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This study aims to respond to repeated calls for more process-focused research on effectual entrepreneurship. It illustrates how effectuation takes place, particularly through gaining the commitment of actors with diverse resources, knowledge and needs in a context characterized by power disparities. It illuminates the ethical concerns faced by effectual entrepreneurs and the impact these concerns could have on the service design.

The qualitative investigation involved in-depth interviews with 30 intercultural trainers-entrepreneurs delivering repatriation training in the context of international assignments. The authors supplemented primary data with the analysis of training and promotional materials.

The authors identify four key elements of the effectual process, in which entrepreneurs aim to elicit commitment while reconciling potentially conflicting demands of the actors involved: surfacing needs; value framing; co-creation; and joint affordable loss. The authors show how the acquisition of commitment has a consequential impact on subsequent steps of effectual entrepreneurship. The authors highlight how the interdependence of entrepreneurs, their services, clients and end-users impacts the availability of means and goals. More importantly, the authors also demonstrate how resource dependence, knowledge disparities and power imbalance between actors partaking in effectual entrepreneurship can lead to numerous ethical concerns and result in suboptimal service designs.

This study demonstrates the dark side of effectual entrepreneurship in a resource-constrained environment. The authors show how power disparities and resource-dependence can lead to ethical dilemmas and inferior service designs, where entrepreneurs follow the lead of influential and resource-abundant stakeholders at the expense of the end-users.

To date, research on women’s entrepreneurship has largely been focused on how gender roles may constrain the venture process, or cause role conflicts for women pursuing an entrepreneurial career. While acknowledging the validity of such perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to apply a broader perspective of career-life development, answering the call for a more nuanced and embedded understanding of an entrepreneurial career.

This paper presents a constructionist, relational analysis of the experiences of 13 Canadian women who started their business following the life transition to motherhood. Interview data were coded using grounded theory methods.

The conceptual model captures the influence of the mothering role in shaping the transition into entrepreneurship, illuminating the reciprocal relational processes of context, choice and outcomes in the career-life development of mother entrepreneurs.

While this is a small sample, and findings are not generalizable, application of relational theory of career-life offers implications for supporting women’s transition to, and continued success in, entrepreneurship.

Career theory offers practical application to the management of mother entrepreneurs’ career-life development.

To date, there has been limited application of career theory to entrepreneurship, particularly to understanding the gendered, relational career-life experiences of mother entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to consider gender role identity as an informal institution shaping female entrepreneurship, and to illuminate the dual effects of institutions as constraining and enabling forces.

The paper examines the context of female entrepreneurship in Japan, and highlights the importance of “motherhood” for Japanese women. Outlining the institutional context of gender role and female entrepreneurship, and using two case studies of Japanese female entrepreneurs as illustrative examples, the paper explores how gender role identity can be viewed as a core element driving female entrepreneurship. Drawing on institutional theory and the “role as resource” perspective, a set of propositions are advanced on linkages between gender role identity and female entrepreneurship.

The findings suggest that a strong identification with their family roles, in particular the role as a mother, lead Japanese women onto the entrepreneurial path. A strong gender role identity is also reflected in the identity of the ventures, the products and services provided by these ventures, and their organizational structure and practices.

This study represents an initial attempt to explore how female entrepreneurs can leverage their gender role identity in creating a unique configuration for their ventures that represents a fit to their identity as mothers.

Instead of viewing gender role identity one‐sidedly as a constraint, the case‐study‐based conceptual arguments advanced are employed to develop a more balanced perspective on motherhood as being an enabling factor in female entrepreneurship.

The role of clusters in the development and growth of local and national economies has been extensively studied and discussed in global literature. Different methodologies are used for analysing the impact these have in national and regional economies, such as the input–output (IO) and gravity models. This paper aims to detail the methodologies present in the literature and propose a new robust theoretical framework, which facilitates the evaluation and comparison among maritime clusters in terms of attractiveness assisting stakeholders to devise strategies, which will attract companies.

An index is created composed of five key categories, namely, infrastructure, financing, governance, manpower and institution/legislation. For the analysis of the index, multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) is used as a tool to evaluate the importance and performance of the different attributes using both quantitative and qualitative criteria. The methodology has been tested via the use the Piraeus maritime cluster.

The framework has been tested on its robustness and friendliness to the user providing useful insights to the stakeholders. Among the results has been the importance of the finance, manpower and infrastructure attributes, which appear to promote the cluster’s attractiveness. In addition, legislation and institutional partnerships, along with Government support, need to take place improve the performance of the cluster.

A key limitation is the fact that the methodology has been tested in a single case. Applying the methodological framework in a wider sample of clusters will significantly improve the present work.

The proposed model takes further existing research in the field via adopting the philosophy of the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index. Among the benefits of the proposed index is that it offers the flexibility and robustness to compare among different maritime clusters globally and can be readily used as a benchmarking policy tool at national, regional and global levels at any given point in time and attribute dimension.

This paper aims to explore internal audit effectiveness through its contribution to corporate governance. Namely, the authors attempt to investigate the impact of internal audit professionalization on internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance.

Using a research framework informed by institutional theory, the authors predict that internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance is associated with factors related to internal audit professionalization. To investigate the arguments, the authors combine data from a survey of 49 listed companies in the Athens Stock Exchange with publicly available information from annual reports.

Empirical results indicate that internal audit professionalization affects internal audit effectiveness, as internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance is improved for organizations where internal audit function complies with internal auditing standards and internal auditors hold professional certifications. The findings also suggest that internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance is shaped by some company-specific characteristics, namely, CEO duality and audit committee quality.

The results have implications for internal auditors who wish to increase the efficiency of their work, corporate governance mechanisms such as the board of directors and the audit committee, which can use the findings of this study to better respond to their responsibilities concerning internal audit and regulators who can also benefit to strengthen areas with substantial impact on internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance.

This paper contributes to the academic discussion on the role of internal audit in corporate governance and complements the work of other researchers in the field of internal audit professionalization. This study tries to fill a gap in the literature on the effect of internal audit professionalization elements on internal audit’s contribution to corporate governance.

The objective of this paper is to examine the determinants of the Greek house market during the period 2006–2022 using not only economic variables but also behavioral variables, taking advantage of available information on the volume of Google searches. In order to quantify the behavioral variables, we implement a Python code using the Pytrends 4.9.2 library.

In our study, we assert that models relying solely on economic variables, such as GDP growth, mortgage interest rates and inflation, may lack precision compared to those that integrate behavioral indicators. Recognizing the importance of behavioral insights, we incorporate Google Trends data as a key behavioral indicator, aiming to enhance our understanding of market dynamics by capturing online interest in Greek real estate through searches related to house prices, sales and related topics. To quantify our behavioral indicators, we utilize a Python code leveraging Pytrends, enabling us to extract relevant queries for global and local searches. We employ the EGARCH(1,1) model on the Greek house price index, testing several macroeconomic variables alongside our Google Trends indexes to explain housing returns.

Our findings show that in some cases the relationship between economic variables, such as inflation and mortgage rates, and house prices is not always consistent with the theory because we should highlight the special conditions of the examined country. The country of our sample, Greece, presents the special case of a country with severe sovereign debt issues, which at the same time has the privilege to have a strong currency and the support and the obligations of being an EU/EMU member.

The results suggest that Google Trends can be a valuable tool for academics and practitioners in order to understand what drives house prices. However, further research should be carried out on this topic, for example, causality relationships, to gain deeper insight into the possibilities and limitations of using such tools in analyzing housing market trends.

This is the first paper, to the best of our knowledge, that examines the benefits of Google Trends in studying the Greek house market.

Although the adoption of 3D printing technology in many sectors such as medicine, aerospace, jewelry and the food industry is remarkable, the adoption of 3D printing technology by hobbyists remains unknown. The purpose of this paper is to map the attitude of individuals toward this new technology, define critical factors that have an impact on hobbyists’ behavior and, finally, explore the impact of 3D printing on social, economic and environmental changes, as 3D printing technology redesigns manufacturing, thereby impacting many sectors of day-to-day life.

A survey has been carried out on Greek hobbyists, and valuable conclusions have been drawn. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire survey performed on a sample of 344 Greek consumers in this sector. A questionnaire of 30 questions was distributed electronically.

This paper contributes to the determination of the percentage of individuals that know about 3D printing, the factors that have a significant contribution to adoption of the technology and, finally, identifies the profile of those that use 3D printing technology either in their work or for their hobby. Using a factor analysis, the authors classified users into five categories based on their attitudes towards 3D printing adoption: “innovators,” “informed,” “ecologists,” “engineers” and “re-users.”

The authors believe that understanding the predictors of 3D printing technology adoption for personal use and its benefits will overcome a pertained research gap and establish an empirical nucleus for further studies in relevant contexts. This type of research is necessary to expand the survey to other European countries.

3D printing is not new, but rather is an emerging technology. Individuals are willing to adopt this innovative technology. Based on the results of our survey, a desktop 3D printer will be necessary for every home and office in the near future.

The impact of 3D printing technology on rural life and its social implications are open questions. In this paper, by identifying the groups of hobbyists, the authors determine their particular characteristics and their perspectives on this new technology. All of what is discussed above is valuable for mapping the characteristics of those who adopt this technology.

This study is attempting to determine the behavior of individuals towards 3D printing technology, their awareness and how familiar they are with this new technological innovation.

Application of technology and meeting accessibility requirements of guests are two essential areas to consider and improve in order to facilitate, ameliorate and accelerate the management of hospitality services furnished by hotels. These two trends carry great importance for competitivity of hotels' services and sustainability of tourism industry. They are two distinguishing characteristics that build a positive perception of hotels' image among its rivals.

This chapter aims to reflect the current level of conformance of the hotels' services to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for tourism, specifically, SDG 11 related to accessibility and SDGs 9, 12 and 13 related to technology. A qualitative research is conducted to find out the commitment and awareness levels of the hotel staff at managerial positions to the accessibility and technology requirements in line with the mentioned SDGs. The representatives of city centre hotels of İzmir, Turkey with three, four and five stars and boutique hotels categories are chosen as the target population. The results obtained via content analysis signal that the extent of conformity of hotels to technology and accessibility requirements in line with the adoption of the related SDGs depend on the creation of practical solutions on the educational, legal and managerial perspectives. The chapter contributes to academic literature in tourism management and brings suggestions for tourism practitioners to adapt and improve their services to meet the standards and requirements of SDGs related to accessibility and adoption of technology in hospitality services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the integration of serious games (SGs) in the area of special educational needs in the last ten years (2007-2017).

SGs indicate positive effects on students with special educational needs and promote a multi-sensory style of learning.

Research showed that SGs are able to keep K-12 education students with attention, memory and developmental disabilities engaged in classroom facilities scaffolding their learning through increased motivation, independence, autonomy and resultant self-esteem.

Time constraints, cost and availability of appropriate games as well as the small sample of the individuals being investigated are some of the research limitations the paper refers to.

Learning through SGs has educational values that are based on learning concepts intrinsically motivating.

Students with attention, memory and developmental disabilities demonstrate characteristics of engagement, creativity, control and communication.

SGs-based learning has proven its value added to students with attention, memory and executive control difficulties as well as mental or developmental disabilities engaging students better than when using traditional methods.