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This paper aims to add to the theorization of family dynamics and women’s entrepreneurship by examining women’s influence on decision-making in family businesses. Business decisions in family firms, in particular, are not free from family influence in terms of goals and strategies, and the role of women in decision-making processes is of particular interest. Consequently, the role of women entrepreneurs in family firms and their influence on business development requires a more fine-grained analysis of the family dynamic within the family and the business.

This study draws on a qualitative study and focuses on the life story narratives of nine women in rural family businesses in rural communities of Småland province in Sweden to empirically examine the decision-making processes. This region is known both for its entrepreneurial culture and traditional gender order. Based on the narrative accounts of women entrepreneurs in family businesses, the data analysis method is thematic, using a Gioia-inspired method.

The complexity of decision-making in rural family firms is further complicated in part due to a closeness with the rural community. Thus, a typology of three decision-making modes in family firms emerges an informal family-oriented mode, a semistructured family/employee consensus mode and a formal board mode with at least one nonfamily member. Moreover, the advantages, disadvantages and strategies that women use to influence decisions within the respective mode are outlined.

This work contributes to the study of women’s agency and its implications in family business and entrepreneurship in the rural context. The study implies that women’s agency shapes the (rural) entrepreneurship context and, likewise, the (rural) entrepreneurship context influences women’s agency. Hence, the author challenges the view of women as only caregivers and sheds light on the practices and processes behind the scenes of entrepreneurial family businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight challenges for service firms communicating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts to customers. Specifically, it focuses on the relationship between ESG metrics and reporting and customer perceptions of social innovativeness.

The empirical material comprises three years of data (2018–2020) covering more than 100 firms from three sources: (1) Social Innovation Index (Sii), which is collected as part of the American Innovation Index (Aii), (2) Bloomberg Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) ESG and (3) Datamaran.

ESG metrics and reporting do not suffice to explain customer perceptions of social innovativeness. Rather, a firm's industry plays the prominent role in affecting these perceptions where service firms are at a disadvantage as customers perceive services as less socially innovative compared to goods.

While ESG metrics and reporting provide important information for investors and regulators, they are not reflected in customers' perceptions of firms' social innovativeness, and services are at a disadvantage relative to goods. Therefore, services researchers and managers must advance their knowledge regarding how to better link ESG metrics and report to customers' perceptions.

The paper offers a first large-scale, cross-industry investigation of how ESG metrics and reporting impact customer perceptions of social innovativeness, leading to a research agenda on communication of ESG.

In this chapter, we address challenges and constraints to sharing negative emotionally-charged events in the family business context, and how this has an effect on ownership or manager identity. We examine the specific structural and social characteristics of family businesses that can undermine the benefits of socially sharing emotions. We provide illustrations of sharing emotions with external and internal partners of family businesses. We specifically point out the difficulty of sharing due to the deeply personal nature of the emotional events involved, the complexity of relationships, lack of trust, bullying, exclusion, and family expectations.

We conclude that women may be disadvantaged in different ways, such as being exposed to more emotionally challenging events than men, having a limited and crippled network of confidants within and outside the family business, and perceiving themselves as having signs of weakness. All these constraints hinder women from building a solid ownership or manager identity.

Our suggestions to family members and external partners alike are to work on continuous awareness and consciousness building where everything that is mentionable is also manageable, to strengthen relationships through so-called “check-ins” to develop effective communication skills, and to openly discuss family expectations.

This paper aims to examine uncertain situations with potential for learning in care work. While the dominant learning strategy in elderly care is lecture-based education, learning from and during daily care work routines is crucial and suitable. However, little is known about the potential for learning in daily work in elderly care.

This paper is based on a doctoral study conducted in Danish nursing homes. Shadowing care workers led to the construction of care work vignettes, which were analyzed and validated in analytic dialogues with field practitioners. Here, a selected vignette forms the empirical base for analyzing uncertainty through the lens of Dewey’s philosophy of learning.

The results suggest labeling uncertain situations as noisy, as they are sensorily felt, prompting doubt and perplexity and, hence, reflection and learning. Noisy situations cause breakdowns in action experienced as a tension that triggers reflection, often with colleagues, alongside work. A critical discussion draws attention to silent situations that proceed undisturbedly, according to routine, and, hence, often without reflection. To handle uncertainty, either noisy or silent, care workers must be considered as learning actors. Space and time for reflection are mandatory.

By focusing on uncertainty in care work, this study contributes to the understanding of workplace learning potential by clarifying the characteristics of situations useful for systematic exploration and collaborative learning from specific instances in work.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the motivations and dynamics of Polish small business owners who are living and working in the United Kingdom several years after Poland’s enlargement to the European Union.

The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 39 Polish migrants, residing in the Cardiff area, in 2008 and 2011. During the 2008 data collection period, 20 interviews were completed, and during the 2011 data collection period, 19 interviews were completed.

The findings highlight that migrants become entrepreneurs for a variety of reasons, blurring the lines between cultural and economic entrepreneurship as well as between necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. The findings also highlight the changing motivations of the ethnic entrepreneurs over time, particularly when the demand for their product is unsustainable.

The generalisabilty of the research is limited because of the small sample size. In addition, the lack of Polish language skills of the interviewer may have influenced the sampling of the Polish community.

The findings from this article will have an impact on the wider ethnic entrepreneurship literature, migration-based policy and the cultural integration of migrants in the long-term.

This article contributes to the wider literature on ethnic entrepreneurship through considering the migrants’ motivations throughout their entire entrepreneurial period and how these motivations may evolve over time.

Elder mistreatment is a widespread medical and social problem that is often under‐recognised by primary care physicians. The primary aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of elder mistreatment among elderly patients with mental disorders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One‐hundred‐and‐eighty‐four patients with different mental disorders were asked to complete the EAST questionnaire as part of a comprehensive geriatric assessment. Screening results were evaluated, and patients who had responses associated with ‘mistreatment’ were invited back to the clinics for additional clinical evaluation. Different types of mistreatment were identified in 71% of all patients. This led to a conclusion that screening for elder mistreatment should be a part of the routine health assessment for all older persons and a part of comprehensive geriatric assessment.

Many scholars have characterized political and economic globalization as entailing deterritorialization, a radical decentering of place and the erasing of various kinds of borders. This paper argues instead for an alternative view of globalization as reterritorialization, a process in which meanings of place remain salient (and in some cases become even more pronounced) but are reconfigured. The analysis focuses on transformations of understandings of territory and ownership in coastal Croatia, examining diverse Croatian responses to the privatization of the tourist industry and the speculative boom in vacation properties. In particular, the paper considers how the politics of European integration and Croatia's aspirations for EU membership – together with the heritage of Croatia's recent past of nationalist warfare – shape Croatia's economic transition from a regime of “social property” under socialist Yugoslavia to a neoliberal regime of private property. The chapter also examines the metaphors of fluidity in vogue for describing globalization, using understandings of actual property in (and on) water to reflect critically on conceptual models of globalization.