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The public is often associated with a spatial entity: the sphere. Recent technical developments, however, raise questions about the applicability of the sphere as a concept in social, political or economic studies. This paper aims to discuss two different intuitions related to spheres regarding operational and territorial attributes. It identifies a growing discrepancy between these intuitions as a result of the spread of digital technology in society. The notion of the sphere must therefore be used more carefully in the future.

The paper takes a conceptual approach based on constructs developed by Habermas for the analysis of the bourgeois public. The resulting twofold model is validated on the background of current research in organisational science and general considerations about the effect of digital technology on society.

The paper identifies an increasing inconsistency in the conceptions of social spheres, which implies that accustomed spatial concepts cannot further be used as before in this context. Exemplary evidence about this divergence is gathered from extant work in the field.

While a lot has already been said about social dynamics in the digital age, their consequences for the applicability of the sphere as a spatial concept have not yet been properly addressed. The paper identifies a fundamental problem in the discourse on social spheres in the digital age that challenges the internal consistency of the concept, independently from any further epistemological or ontological considerations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) fosters economic growth and opens up new directions for innovation. However, the diffusion of AI proceeds very slowly and falls behind, especially in comparison to other technologies. An important path leading to better adoption rates identified is trust-building. Particular requirements for trust and their relevance for AI adoption are currently insufficiently addressed.

To close this gap, the authors follow a qualitative approach, drawing on the extended valence framework by assessing semi-structured interviews with experts from various companies.

The authors contribute to research by finding several subcategories for the three main trust dimensions ability, integrity and benevolence, thereby revealing fundamental differences for building trust in AI compared to more traditional technologies. In particular, the authors find access to knowledge, transparency, explainability, certification, as well as self-imposed standards and guidelines to be important factors that increase overall trust in AI.

The results show how the valence framework needs to be elaborated to become applicable to the AI context and provide further structural orientation to better understand AI adoption intentions. This may help decision-makers to identify further requirements or strategies to increase overall trust in their AI products, creating competitive and operational advantage.

This paper aims to explore the development of the US steel industry from the 19th to the 20th century by applying the Schumpeterian perspective on the concept of creative destruction. It introduces Game Theory as a means to describe patterns of strategic situations and entrepreneurial decision-making in an emerging industry.

Based on a narrative literature review of Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction, four historical case studies have been designed. These historical case studies build the basis for game-theoretically analysis and evaluation. In doing so, the authors identify games with different payoff matrices that take place while an industry emerges, reflecting different layers of creative destruction.

Emerging industries, as this paper highlights, go through several stages of development until they reach full maturity. With Schumpeter, these stages can be studied through an entrepreneurial lens, highlighting different patterns of decision-making in each respective stage. This paper adds to a better understanding of emerging industries. Furthermore, this paper provides a methodological repertoire that can also be applied to other cases as well, such as the emergence of contemporary digital industries.

The paper provides a horizontal overview of how Game Theory can be applied to analyze industrial epochs and how the concept of creative destruction works in industry and transforms industry. It introduces Game Theory to management and business history as a sound methodological base to analyze and evaluate strategic situations and entrepreneurial decision-making.

The paper presents a comprehensive method to act in the different stages of an industrial epoch and how to act. The games applied in the particular layers of creative destruction give an insight into the analysis of strategic situations and strategic decision-making in the industry.

This paper provides a horizontal perspective on strategic games that can be used as an analysis methodology in the field of entrepreneurship and applied in contemporary industries. It connects historical cases out of the US steel industry with Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction and Game Theory.

This research objective was to explore how Romanian IT family businesses' co-founders enable entrepreneuring through familiness practices. The authors explored what familiness practices emerge and how these are facilitated and supported by the rhetoric framework.

Drawing on Romanian IT entrepreneurs' practice from five case studies of IT family businesses and purposive revelatory cases, the authors considered the family co-founders' narratives and representations of familiness presented in 31 interviews.

The respondents' communication in entrepreneuring is a joint collaborative effort of the family co-founders to function well. Family entrepreneurs generate positive perceptions in favour of enterprising families using persuasive communication via rhetoric appeals to familiness ethos, familiness logos and familiness pathos, leading to constructive conflict management. The rhetoric of persuasion supports family entrepreneuring.

The authors conducted multiple case studies, profiling technological co-founders and family entrepreneurs in the challenging circumstances of an emerging economy.

The analysis of the use of rhetoric contributes to a better understanding of familiness practices in the family business. Through appeals to ethos, family business entrepreneurs enforce family values built on shared history, complementarity and moral exemplarity. The appeals to logos in entrepreneuring involve fulfilling complementary roles, alignment and continuous learning and coaching. The appeals to pathos are about emotions and how the family entrepreneurs' discourse enforces constructive handling of emotions.

The perceived familiness communicated through appeals to ethos, logos and pathos contributes to legitimating the family firm structures.

Theorising from family entrepreneurs' familiness practices, the authors suggest that entrepreneuring requires good communication of the representation of familiness for co-founders, employees and other stakeholders to also serve constructive conflict handling. The perceived familiness communicated through appeals to ethos, logos and pathos helps family businesses leverage their unique strengths and resources in the entrepreneuring process.

The study aims to map the intellectual structure of business ethics studies by analyzing 17,246 citations of 225 papers published in Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ) in the year between 2005 and 2014. Specifically, the purpose of the study is to describe the current state of BEQ, identify the most influential journals and works, identify the key themes of business ethics studies during 2005-2014 and, at the same time, report the changes in themes by making a comparison between two time periods – 2005-2009 and 2010-2014.

First, the study presents the information of the authors, institutions and countries that contribute to BEQ with a statistical analysis. Second, the study identifies the most cited journals and works in BEQ during 2005-2014 with a citation analysis. Third, the study identifies the key research themes in business ethics studies with a co-citation analysis. With the help of factor and social network analysis (NA), the study groups the research themes and maps their links.

First, the statistical results show that many well-known researchers from famous US institutions publishing in BEQ. Second, the citation analysis results show that quite a few journals become mature gradually in business ethics domain. Besides, most of the influential works are normative and theoretical. Third, the co-citation results indicate that “stakeholder management” and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) are two main themes in business ethics studies in the past decade. Specifically, “stakeholder management” attracts the most research interests in both two sub-time periods. In addition, compared with the pure studies on CSR during 2005-2009, increasing researchers are keen on the theme of “political CSR under globalization” in the second five years. Meanwhile, other focus like “society, state and business ethics” earns a certain degree of attention in the time window 2005-2009. And “accountability in MNCs” and “political philosophy” are the new concerns in the year between 2010 and 2014.

The study confirms BEQ’s leadership role in business ethics domain. And, it further proves that business ethics has evolved as an independent discipline. It also helps the researchers to have a concise knowledge of the main contents and key points of business ethics research. Methodologically, co-citation analysis combined with factor and NA provides clear results and visualized figures which can be understood easily by the researchers and practitioners.

Identify some of the most relevant factors that trigger a private school's workforce to foster a sustainable competitive advantage by reinforcing the intrinsic job satisfaction and the levels of teacher self-efficacy, engagement and job performance.

Surveys were applied to private school teachers to assess their perception concerning the studied variables, data were tested at a confirmatory level using the partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM).

Teachers with a high sense of self-efficacy and possessing elevated intrinsic satisfaction tend to be highly productive and results-oriented. Intrinsic job satisfaction is a key factor that influences more than extrinsic job satisfaction in the previously mentioned relationship.

Although the obtained results are constrained and apply to the Mexican context, we suggest that virtual limitation can be overcome by extending the study due to the proposed construct that can be applied in other regions or organizations.

Principals will need to develop mainly the intrinsic job satisfaction in the teaching staff, to improve the job and organizational performance. This should be accompanied, secondly, by factors that encourage extrinsic satisfaction such as fair pay or recognition.

Open up an alternative explanation, based on the evidence of this study, to the theory of social exchange, since the factor that most influences teacher’s citizenship behaviours is not extrinsic but intrinsic satisfaction. That is, it is not what the employee receives from the institution, but what the employee does or gives to the institution the source of satisfaction that will encourage greater job performance.