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This paper aims to provide information about the state of the art of University Social Responsibility (USR) from a regional perspective, based on a theoretical and practical development proposed by a wide net of Latin-American higher education institutions (HEIs): the USR Union of Latin America (URSULA).

The state of the art was performed through a two-year measurement process (2018–2019) conducted in 80 HEI from 12 Latin-American countries. The state of the art was constructed through a self-reported diagnosis concerning four HEI scopes of action, twelve goals, and sixty-six indicators to measure the accomplishment of USR goals.

The study's primary results were twofold: first, the verification of a dynamic model for USR consensual management and second, the understanding of USR's challenging nature for standard practices in HEIs.

This study's results contribute to creating a practical framework for USR measurement based on a regional context (Latin America). Moreover, this research underlines the discrepancy between HEIs' social performance and the need to commit to the 2030 UN sustainable development goals.

This is the first study to examine the state of USR in a region such a Latin America.

The study aims to explore the entrepreneurial agency, focusing on migrant entrepreneurs’ ability to reshape societal structures and initiate endeavours despite limitations in entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) with constraints.

Through 23 qualitative interviews in an EE with constraints and using a grounded theory-inspired abductive approach, the study uncovers coping mechanisms and responses to barriers and imitations and explores entrepreneurial agency within these EEs.

The findings show that migrant entrepreneurs overcome constraints through a bricolage approach involving seizing opportunities, leveraging family and friend networks, collaborating strategically, adapting and innovating. Moreover, they exhibit a strong “entrepreneurial gene”, displaying resilience and determination to succeed despite challenges.

Interviewees’ subjective perceptions and language barriers may bias the results due to the narrow spatial focus. Advancing the understanding of entrepreneurial agency in EEs with constraints helps practitioners design training programmes fostering adaptive capabilities and forward-thinking mindsets. At the same time, ecosystem actors can implement inclusive practices and strategies to mitigate regulatory hurdles, promote cultural competence and facilitate collaborative initiatives among entrepreneurs.

Delving into the entrepreneurial agency of migrant entrepreneurs reveals the importance of inclusive EEs in fully exploiting migrant entrepreneurs’ economic and societal value.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether non-financial firms listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) exhibit a target cash conversion cycle (CCC). The study also examines the speed of adjustment to the target CCC and the factors that influence corporate decisions on the optimum length of the CCC.

Based on a sample of 33 publicly traded firms on the NSE for the period between 1993 and 2008, cross-sectional and time series analyses were carried out on the data comprising 468 firm-years. A target adjustment model was developed to examine the significant determinants of the CCC. Various regression approaches including ordinary least squares, fixed effects and two-stage least squares estimation models were used in data analysis.

The results, which are robust for endogeneity, show that non-financial firms listed on the NSE maintain a target CCC. Further analysis reveals that these firms adjust to the target CCC at a slower rate. The results show that the determinants of the CCC include both firm-specific and economy-wide factors. Specifically, the study establishes that older firms and firms with more internal resources maintain longer CCC. Moreover higher return on assets, investment in capital expenditure and growth opportunities have a significant negative association with the CCC. The results also show a significant positive relation between inflation and the CCC.

The study establishes that other than internal firm-specific factors, the CCC is also influenced by inflation, which is an external, economy-wide factor.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study to examine whether listed non-financial firms in a frontier market maintain a target CCC.

The conceptual framework of Multicultural Hybridism is adopted to reflect the emerging themes of transnationalism and superdiversity in the context of ethnic minority migrant entrepreneurs breaking out of their ethnic enclaves into mainstream economy. It is constructed as an extension of Mixed Embeddedness theory (Kloosterman, 2006), given that ‘Multicultural Hybrid’ (Arrighetti, Daniela Bolzani, & Lasagni, 2014) firms display stronger resilience with a higher survival rate than enclaved businesses (Kloosterman, Rusinovic, & Yeboah, 2016). With further integration of incremental diversification typology (Lassalle & Scott, 2018), the current study adopts Multicultural Hybridism as a lens to explore the opportunity recognition capabilities of transnational, migrant entrepreneurs who are facilitated by the hybridity of opportunity recognition (Lassalle, 2018) from linking host-country and home-country cultures. The hybridity of opportunity recognition focuses on access to markets and resources between transnational ethnic and local multicultural mainstream markets. Through the theoretical lens of Multicultural Hybridism, interviews with 16 Birmingham-based Chinese migrant entrepreneurs have been analysed to shape a dynamic understanding of the multifaceted concept of breakout in a superdiverse and transnational context. The multilayered interpretation of breakout provides an enhanced understanding of the diversity of hybridism between transnational ethnic and local multicultural mainstream markets. This is seen from the perspectives of firm growth and social integration in the current locations and future spaces of transnational migrant entrepreneurs. It goes beyond the narrow imagination of breakout as an economic assimilation process, avoiding the singular conceptualisation of the host-country mainstream market as the only breakout destination for transnational ethnic entrepreneurs.

This paper is a response to the failure of construction firms to use sufficient attention to their working capital management (WCM) practices, resulting in operational challenges, and leading to the collapse of firms in most developing countries. Hence, this study aims to explore the empirical perspective of WCM practices among large building construction firms (LBCFs) in Ghana, to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 9.

The study collected primary data through structured survey questionnaires from LBCFs in Ghana. The CEOs/Directors, General Managers and Accountant/Finance of LBCFs in Ghana formed the unit of analysis based on a simple random sampling technique. Mean score, standard deviation and one-sample t-test were used to perform the empirical analysis of the study.

According to this study's empirical results, LBCFs appear to have effective WCM practices in place. This was evidenced in the surveyed responses which indicate that the sector’s WCM practices sound good based on the mean scores and statistically significant as the t-values > 1.664. Notably, LBCFs in Ghana pay their suppliers early to reduce the fear of adverse effect of late payments on their credit history, making them conservative in their approach toward financial management.

This is a pioneering paper in a developing country like Ghana, highlighting the significance of gaining an in-depth understanding of WCM practices among LBCFs. The findings of this study are expected to provide valuable information to industry players toward ensuring WCM efficiencies and can serve as a solid foundation for further empirical studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between debt policy and performance among family firms (FF), providing evidence on whether FF differ from non-family firms (NFF). It also focusses on the possibility of asymmetrical debt policy impact on performance between periods of stability and economic adversity.

The paper employs panel data regression, considering a sample of Portuguese listed firms for the period between 1999 and 2014.

Overall, the author find evidence that debt contributes negatively to firms’ performance, which is consistent with the pecking order prediction, and that the relationship between debt and performance do not differ significantly between FF and NFF. After addressing the endogeneity issue, the author conclude that firms’ performance is negatively influenced by both short- and long-term debt. Considering the total debt, the negative relationship between the two variables differs from family and non-family companies. The results show that age and size influences positively, and the independence of the board directors influences negatively the firms’ performance. The empirical findings suggest that under economic adversity, the firms’ performance is negatively affected. Finally, the author conclude that return on assets appear to fit better than return on equity or MB when you want to relate debt and firm performance.

A limitation of this study is the small size of the Euronext Lisbon that results in a small sample.

This paper offers some insights on the relationship between debt policy and firm performance from a country with weak protection of minority shareholders, concentrated ownership and a significant family control. It also gives the opportunity to analyse whether firm performance differs according to market conditions.

The image of Mel Gibson and Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) in the Mad Max and X-Men franchises represents traditional heroic action masculinity. This chapter explores the roles of female action heroes in defying patriarchy and subverting action film genre stereotypes in male-dominated franchises. In contrast to past characterisations of Max, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) provides both a departure to the role of Max as the male saviour seeking vengeance, by focusing on Imperator Furiosa and offering space for a portrayal of femininity characterised by inclusivity and tolerance. In Logan (2017), the decay of Wolverine is central to the narrative. Rather than the portrayal of an immortal hypermasculine hero in the previous X-Men films (with emphasis on men in X-Men), a new female mutant Laura assumes his mantle. In this context, I consider the gender roles and depiction of women in these films, and how they may be read as offering a futuristic vision of utopia in dystopian narrative worlds.

In the distant future, the social and economic systems build by the patriarchy are crumbling, causing an environmental crisis and divisive society, where people who are different (mutants) are hunted down. Mad Max: Fury Road and Logan both offer an alternative depiction of women and girls, providing new perspectives to navigate an uncertain dystopian world through fierce female warriors Furiosa, and mutant girl Laura. Ultimately this chapter demonstrates that survival in the post-apocalyptic and dystopian worlds represented in Mad Max: Fury Road and Logan may be achieved via a subversive feminist solution/utopia to the crisis of masculinity.

For over thirty years, one of the most overt forms of employer opposition to unionization has been anti-union campaigns conducted by union avoidance consultants. As a result, both union and employer associations have attempted to influence the provisions of the LMRDA that cover consultant activities. This article provides the first comprehensive historical analysis of the LMRDA's reporting and disclosure requirements covering employers and consultants. The first section examines consultant reporting policy from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, a period when unions filed relatively few complaints and the DOL initiated few investigations, but the consultant industry expanded significantly. Section two examines developments in the 1980s – the period of greatest congressional and judicial activity on consultant reporting since the 1950s. The final section looks at post-1980s events and examines why organized labor has persisted with its campaign to reform government policy on consultant reporting, despite its inability to make progress on the issue over the past four decades.

Careers have come to dominate contemporary discourse on gendered entrepreneurship. This paper aims to explore entrepreneurial careers as recounted by commercially successful female entrepreneurs to examine how they strategize to construct desirable careers in contexts characterized by underdeveloped markets and weak institutions.

Using a qualitative research design, data for our inquiry come from publicly available life history accounts of 20 female entrepreneurs appearing on an enterprise focus television show in Nigeria. The authors supplemented the television interview data with archival data in the form of publicly available digital footprints of the entrepreneurs collected from their company websites, magazines, online newspapers featuring these entrepreneurs and their social media pages such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Facebook and Instagram.

The careers of female entrepreneurs operating in context of underdeveloped institution and markets, the authors found, are characterized by four heterogeneous ingrained dispositions and actions reflecting how they got in and got on with their entrepreneurial careers: (1) “Observing and playing business,” (2) traipsing the “path less traveled,” (3) a hook to the “Pierian spring” of entrepreneurship and (4) “Grace under pressure” in decision-making.

The authors contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by providing insight into the lived experiences, agency and careers of commercially successful female entrepreneurs as played out in the form of a contextual practice of “wayfinding” to starting up and managing their own business ventures.