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The efficacy of SBA loans on small firm survival rates
Get PDFIn an attempt to support entrepreneurs, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offers loans to small firms. The SBA claims that it not only offers capital to small firms, but that it offers services and support to help them build capabilities. This study investigates whether the empirical evidence demonstrates an improvement in four-year survival rates for SBA-aided firms over the general population of small firms, and if there is any correlation between loan size and survival rates. Additionally, the study examines if women and minority-owned SBA-aided small firms (who are a traditionally under-represented demographic) improve their four-year survival rate. The results suggest that small firms that receive SBA loans do improve the four-year survival rate over the general population of small firms. However, loan size was not correlated with higher survival rates. The results also suggest that women-owned small firms experience a similar increase in survival rate, while minority-owned small firms do not receive a statistically significant increase.
Pinning Down the Historical Significance of Button Collecting
Get PDFPolitical buttons were once a must-have item for any political hopeful running a campaign. For more than a hundred years, buttons have been used by many people and organizations to spread messages and gain support for a cause. This article aims to discuss not only the history of buttons but also the history they help to preserve. As a mass-produced item, buttons are an easy way to delve into the many movements and events that have become significant moments in the history of our nation and lives. However, since the turn of the century and with the technological boom that followed, the use of buttons has begun to fade. The purpose of buttons is evolving from large movements to smaller organizations and personal use, but their ability to encapsulate a small piece of history remains
Innovative and Engaging Approaches in a Middle School Science Classroom: Ideas to Capitalize on Student Interest
Get PDFThe purpose of this article is meant to provide evidence and examples from an exemplary middle school science teacher’s classroom with regard for using innovative approaches in STEM education. The author of the article suggests moving from a curriculum-centered paradigm to a student-centered paradigm. Strategies for integration in STEM education are discussed, and include choice-based centers, project-based learning, and small group instruction. The role of standards and curriculum are addressed with an emphasis on whole child, developmental practices, and meaningful/relevant activities in science education
Teacher Perceptions of Gender Roles, Socialization, and Culture During Children’s Physical Play
Get PDFPlay involves activities promoting children’s development in physical, social, emotional, and cognitive domains (Dewar, Servos, Bosacki, & Coplan, 2013). The existing literature describes ways in which teachers’ perceptions may influence children’s emerging gender roles during physical play. This paper describes teachers’ perceptions of children’s gender roles and the relationship with physical play. A teacher’s potential influence on emerging gender roles during physical play is discussed.  
Financial resources, financial literacy and small firm growth: Does private organizations support matter?
Get PDFStudies on small firm growth in many countries focused on some specific factors, and no comprehensive research on this issue is available to draw the conclusion. Based on the concept of the theory of Resource Based View (RBV), a research framework is formulated in order to examine how resources like finance and financial literacy of the owner-manager affect financial and non-financial growth of small firms operating in Bangladesh. Data was collected through self-administered questionnaires from 407 owner-managers of small firms operating in three divisions of Bangladesh where most of the small businesses are concentrated. Using partial least squares analysis, the paper found that both finance and financial literacy have positive and statistically significant relation with small firm financial and non-financial growth. The paper also showed that private organizations support moderates the relationships between finance, financial literacy and small firm financial and non-financial growth. From the findings, it is evident that if small firms have better access to financial resources and can earn required financial literacy and at the same time get proper and adequate support from private organizations, they will contribute more to the economy by achieving their financial and non-financial growth
Startup innovation capability from a dynamic capability-based view: A literature review and conceptual framework
Get PDFWhile there is a rich body of literature on innovation, the concept of innovation capability (IC) is barely identifiable as a distinct construct. Startup IC is tacitly covered in innovation management, entrepreneurship, or small business literature. We suggest a dynamic capability (DC) approach to study innovation as a distinctive capability of startup firms. A semi-structured literature review of 125 articles combining various theoretical backgrounds is discussed, including the IC conceptualizations and operationalization that we extracted and clustered into a comprehensive yet synthetic framework. This paper suggests an IC construct as a higher order DC composed of three DCs—sensing, seizing, and transforming—and three layers of foundations—core IC, supporting IC, and startup entrepreneurial capabilities. This work adds to the emerging capability-based view of the innovation stream by addressing the specific case of startups. It recognizes their entrepreneurial nature and the important role of the entrepreneur’s capabilities and behaviors. It also contributes to the entrepreneurship theory by identifying the capabilities contributing to opportunity sensing and seizing and the capabilities required for transforming and shaping new opportunities. For practitioners, the IC framework offers a practical tool to assess startup ICs and identify strengths, weaknesses, and external complementarities
Kant, Hegel, Sellars: The Structure of Knowledge
Get PDFThis paper examines the refutation of skepticism elaborated by G. W. F. Hegel in the introduction to his Phenomenology of Spirit. This refutation is motivated by what Hegel sees as a funda-mental incoherence in modern philosophy initiated by Descartes and culminates in the ‘subjectiv-ist’ conclusions reached by Kant. More specifically, the incoherence concerns the inability to cate-gorically represent the thing-in-itself. He approaches the problem by articulating Kant’s original unity of apperception as a kind of transcendental comparison of knowledge and being. This, along with a Fichtean elaboration, allows him to frame the distinction of phenomena and reality as a distinction internal to consciousness itself. The thing-in-itself is realized as not some detached, external reality, but a point of orientation, a functional role, against which consciousness of this being is brought into relief. By positing a theoretically inaccessible standard for what counts as knowledge, skepticism is revealed as misunderstanding the very nature of knowing
Letter from the Editors
No full textThis semester has been stressful for us all. Between the tornadoes that devastated our state and the pandemic that has devastated the world, we have all struggled with trying to find the resolve to make it from one day to the next with our sanity intact. For the editorial staff at Scientia, this journal has been our bright spot and safe place to land this semester. Through the papers we received, we were transported from our own very real and uncer-tain world to worlds unknown and incredible. Whether we were in a world grappling with pilot shortages or in the world of Doctor Who, our lives were enriched and made better by the hard work and research of the scholars who shared their worlds with us. Scientia has, since its first issue, strived to highlight both the highest quality of research at Middle Tennessee State University and the perseverance required of a scholar. Not only does this edition feature the high standards of scholarship from diverse disciplinary back-ground for which Scientia has become known, but it also shows the perseverance required of a scholar who lives both within a single discipline and within an uncertain world.
In the pages of this journal, we are able to look at ways to prevent a crisis while under-standing the very elements which create it in “Analysis of the Airline Pilot Shortage.” We take a step back in time to understand the ways in which slaves were silenced through advertisements in “Humanizing the Dehumanized: The Complex Connections between William Lloyd Garrison’s Preface and Fugitive Slave Advertisements” before taking a ride on the TARDIS and asking ourselves, “How has the portrayal of women on the television series Doctor Who evolved from 1963 to 2019?”. We fall into “The Authorial Sublime” and experience the trials of what it means to live by “The Soldierly Code.” We collect buttons while “Pinning Down the Historical Significance of Button Collecting” and search for “Rhyme and Revolution” in the works of William Wordsworth. Finally, we delve deeply into the metaphor of “Shin Gojira: Return of the Angry God” as a reflection of Japan before losing ourselves in conversation with Kant, Hegel, and Sellars unpacking “The Structure of Knowledge.”
The works in this edition, produced from backgrounds ranging in philosophy to aerospace, seem to reflect and acknowledge something uncertain and give it a concrete space. Each work reaches out to the reader and presents not uncertainty but a level of understanding and knowing. This edition would not have been possible without the hard work of the authors who took a leap of faith in sending us their work.
This edition also would not have been possible without the staff who worked through a sense of loss and constant transition and adap-tion because of the Covid-19 pandemic. For the hard work from both, the editorial staff can only say thank you.
Thank you to the administration at the Honors College. You all have been such a joy to work with, and we could not have done this work were in not for you.
We would also like to thank Marsha Powers, who believed in and supported us through-out this entire process. Without her, this edition would not be possible. She has cham-pioned this journal and led the editorial staff as our advisor through a very challenging semester. She has been an indispensable source of knowledge and comfort for us all.
We would like to thank Dr. John Vile and Dr. Philip Phillips from the Honors College, without whom we would be lost.
We would also like to thank you all, the readers. We hope you enjoy this edition of Sci-entia et Humanitas as much as we do. We hope you will see the scholarly vigor and rigor, and we hope you will be transported as we have.
Jenna Campbell Field
Editor in Chief
Gabriella Morin
Managing Editor
Jameson Baldwin
Section Edito
Family human capital and the championing of innovation in small firms
Get PDFThis study of 94 small family firms focuses on complex interactions between individual family members and firm-level activities and outcomes. We develop and test a model of relationships between family championing of innovation, family human capital characteristics, and the firms’ adoption of innovation. Family members championed many more adoptions of innovation than non-family members did, demonstrating strong family influence in smaller firms. An important point is that this strong family influence would appear insignificant without accounting for the significant moderating influence of variance in family human capital levels. This study contributes to our understanding of family influence’s heterogeneous nature by modeling interaction between mediating family behaviors and moderating family characteristic
Education by the Numbers
Get PDFEducation is sometimes referred to as an investment in human capital (Wolla & Sullivan, 2017). How Does Level of Education Affect Income