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Entrepreneurship Education and Entrepreneurial Intention in a Turbulent Environment: The mediating role of entrepreneurial skills
Get PDFThis study examines the impact of entrepreneurship learning on individual propensities to entrepreneurial activities in the context of a turbulent environment. The paper draws from a cross-sectional survey of 331 students of the University of Maiduguri in Maiduguri, Northeast Nigeria, and Bayero University Kano, in Northwest Nigeria — both cities heavily affected by conflict and terrorist insurgency. The results of the structural equation modelling indicate that the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) on entrepreneurial intention is fully mediated by entrepreneurial and management skills. Further, the results show that entrepreneurial skills have significant impacts on respondents’ risk taking and self-efficacy, and EE is an effective moderator of political instability in the sense that EE weakens the negative impact of perceived political instability on entrepreneurial intention. By bringing together the interactions of entrepreneurship education with individual attributes and environmental factors, the paper makes a significant contribution to a new body of research examining the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial and micro/small business development in sub-Saharan Africa and conflict contexts. It also highlights the importance of entrepreneurship development as part of a multi-faceted policy intervention in conflict contexts characterised by widespread youth unemployment and alienation from the State
Eco-entrepreneurship as a Response to Sustainability and Climate Challenges: What have we learnt and where do we go from here?
Get PDFThrough this review, our key intention is to capture interest and advance research on eco-entrepreneurship. We examine the literature on eco-entrepreneurship and highlight that research on eco-entrepreneurship has received limited attention, and thus, several areas remain underexplored. Therefore, scholarly contributions were invited to interrogate, challenge, and debate current understanding of the topic in an effort to develop solutions to unanswered questions. The contributions chosen for this issue comprise of three studies on eco-entrepreneurship, that complement each other in terms of the topic of investigation and the context of the study. The studies share an understanding of how eco-entrepreneurship is stimulated, how decision-making in such hybrid ventures could be triggered and what alternative financing strategies could be adopted by eco-ventures. In addition, our review contributes by emphasizing areas in eco-entrepreneurship that need research attention
Mental Health, Caring, and Covid-19: Examining the Gendered Effects of Working from Home on Carers’ Mental Health
Get PDFThe Covid-19 pandemic altered labour markets, specifically through working from home (WFH) policies, impacting mental health (MH), particularly among carers. This study uses the Healthy Ireland Survey to examine MH among employed carers in Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on gender differences. We find a quarter of Irish workers experienced MH declines, with significant impacts on carers and evident gender-specific effects. WFH appeared to alleviate worsening MH for female carers, though it remained at a high level. While WFH is not a panacea for carers\u27 MH and wellbeing, it may help when designing gender-sensitive policy interventions to support them
Should Antibiotic Treatment or Surgery be First-Line for Acute Uncomplicated Appendicitis? A Systematic Review
Get PDFBackground: Acute appendicitis is the sudden inflammation of the vermiform appendix. It is the most common abdominal emergency. Appendicectomy, performed open or laparoscopically, has been the mainstay in the treatment of uncomplicated appendicitis. This technique has numerous advantages, namely the impossibility of recurrence.The use of antibiotic-only treatment for acute appendicitis has associated benefits and risks. Procedure specific complications of appendicectomy such as wound infections and incisional hernias can be avoided. This treatment option is gaining popularity amongst patients due to these potential benefits.
Aim: To determine whether appendicectomy or antibiotic treatment is superior as first-line treatment for acute uncomplicated appendicitis.
Methods: Several databases were searched to identify published literature relevant to this field of study. The databases used were Cochrane Library, Medline, and PubMed. Articles that reported on trials utilising antibiotics or surgery for the treatment of acute uncomplicated appendicitis were selected and further screened to ensure that they were randomised controlled trials, ‘English full-text articles’ that were published in peer-reviewed journals from the years 2010-2021. Other types of research studies such as case reports and meta-analyses alongside studies that involved participants aged 16 or younger were excluded.
Results: The initial search identified a total of 124 studies. Of these studies, 47 duplicates were excluded and the remaining 77 underwent title and abstract screening. From this screening, 20 studies were identified for a full-text study, which led to the inclusion of 10 papers for this review. On review of these studies, all 10 of these random controlled trials compared the outcomes between antibiotics and surgical intervention for the treatment of acute uncomplicated appendicitis.
Conclusions: There is insufficient evidence to suggest that antibiotic therapy should replace appendicectomy as first-line treatment for acute uncomplicated appendicitis. However, while antibiotic therapy failed to meet the criteria for superiority compared with appendicectomy in several major studies, consideration should be given to the other advantages of antibiotic therapy, especially in resource-poor countries, where it can be used to free up hospital beds for emergencies that warrant greater care and intervention
Special Issue Foreword: Audiovisual cultural policy in Ireland
Get PDFThe aim of this introduction is to provide a brief history of policy interventions in Ireland towards the audiovisual industries; to identify some key themes from the contents of this special issue, but also to think about why this special issue is timely. It interrogates issues of culture, of policy, definitions of the audiovisual, but primarily interrogations of how these questions and issues are framed by national, supranational and global policymakers
Educating for Entrepreneurial Leadership: From didacticism to co-creation
Get PDFEntrepreneurial leadership promotes organisational competitive advantage and innovation resulting in increased attention on entrepreneurial leadership development. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) claim to develop entrepreneurial leaders. However, knowledge of how to facilitate entrepreneurial leadership development is limited, the effectiveness of development practices is contestable, and current understanding of the phenomenon is mostly conceptual. We address this void by exploring educators’ perspectives of entrepreneurial leadership development and consider how the phenomenon is facilitated. We employ Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as our research methodology and analyse the data following IPA data analysis guidance. Findings signify the importance of placing strong emphasis on co-creating education experience with wider stakeholder involvement, thereby forming an entrepreneurial community which works collectively over the longer-term to facilitate entrepreneurial leadership development. The findings also reveal the pedagogic significance of facilitating supportive learning conditions and ‘handholding,’ a broader form of support which contradicts the established notion of ‘independent learners’ thereby challenging current ontologies around ‘student support’ when facilitating entrepreneurial leadership development
“My Disability Is Something We Use as a Strength” — Hero or Not Hero: Revisiting critical studies about entrepreneurship
Get PDFCritical perspectives challenge the figure of the hero. Meanwhile, the scientific debate lacks a conceptual framework to define the hero characteristics. The objectives of this research are to present and extend the hero-matrix, to use entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWDs) as a means to test the matrix empirically, and to shed light on what defines a hero in our current post-modernist context. To do so, we interviewed 20 EWDs twice over the course of a year. Our results show that a hero is someone who successfully copes with seven injunctions relating both to himself or herself as a person, and to someone who interacts with others. Disability seems to increase the intensity of each criterion
Belgian Trade After Brexit
Get PDFThis study examines the impact of Brexit on Belgian trade with the United Kingdom. No evidence was found that uncertainty effects led to a significant decline in Belgian exports after the Brexit vote in 2016. However, the UK’s departure from the EU’s Single Market in 2021 caused a major decline in Belgium’s trade with the UK by about 25 per cent. In addition, I find that imports from the UK significantly dropped below the baseline after the election of Boris Johnson. The study also explores heterogeneous adjustments on the margins of trade and on different products and industries.
The First Year Gender Pay Gap Reporting in Ireland: A Sociological Analysis
Get PDFIn 2022 organisations in the Republic of Ireland with 250+ employees were required to report on their hourly gender pay gap for the first time. This research combines a comparative quantitative analysis of the statistical data included in 578 published reports and a thematic analysis of the accompanying narratives. The majority of organisations reported a higher mean and median rate of pay for male employees. The overall average GPG across all employees was 11.82 per cent, with a smaller median gap of 8.37 per cent. The reports allow us to see how organisational level characteristics impact the gender pay gap. The variations across organisations, industries and sectors challenge common sense framings of the gender pay gap as a natural and inevitable feature of the contemporary workforce. While the introduction of mandatory GPG reporting marked an important step towards pay transparency, both the implementation and the content of the reports point to significant weaknesses that could undermine the potential to foster genuine change
“If You Can’t See It, You Can’t Be It!” News Media Engagement and Gender Differences Among Irish Economists
Get PDFWomen are under-represented across most facets of economics. One under-investigated area of research is their participation in the media. The absence of female representation may contribute to the perception of economics as a largely male dominated discipline, with consequences for role modelling, influencing public debate, and ultimately policy decisions. Using an online self-reported survey, this study investigates levels of news media engagement among economists in Ireland and the supply-side factors influencing barriers to engaging with the media. We find that women economists are less likely to be invited to participate in news media events compared to their male counterparts. Women are also more likely to refuse to participate and require longer to prepare for an interview. While there are no gender differences regarding feeling equipped to deal with the media, women are less confident and more likely to state that media engagement is not an important part of their working lives. Despite this, women feel a greater responsibility to inform the public about the implications of their research, and to act as role models for junior economists. Our findings suggest that a multi-faceted approach is required to achieve greater gender equality – by economists themselves, who could build media networks and promote their research through different channels; by employers, who could give women economists more time to engage with the media; by journalists, who could better foster and build relationships with women economists; and by representative bodies, who could better communicate the depth and diversity of economists’ areas of expertise