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Information security awareness (ISA) mainly refers to those aspects that need to be addressed to effectively respond to information security challenges. This research used focus groups to empirically investigate the main ISA dimensions that emerge from the Italian public health-care sector. This study aims to identify the most critical dimension of ISA and to evaluate the diffusion and maturity of information security policies (ISPs) of health-care infrastructure and training programs.

This research adopted a qualitative research design and focus groups as a research methodology. Data analysis was conducted using the NVIVO 14 software package and followed the principles of thematic analysis.

The focus group results highlighted that health-care personnel find it difficult to comply with the main ISA dimensions, a situation that leads to risky behaviors. Password management, data storage and transfer and instant messaging applications emerged as the most critical of the main ISA dimensions in the context of this research. It also transpired that ISPs are not all-encompassing as they mainly focus on privacy problems but neglect security concerns. Finally, training programs are not fully implemented in the investigated context, thus undermining their positive enhancing role for ISA.

The public health-care sector emerged as a critical yet still under-investigated context. The need for an in-depth investigation of organizational sciences approaches to overcoming information security challenges is also recommended in several prior research studies.

Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly widespread, and cybersecurity is therefore increasingly important. Although the technological aspects of cybersecurity are its best-known characteristics, the cybersecurity phenomenon goes beyond the detection of technological impacts, and encompasses all the dimensions of an organization. This study thus focusses on an additional set of organizational elements. The key elements of cybersecurity organizational readiness depicted here are cybersecurity awareness, cybersecurity culture and cybersecurity organizational resilience (OR). This study aims to qualitatively assess small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) overall level of organizational cybersecurity readiness.

This study focused on conducting a cybersecurity organizational readiness assessment using a sample of 53 Italian SMEs from the information and communication technology sector. Informed mixed method research, this study was conducted consistent with the principles of the explanatory sequential mixed method design, and adopting a quanti-qualitative methodology. The quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire. Qualitative data were subsequently collected through semi-structured interviews.

Although many elements of the technical aspects of cybersecurity OR have yielded very encouraging results, there are still some areas that require improvement. These include those facets that constitute the foundation of cybersecurity awareness, and, thus, a cybersecurity culture. This result highlights that the areas in need of improvement are exactly those that are most important in fighting against cyber threats via organizational cybersecurity readiness.

Although the importance of SMEs is obvious, evidence of such organizations’ attitudes to cybersecurity are still limited. This research is an attempt to depict the organizational issue related to cybersecurity, i.e. overall cybersecurity organizational readiness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of temporal construal theory on entrepreneurial intention models using a three-country study. Inclusion of temporal construal theory in intent models would suggest path dependent influence on intent, and more specifically, that intent may be subdivided into temporally based categories, broadly codified as short-term and long-term intent.

A quasi-experimental study of 1,046 university students in business and engineering from the USA, Mexico, and Spain was conducted. A temporal construal model of intent is proposed, including measures of short-term and long-term intent. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), part of the perceived behavioral control in the theory of planned behavior, is utilized to structure the model antecedents.

The results suggest the existence of differences in individual entrepreneurial intent measures depending on the individual’s perception of when the entrepreneurial event is anticipated to occur in their lives. Utilizing an ESE construct, the authors demonstrated that short-term entrepreneurial intent significantly mediates the effect of ESE on long-term entrepreneurial intent. Furthermore, the results identify a mediating model that does not depend on regional country differences, thus supporting the generalizability of the findings.

The paper bridges temporal construal theory and entrepreneurial intentions to qualify the path dependent effects of this psychological phenomena and its impact on identifying nascent entrepreneurs. The multi-country results indicate the ability to generalize the findings into a more complete theoretical model of entrepreneurial intention and suggests potential improvements in predictive models that currently use single or averaged measures of entrepreneurial intent.