Mackenzie R. Zisser, Sheri L. Johnson, Michael A. Freeman and Paige J. Staudenmaier
The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in personality traits of people with and without entrepreneurial intent to assess whether women who intend to become…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine gender differences in personality traits of people with and without entrepreneurial intent to assess whether women who intend to become entrepreneurs exhibit particular tendencies that can be fostered.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants completed an online battery of well-established questionnaires to cover a range of personality traits relevant to entrepreneurship and gender. Participants also answered items concerning intent to become an entrepreneur. A factor analysis of personality traits produced four factors (esteem and power, ambition, risk propensity and communal tendency, the latter reflecting openness and cooperation, without hubris). The authors constructed four parallel regression models to examine how gender, entrepreneurial intent and the interaction of gender with intent related to these four personality factor scores.
Findings
Participants who endorsed a desire to become an entrepreneur reported higher ambition. Women with entrepreneurial intentions endorsed higher levels of communal tendency than men with entrepreneurial intent. Those without entrepreneurial intent did not show gender differences in communal tendency.
Research limitations/implications
Current findings suggest that men and women who intend to become entrepreneurs share many traits, but women with entrepreneurial intent show unique elevations in communal tendencies. Thus, a worthwhile locus for intervention into the gender disparity in self-employment would be providing space and acknowledgement of prosocial motivation and goals as one highly successful route to entrepreneurship.
Originality/value
Given the underused economic potential of women entrepreneurs, there is a fundamental need for a rich array of research on factors that limit and promote women’s entry into entrepreneurship. Current findings indicate that personality may be one piece of this puzzle.
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David D. Van Fleet, Abagail McWilliams and Michael Freeman
To develop an understanding of communication among agribusiness journals and to examine patterns of citations that allow the measurement and description of the structure of…
Abstract
Purpose
To develop an understanding of communication among agribusiness journals and to examine patterns of citations that allow the measurement and description of the structure of communication flows among those journals in a network.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for this study were gathered from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by Thomson Scientific (Philadelphia). The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis, based on an international trade analogy to explain the network of agribusiness journals and how these journals communicate with business and economics journals.
Findings
Business and economics journals and, particularly the traditionally major ones, surprisingly were scarcely every used. However, the British Food Journal stood out with 50 citations to marketing and strategic management journals.
Research limitations/implications
There are predominantly four such limitations: only 33 journals were studied, only one 5-year time period was involved, that time period is a few years old and the journal characteristics were derived using data from the “Scopes” and “Information for Authors” text on the website of each journal.
Practical implications
Exchanges of agribusiness knowledge and information among diverse stakeholders (consumers, suppliers and public agencies) in a complex environment require a better understanding of the network of agribusiness journals and their relation to traditional business and economics journals.
Social implications
Networks of journals facilitate cooperation and interactions to improve developments in the field.
Originality/value
Examining citations from and to the field of agribusiness is interesting and important because knowledge is transferred through networks comprise those who contribute to journals, read them and learn from them, i.e. by “talking” to each other as well as by practitioners who also read and learn from those journals.
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Patricia R. Todd, Raj G. Javalgi and David Grossman
The aim of this paper is to focus on the determinants that impact the growth of SMEs in B-to-B markets in emerging economies. The objective is to apply the classic model of…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to focus on the determinants that impact the growth of SMEs in B-to-B markets in emerging economies. The objective is to apply the classic model of organizational ecology to examine the characteristics of growth patterns in the B-to-B environment for SMEs in emerging markets, specifically India and China. Application of the model can guide SMEs owners/managers in their effort to successfully expand internationally in turbulent markets characterized by competitive and technological intensity.
Design/methodology/approach
An overview of the basics of the organizational ecology model is presented, followed by the description of various economic drivers of B-to-B markets in India and China. The integration of the organizational ecology model and the strategic development of methods to deal with specific challenges of entering international markets are discussed. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for future research.
Findings
Businesses operating in emerging markets face many of the same roadblocks concerning efficiencies, increasing competition, and the need for capital, that are experienced by businesses throughout the world, however, they also face challenges unique to the developmental nature of the country environment. Ecological models can be used to understand the dynamics between resource utilization and growth.
Practical implications
The ecology-based view evaluates the utilization of resources with a focus on how changes in resource availability impact the international growth strategy of the B-to-B firm in India and China. These two economies represent a large business environment, generally underdeveloped with regards to taking advantage of potential resource availability.
Originality/value
While the significant economic contribution of SMEs is well understood, their business practices in emerging economies have not been extensively studied, especially in the B-to-B arena. The goal here is to stimulate the development of new insights for managing the complex relationships between the B-to-B SMEs, organizational ecology, and the international environment in emerging markets. This study extends the literature concerning factors that impact business success in important emerging markets such as India and China.
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Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the…
Abstract
Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective’s implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.
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In this article, I propose a theory of network opportunity emergence. The core of the argument is that as an overall industry network structure becomes centralized, opportunities…
Abstract
In this article, I propose a theory of network opportunity emergence. The core of the argument is that as an overall industry network structure becomes centralized, opportunities emerge for new entrants. As the institutional environment evolves toward a centralized network flow structure, innovators can identify newly emerged rich resource niches that serve as the perfect breeding ground for an entrepreneurial start-up. While the framework is an aggregate level conceptualization of market opportunities, it also identifies specific actionable opportunities at a very micro level. Examples from the networks of the airline industry illustrate the logic. I conclude by discussing the innovation and entrepreneurship implications for a wide variety of industries and network tie types, calling for utilization of the framework to answer a broad variety of research questions.
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Those who move among the people with their eyes open will not doubt that the number of non‐smokers is increasing, but mostly among older adults. Sales of cigarettes, despite the…
Abstract
Those who move among the people with their eyes open will not doubt that the number of non‐smokers is increasing, but mostly among older adults. Sales of cigarettes, despite the ban on advertising and the grim warning printed on packets, do not reflect this however, which can only mean that those who still smoke are the heavy smokers. This is a bad sign; as is the fact that youngsters, including a high percentage of those at school, openly flaunt the habit. The offence of using tobacco or any other smoking mixture or snuff while handling food or in any food room in which there is open food (Reg. 10(e)), remains one of the common causes of prosecutions under the Food Hygiene Regulations; it has not diminished over the years. The commonest offenders are men and especially those in the butchery trade, fishmongers and stall‐holders, but, here again, to those who move around, the habit seems fairely widespread. Parts of cigarettes continue to be a common finding especially in bread and flour confectionery, but also in fresh meat, indicating that an offence has been committed, and only a few of the offenders end up in court. Our purpose in returning to the subject of smoking, however, is not to relate it to food hygiene but to discuss measures of control being suggested by the Government now that advertising bans and printed health warnings have patently failed to achieve their object.
Robert C. Moussetis, Ali Abu Rahma and George Nakos
This paper examined the relationships between national culture and strategic behavior in the banking industry in Jordan and U.S. The study first developed a strategic posture and…
Abstract
This paper examined the relationships between national culture and strategic behavior in the banking industry in Jordan and U.S. The study first developed a strategic posture and secondly a cultural profile for the top management of the research domain. The strategic posture suggested the readiness for strategic response from managers. The degree of readiness was correlated with the constructed cultural profile of the managers and financial performance of the banks. The study found significant relationships between certain national cultural strategic characteristics, (risk propensity, time orientation, and openness to change, uncertainty avoidance and managerial perception of control over the environment) strategic behavior and financial performance.
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Christopher M. Hartt, Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills
Purpose – To study misbehavior as a form of dissent and resistance in an organized labor situation where traditional forms of labor unrest are suppressed and the implications for…
Abstract
Purpose – To study misbehavior as a form of dissent and resistance in an organized labor situation where traditional forms of labor unrest are suppressed and the implications for how we understand the socio-political processes through which misbehavior is constructed.
Methodology/approach – Archival research, cluster analysis, thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, actor-network theory
Findings – Misbehavior is linked to a series of sociological practices not least of which is the production of knowledge through actor-networks and their relationship to far-reaching discourses. In the empirical material we find a conflict between discourses of labor solidarity and unfair management practices and discourses of patriotism and anticommunism.
Research limitations/implications (if applicable) – This research is based on archival data, as such it is subject to the choices of holders to contribute and archivists to collect.
Practical implications (if applicable) – This work has implications for labor leadership in the understanding of which disputes may be constrained by contextual discourses and by management in the exploration of possible means of suppressing labor unrest.
Social implications – We have found that labor unrest may be constrained by contextual discourse but that suppressed unrest may result in misbehavior and other forms of counterproductive workplace activities.
Originality/value of chapter – The relationship between contextual discourse and employee misbehavior has not been studied in depth. This work presents a new view of the struggles of the unionized workplace.
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This chapter examines the differing ways in which the criminal responsibility of children has been understood in English and Australian common law. The doctrine of “doli incapax”…
Abstract
This chapter examines the differing ways in which the criminal responsibility of children has been understood in English and Australian common law. The doctrine of “doli incapax” has for many centuries worked to establish a presumption in law that children between the ages of around 10 and 14 are incapable of forming criminal intent, unless it can be shown that they are capable of ‘guilty knowledge’ about their actions. In this approach, children are presumed to be ‘naughty’ until it can be shown that they are ‘bad’. However, events such as the murder of James Bulger in 1993 have led to the abolition of the doctrine in the UK, and its questioning in Australia. The chapter will outline how and why the law’s distinction between adults and children in relation to crime has become unstable, and explain the implications of the legal conception of childhood for the sociology of childhood more broadly. It will also explore how a closer look at the history of the doli incapax presumption sheds considerable light on the central and active role played by the judiciary and the legal profession, as opposed to other social and professional groups, in the development of a particular legal construction of childhood.