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The purpose of this article is to examine the role of social capital and higher order meta-skills in developing the employability of marketing students at a UK university.

This conceptual article, bolstered by illustrative primary data, provides a broader conceptualisation of employability. This is to address the specific research question on how social capital (contacts and connections) is deployed (via capability-based higher order meta-skills) in a UK university developing the employability of a specific group of students. The article is situated in the highly fraught context of teaching excellence measurement schemes [such as the teaching excellence framework (TEF) in the UK].

The research findings highlighted the role of social capital and higher order meta-skills in developing the employability of marketing students at a UK university.

While the illustrative primary data are not generalisable, as they are limited to one group of marketing students in one UK university; the conceptual development, including a new social capital based definition of employability that incorporated the capabilities, provided by higher-order meta-skills, is widely applicable.

The article has highlighted how the impact of social capital, etiquette and meta-skills, while being “between the lines” of the employability discourse and the metrics of the TEF, explains the differing perceptions of the value of employability initiatives. The article highlights the grey area of between the reasons given as to why some candidates are valued over others. Perhaps no rhyme or reason sometimes, just the “hidden” perception/interpretations of the interview panel of the “qualities” of one candidate over another.

The difficulty in ascertaining the influence of social capital (and how it can be deployed through higher-order meta-skills as capabilities) results in challenges for universities as they endeavour to respond to the data requirements of “learning gain” within teaching excellent measurement schemes such as the UK teaching excellence framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the “objective” institutionalized barriers (of which social, human and financial capital are decisive factors) and the subjective performance of new migrant entrepreneurs jointly affect their business attitudes and observed behavior.

The paper’s analysis of individualized performance factors (dependent on how “objective” institutionalized barriers are subjectively construed) – in line with the theory of planned behavior – enables a response to recent calls to embrace complexity and pluralism in entrepreneurship through applying social constructivist lenses. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 Eritrean entrepreneurs, and the empirical data were subjected to grounded theory analytical procedures and interpretative phenomenological analysis theoretical coding.

Six core beliefs mitigated entrepreneurial attitudes independently from the objectivized institutionalized barriers: know-how needs to be acquired formally; available sources of financing are internal, and scarce; market expertise is in the books, rather than in the market; blending in the host country’s culture is uncalled for, and the resulting difficulty of operating in the “foreign” market is a price worth paying; risk is to be avoided at all cost; and strong intra-communal bonds need not entail support for their business activity, rendering external contacts hardly necessary or trustworthy.

The paper concludes with recommendations potentially informing policies and targeted interventions by highlighting that any policy intervention or an attempt at structural change of conditions in which new migrant entrepreneurship unfolds should consider entrepreneurs as “performing” individuals, as well as representatives of wider cultural, economic and social dynamics relating to these “objective” institutionalized barriers.

This paper explores how entrepreneurial culture (EC) and organizational learning (OL) determine the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). These NTBFs are located in Isfahan Science and Technology Town (ISTT), Iran. These entities face substantial challenges in a highly-sanctioned economy, which makes adopting, acquiring or transferring new technologies daunting.

This paper analyzes a sample of 200 NTBFs. The participants were trained chief executive officers and observed by applying pre-test and post-test designs. As a final step, empirical data were collected using questionnaires and analyzed accordingly. The structural equation modeling (SEM) with the partial least squares (PLS) approach was used by the SmartPLS2 software.

OL was found to mediate the relationship between EC and EO in the studied NTBFs. Additionally, the indirect effect of EC on EO and the direct impact of OL on EO were significant (=1.96). Therefore, this study focuses on selected NTBFs within Iran's particular and distinctive context.

This study has several limitations. These were the time consuming nature, the lack of cooperation by managers and the COVID-19 pandemic-related challenges. Nonetheless, the findings offer several important implications for practitioners, scholars and policymakers.

The paper sought to explore how EC and OL determine EO in Iranian NTBFs. It, thus, investigates the case of a highly-sanctioned context during the coronavirus pandemic, which imposed several basic and technological limitations on their practices.

The study evaluates small marginal farmers’ (SMFs) potential behavior, attitude and trust in the adoption of innovative emerging technologies.

The study employed an agile multi-factor approach to conceptualize a digital marketplace to connect a supply chain ecosystem for stakeholders.

The empirical findings suggest that most SMFs are willing to embrace innovative technologies. Nonetheless, they lack the necessary technological oriented education, training and funds to innovate. However, their reluctance to adapt changes is attributable to their fear of losing past customs and practices; they were threatened by the reaction of intermediaries (arthyias) to the adoption of technologies, which could result in them suffering huge losses.

This innovative disintermediation business model has a significant potential to reduce information asymmetry, cost and hoarding – and can thus increase the SMFs’ profit margins. Agricultural technological innovations have a profound potential to impact their supply chain logistics positively by reducing the wastage of perishable food and thus enhancing the consumer experience.

Little is known about how experiential entrepreneurship education approaches contribute toward enhancing the engagement of students in the learning process. Using a purposive and convenience sample of individual student reflective journals, the purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate how the process of constructive misalignment enhances the level of student engagement through a team-based experiential entrepreneurship education assessment.

Data were gathered from a purposive and convenience sample of reflective journals, an individual “performance assessment” element of three Masters-level courses (courses 1, 2 and 3) that included an “active” group business ideas generation presentation and a report. These texts were analyzed through content analysis that critically evaluates and summarizes the content of data and their messages.

While expected learning outcomes included teamwork and communication, the higher levels of active learning and student engagement related to innovation and generating a business idea was much more modest. Rather, the study finds that significant learning opportunities were apparent when students experienced unexpected aspects of constructive misalignment, such as linguistic–cultural challenges, nonparticipation and freeriding.

Building on Biggs’ (2003) model of constructive alignment in course design and delivery/assessment, this paper elucidates various unexpected and surprising aspects. It suggests that constructive misalignment could provide major learning opportunities for students and is thus more likely in these team contexts where entrepreneurship students experience constructive misalignment. Educators should, therefore, continue to design experiential entrepreneurship courses and their performance assessments through team-based approaches that achieve higher levels of engagement as well as more active learning.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the provision and reported outcomes of Experiential Entrepreneurship Education (EEE), from learner, educator and university perspectives, in order to reflect upon the progress of the Entrepreneurial University. It proposes a conceptual framework for integrating the multiple stakeholder perspectives for an “education led” and student-focused Entrepreneurial University, something yet to be identified from existing research and, consequentially, future research.

A reflective literature review explores the depth and breadth of EEE provision in Universities, noting: what is taking place, who is involved, where EEE is situated (within the university context), and how the knowledge base is informed. From these reflections, a conceptual framework is proposed as a means of exploring and categorizing progress towards a student-focused Entrepreneurial University through education experiences.

The literature review is largely informed by case studies developed by educators reflecting on student learner experiences for the purpose of course enhancement. These case exemplars provide the resource for emergent, bottom-up strategy that could support the Entrepreneurial University. However, the role of the University is less researched, in terms of providing context and external strategic relationships to resource EEE and deliver a more planned approach to the Entrepreneurial University. The Entrepreneurial University and EEE are mainstream agendas and the development of both must consider the role and contribution of the University in terms of strategy formulation and implementation.

This study takes a holistic view, seeing EEE and the Entrepreneurial University as connected agendas. The student-focused Entrepreneurial University cannot result from emergent, bottom-up strategy alone and thus there is a need to address the role of top-down resource-based University strategy in creating real progress. The paper provides a conceptualization, for the purpose of analysing and informing the relationship between EEE and the Entrepreneurial University that places the University as a key stakeholder, and in doing so asks that scholars and educators build the knowledge base not only from cases of good practice but also from the review of strategic management within Universities.

In exploring how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) overcame COVID-19 restrictions by deploying their specific dynamic capabilities to pivot their business models, this article explains the novel approaches that SMEs take and how they have responded to the financial challenges that arose from the pandemic.

The article adopts a dynamic capabilities lens to explain: (1) the specific financial effects of the relatively “short” (seven week) COVID-19 lockdown during March and April 2020 on SMEs; (2) the barriers they faced; and (3) how they overcame these barriers. The data were collected via semi-structured interviews with the owner-manager or a senior manager in each surveyed SME. The interview data were analysed using NVivo.

Analysis of the findings revealed five key factors: (1) the capability of SMEs to access external resources, especially entrepreneurial finance; (2) their ability to reconfigure resources and plan for the longer term, yet retain flexibility; (3) how entrepreneurial learning provided the capability to deal with the “unplanned” events/uncertainty; (4) the importance of networking and sources of information; and (5) the remarkable optimism for a future recovery, despite the difficulties of the trading period.

This research fills a unique niche, as no previous studies have examined the resilience and dynamic capabilities of SMEs during a complete lockdown and business shutdown of this magnitude. This context, unprecedented in the history of modern economies, offers a new lens through which to understand the mechanisms of business survival and adaptation in times of severe disruptions. No previous studies have been conducted in unique circumstances during a time when SMEs were faced with such a strict lockdown with travel and business completely shut down.

This paper examines how some specific psychological characteristics and stress levels of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) key decision-makers (founders/managers) (KDMs) influence firm goal attainment based on two firm aspiration types.

This study hypothesizes that perceived resilience, social skills (self-promotion, ingratiation, expressiveness, social adaptability), and stress of SME KDMs will differently influence firm performance goal achievement based on firm historical versus social aspirations. IBM AMOS v27 is used to test these hypotheses on survey data of 267 Australian SME KDMs.

The study reveals that KDMs’ perceived resilience, social skills and stress differentially impact the achievement of firm performance goals when selecting firm-level historical and social aspirations. Resilience and some specific social skills can even have a detrimental effect on achieving firm goals when applying historical and social aspirations. Historical aspirations are based on the firm’s performance history, while social aspirations are based on the performance of a reference group of competitor firms. The differences in the relationship between these characteristics and the two aspiration types are also explained. Furthermore, the study reveals the important role of perceived stress levels in achieving firm performance goals, using both aspiration types.

This study is the first to investigate how the perceived use of some specific psychological characteristics of SME KDMs influence the ability to meet firm performance goals based on the discretionary use of historical and social aspirations and the relationship between these aspiration types. In this context, the paper explains the reasons for the differences and similarities in their use. Thus, this study provides an important empirical contribution to research on the emergent domain of micro-foundational SME goals.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the call by McMullen and Dimov (2013) for a clearer understanding of entrepreneurial journeys by investigating the entrepreneurial capitals and micro-processes of seven young early stage entrepreneurs who all exited their businesses within 3 years of start-up.

The authors analysed empirical data from concurrent in-depth interviews which generated rich longitudinal case studies. Theory-building then led to a proposed “Longitudinal Dynamic Process Framework” of entrepreneurial goals, processes and capitals.

The framework builds on prior studies by integrating entrepreneurial processes and decisions into two feedback loops based on continuous review and learning. It thereby enhances understanding of the dynamics of new business development and unfolds the early stage ventures entrepreneurs' business exits.

The findings are based on a small purposive sample. However, the main implication for research and theory is showing how the entrepreneurial capitals are dynamic and influenced by entrepreneurs' environment, and also separating entrepreneurs' personal issues from their business issues.

The findings challenge some assumptions of policymakers and offer new insights for practitioners and early stage entrepreneurs. These include having more realistic case-studies of the entrepreneurial journey, recognizing the need to be agile and tenacious to cope with challenges, understanding how capitals can interact in complementary ways and that entrepreneurial processes can be used to leverage them at appropriate stages of the start-ups.

The concurrent longitudinal analysis and theory-building complements extant cross-sectional studies by identifying and analysing the detailed processes of actual business start-ups and exits. The proposed framework thereby adds coherence to earlier studies and helps to explain early stage entrepreneurial development, transformation of capitals and business exit.