturing organisations.

The study concentrates on Ghana’s manufacturing industry and embraces the stakeholder theory and quantitative methods.

This research underlines why top managers must prioritise investment in LS to promote sustainable development and attain their organisations’ TBLP targets. The study also provides key insights for top managers to consistently commit enormous resources towards developing lean practices, contributing favourably to TBLP. By establishing the interplay among LS, TMC and TBLP, manufacturing practitioners and researchers can further advance new strategies to address the growing sustainability concerns and achieve higher economic, social and environmental performance.

The study’s originality lies in analysing the mediation effect of TMC on the linkage between LS and TBLP in a developing economy where manufacturing organisations are continuously exposed to resource and waste management problems and lack adequate commitments from top managers towards sustainability initiatives. It is also the first to establish relationships between top management commitment and TBLP in the manufacturing industries of developing economies, concentrating on Ghana.

This study addresses the intersection of team gender composition, social entrepreneurship and new venture performance, aiming to understand the unique dynamics shaping these areas. The authors discuss why female and diverse founding teams often gravitate toward social ventures and explore the relevance of this phenomenon. By investigating the impact on new venture performance, this study examines the effect of team diversity in the context of social entrepreneurship.

The study is based on a survey among new ventures in Austria. Data from 326 new ventures were analyzed using linear and logistic regression analysis. Drawing on gender role theory, the effect of diverse and female founding teams on the amount of acquired external capital was tested, emphasizing how social goals may serve as a signaling mechanism to investors.

In line with gender role theory, the study confirms that female and diverse founding teams are more inclined to establish social ventures. While the authors find empirical support for this assertion, there was no evidence found for a second assertion by the gender role theory stating that social entrepreneurship can specifically reduce gender bias with respect to external equity funding of new ventures. Contrary to expectations, the tendency of female and diverse founding teams to prioritize social goals hinders their ability to secure external equity. Furthermore, this research indicates that gender-diverse and all-female teams achieve lower levels of employment growth compared to all-male teams. These results provide insights into the relationship between team composition and venture performance.

Adding to gender role literature, this research expands the current understanding of how team gender diversity and social entrepreneurship affect venture performance. The study indicates a high prevalence of social entrepreneurship among gender-diverse teams and highlights specific challenges faced by female and gender-diverse founding teams. The findings underpin the need for a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by female and gender-diverse teams in the entrepreneurship area. By addressing these dynamics, the study offers valuable insights and recommendations for policymakers, investors and entrepreneurs, laying a foundation for future research into promoting gender equality and fostering inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystems.

This paper investigates whether disclosure quality and a history of overpaying for acquisitions are associated with differences in the value-relevance of gains on bargain purchase with high disclosure prominence.

Findings are from multivariate regression results, using a sample of firms listed in South Africa from 2010 to 2019, where a mandatory earnings reconciliation provides high disclosure prominence for gains on bargain purchase.

Given high disclosure prominence, disclosure quality is not associated with differences in the pricing of gains on bargain purchase. Instead, most gains on bargain purchase are priced as future losses (unrecognised liabilities). However, when a firm has a history of overpaying for acquisitions, gains on bargain purchase are priced as transitory economic gains.

Further research is required to determine if overpaying for acquisitions similarly communicates the credibility of gains on bargain purchase when disclosure prominence is low.

Disclosure prominence can reduce disclosure processing costs and increase the value-relevance of complex acquisition accounting. High disclosure quality cannot compensate for a weak acquisition track record.

Findings deepen our understanding of the pricing of gains on bargain purchase. This paper presents empirical results that reconcile previously conflicting theoretical views of gains on bargain purchase (as unrecognised assets or as unrecognised liabilities), by shedding light on the role that a record of overpaying for acquisitions plays in the value-relevance of gains on bargain purchase.

This systematic review paper aims to investigate seasonal ambient change’s impact on the incidence of falls among older adults.

The population, exposure, outcome (PEO) structured framework was used to frame the research question prior to using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis framework. Three databases were searched, and a total of 12 studies were found for inclusion, and quality appraisal was carried out. Data extraction was performed, and narrative analysis was carried out.

Of the 12 studies, 2 found no link between seasonality and fall incidence. One study found fall rates increased during warmer months, and 9 of the 12 studies found that winter months and their associated seasonal changes led to an increase in the incidence in falls. The overall result was that cooler temperatures typically seen during winter months carried an increased risk of falling for older adults.

Additional research is needed, most likely examining the climate one lives in. However, the findings are relevant and can be used to inform health-care providers and older adults of the increased risk of falling during the winter.

Social media-induced fatigue has received much attention in recent years. Although studies have discussed the association between related stress and fatigue, few studies have analyzed the media characteristics corresponding to social interaction stress and their effects on fatigue from the perspective of social relations and interaction structure. This paper aims to explore the association between network heterogeneity, social stressors and fatigue from the perspective of a person-environment misfit.

The survey data of 402 social media users were analyzed, and hierarchical regression models were used to validate the proposed theoretical model.

Data analysis showed that supplementary misfits (network heterogeneity) and complementary misfits (information overload and role conflict) positively affect fatigue. Additionally, supplementary misfits can indirectly affect fatigue through complementary misfits. The analysis results also confirmed the positive moderating effect of the relationship climate between network heterogeneity and role conflict. However, the quality of information does not reduce the impact of network heterogeneity on information overload.

This study reveals the mechanisms affecting user fatigue due to a lack of match with the environment. It also provides evidence of stress self-regulation among social media users and suggests how managers can help alleviate it.

We aim to explore the role of digital technologies for enhanced sustainability, hope, empowerment, resilience and optimism (SHERO) among female entrepreneurs in the Caribbean and the importance of embeddedness and contextualisation as a premise for integrating gender as a socially constructed situational practice.

The study presents qualitative data results of semi-structured interviews with 30 female digital entrepreneurs who own and operate their businesses in a range of sectors in three national contexts in the Caribbean. Narratives of the participants were used to develop the themes that emerged from the interviews.

The Caribbean context is an overarching factor that influences every facet of the lived experiences of female digital entrepreneurs. From the different contextual dimensions, we gained insights into the nuances and paradoxes of dominant assumptions related to how digital technologies influence the business transformation of female entrepreneurship as it relates to sustainability, hope, empowerment, resilience and optimism. Through a contextual gendered lens, these five business areas are found to be overlapping and mutually reinforcing features of the lived experiences of female digital entrepreneurs.

The Caribbean region, comprising of small island developing states, epitomises a unique spatially fragmented entrepreneurial context described as islandness which also offers a “fresh” context within the Global South that captures the novelty and heterogeneity of female entrepreneurs in the digital space.

This study investigates the influence of corporate culture on financial reporting transparency within Iranian firms.

Leveraging a dataset of 1,480 firm-year observations from the Tehran Stock Exchange spanning from 2013 to 2022, the study employs text mining to quantify linguistic features of corporate culture and transparency, specifically readability and tone, within annual financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) reports.

Our results confirm a positive and significant relationship between corporate culture and financial reporting transparency. The distinct dimensions of corporate culture — Creativity, Competition, Control, and Collaboration — each uniquely enhance financial transparency. Robustness tests including firm fixed-effects, entropy balancing, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) validate the profound influence of corporate culture on transparency. Additionally, our analysis shows that corporate culture significantly affects the disclosure of business, operational, and financial risks, with varying impacts across risk categories. Cross-sectional analysis further reveals how the impact of corporate culture on transparency varies significantly across different industries and firm sizes.

The study’s scope, while focused on Iran, opens avenues for comparative research in different cultural and regulatory environments. Its reliance on text mining could be complemented by qualitative methods to capture more nuanced linguistic subtleties.

Findings underscore the strategic importance of cultivating a transparent corporate culture for enhancing financial reporting practices and stakeholder trust, particularly in emerging economies with similar dynamics to Iran.

This research is pioneering in its quantitative analysis of the textual features of corporate culture and its impact on transparency within Iranian corporate reports, integrating foundational theoretical perspectives with empirical evidence.

As a contribution to the social ties and dynamic capabilities literature, the purpose of this study is to examine the boundary role of the industrial factors (competitive intensity, dependence on suppliers and demand uncertainty) on the relationship between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) social ties (business ties and political ties) and firm performance.

Data were collected from 1,077 SME top-level managers in Turkiye. The proposed model is analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling in SmartPLS 4.0 software.

The results elucidate how demand uncertainty serve to moderate the influence exerted by both business and political ties upon the performance of SMEs. However, the moderating effects of competitive intensity and dependence on suppliers, although initially hypothesized, were not found to have a significant impact on the relationships.

The relevance of social ties of SMEs may depend on the industrial factor. Although both political and business ties are effective on the customer side, these ties may become irrelevant when it comes to competition and supplier relations. In competitive SME settings, where businesses are vying for similar markets, the effectiveness of ties might be questionable. In such cases, SMEs might invest in building in-house capabilities and competencies, rather than relying on their relational networks.

This study contributes to the understanding of how relational networks, which are considered as dynamic managerial capabilities, impact SMEs performance. It also fills an important gap by testing the boundary role of industrial factors on this relationship. The empirical data is collected from the Turkish context, which is also an original aspect of the study, considering most of the social ties literature has a limited focus on a few contexts. The results also indicate new areas for discussion and exploration, indicating potential avenues for further research.