14129 research outputs found
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Uneven Contributions: Informal Entrepreneurship and Sustainability in the Global South
No full textInformal entrepreneurship dominates economic activity across the Global South, yet its role in sustainable development remains contested. While informal enterprises generate substantial income and employment contributing 40%–60% of GDP and engaging over 70% of the workforce in many developing regions, their broader social and environmental consequences are insufficiently understood. Drawing on the triple bottom line (TBL) framework, this study examines how informal entrepreneurship affects economic, social, and environmental sustainability across 12 developing countries spanning Latin America, Asia, and Africa over 2005–2020. Using panel data from the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, and World Development Indicators, we construct composite sustainability indices aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Employing fixed- and random-effect models with Driscoll–Kraay robust standard errors to address heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, and cross-sectional dependence, we uncover a pronounced duality. Informal entrepreneurship contributes positively to economic sustainability by expanding employment opportunities and income generation, particularly in institutionally fragile contexts. However, these economic gains are offset by significant social and environmental costs, including weakened labor protections, limited social inclusion, and heightened environmental degradation. By extending the TBL framework beyond its traditional corporate focus to informal entrepreneurial contexts, this study advances sustainability scholarship and reveals how informality fundamentally reshapes sustainability trade-offs in developing economies. The findings underscore the need for adaptive, context-sensitive policy approaches that harness informal entrepreneurship's economic potential while systematically addressing its social and environmental risks through hybrid governance mechanisms, targeted capacity building, and phased formalization pathways.Publishe
Financial Development, Environmental Policies, and Green Innovation: Heterogeneous Drivers of Renewable Energy Transition in OECD Countries
No full textAn online version of the complete book is available at LAU libraries.This study examines the impact of financial development, environmental policy stringency, and green innovation on renewable energy across OECD countries during 1990–2022. The present research employs a distributional approach across various quantiles to capture heterogeneous effects on renewable energy consumption and production capabilities. The empirical results reveal substantial heterogeneity in financial development impacts, with insignificant negative effects at lower quantiles but strong positive effects at higher quantiles, indicating benefits primarily for countries with established renewable energy markets. Environmental policy stringency exhibits an opposing pattern, generating the strongest effects for countries with limited renewable energy adoption, while diminishing at higher quantiles. Green innovation demonstrates a consistent positive impact across the entire distribution, serving as a fundamental driver regardless of countries’ renewable energy positions. These findings demonstrate that effective renewable energy strategies require differentiated approaches based on countries’ development stages. For early-stage countries, environmental policies combined with innovation support prove most effective, while advanced markets benefit primarily from deepened financial development. This evidence enables policymakers to design targeted interventions that align with countries’ specific renewable energy capabilities and market conditions.564 pages : illustrationsIncludes bibliographical reference
Cross-cultural adaptation in healthcare: examining expatriate doctors’ strategies and challenges in Wales
Full text linkPurpose
This study examines the cross-cultural challenges experienced by expatriate doctors working within an National Health Service (NHS) Health Board in Wales, with particular attention to how they navigate adaptation in professional and social contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a qualitative research design based on semi-structured interviews with expatriate doctors employed at a Welsh NHS health board. Data were analysed thematically to explore participants' experiences of communication, relocation, workplace practices and organisational support during their adaptation process.
Findings
The findings indicate that expatriate doctors face persistent challenges related to language and communication nuances, relocation and social isolation, and adjustment to flatter professional hierarchies. Successful adaptation was facilitated by individual factors such as personality traits (notably extraversion and open-mindedness), access to social and familial networks, and prior exposure to the UK healthcare system. Participants consistently highlighted the absence of structured cross-cultural training as a barrier to smoother professional integration.
Originality/value
By focusing on self-initiated expatriate doctors in a Welsh healthcare context, the study extends existing research on cross-cultural adaptation in healthcare beyond commonly examined settings. It offers practical insights for improving onboarding, cross-cultural training and institutional support mechanisms, with implications for staff wellbeing, retention and patient care outcomes within the NHS.Publishe
Family matters: parental entrepreneurial background and intentions
Full text linkPurpose
We investigate how family background shapes entrepreneurial intentions (EI) among employed adults in the Arab world. While much of the EI literature focuses on students and nascent entrepreneurs, we examine how parental entrepreneurship influences intention formation in adulthood, accounting for mediating psychological mechanisms, contextual moderators, and gendered dynamics.
Design/methodology/approach
We hypothesise that entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates the relationship between parental entrepreneurship and EI, and that perceived entrepreneurial culture moderates this pathway. Using primary survey data from 4,167 employees across six Arab MENA countries, we apply regressions, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses to test these hypotheses.
Findings
Parental entrepreneurship is positively associated with EI, but this effect is concentrated among men. Self-efficacy mediates the intergenerational link, again primarily for men, and the mediation is strongest when entrepreneurial culture is perceived as less supportive. For women, by contrast, the direct effect of parental entrepreneurship on entrepreneurial intention is statistically insignificant, and the mediating role of self-efficacy is weak and largely unsupported.
Originality/value
We advance the EI literature by moving beyond student populations to focus on employed adults in a region where entrepreneurship is both family-embedded and institutionally constrained. It demonstrates that intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship is conditional on both gender and cultural context, offering theoretical insights into how family, culture, and efficacy jointly shape entrepreneurial aspirations, while also offering practical guidance for policies promoting inclusive entrepreneurship in the Arab MENA region.Publishe
The impact of Big Five Personality Traits on entrepreneurial orientation
Full text linkOur study explores the interplay between the Big Five Personality Traits (B5-PT) and Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) among home and international entrepreneurs in the Middle East, focusing on Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Utilizing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we investigate how different combinations of personality traits influence EO in distinct entrepreneurial contexts. The findings reveal four universal configurations and four context-specific configurations that lead to high EO, highlighting the dynamic and configurational nature of entrepreneurial behaviour. For home entrepreneurs, high conscientiousness and agreeableness are key drivers of EO, reflecting a focus on collaboration and resource management within familiar environments. In contrast, international entrepreneurs benefit from openness and extraversion, which foster adaptability and networking capabilities in complex, cross-border markets. By adopting a configurational approach rooted in complexity theory, this study moves beyond reductionist frameworks, offering novel insights into the nonlinear and context-dependent relationships between personality traits and EO. These findings have practical implications for policymakers and entrepreneurs, providing a foundation for designing tailored interventions that enhance entrepreneurial success. The study also enriches the discourse on entrepreneurship in the Middle East by addressing underexplored regional dynamics and advancing the methodological application of fsQCA in entrepreneurship research.Publishe
Voiceless Migrants vs Loving Employers: Framing the Kafala System in News from Lebanon
No full textThis study analyzes how migrant workers under the Kafala or “sponsorship” system are represented in Lebanese news media during times of crisis. To investigate media representations of migrants in Lebanon, this study employs quantitative and qualitative analysis of 197 randomly sampled news headlines and 18 purposively sampled news articles published from 2020–2021. The quantitative findings reveal that during times of crisis in Lebanon, the headlines about migrant workers became more negative while the qualitative analysis found the articles almost never quoted migrants while reproducing racialized and gendered media biases through the media frames, discourses, and visuals presented.Publishe
From handshakes to hashtags: Fostering digital human touch in business interactions
Full text linkIn the contemporary business landscape, where business interactions are progressively migrating to virtual environments, the ability to convey human touch without physical proximity has emerged as a critical yet under-explored phenomenon. This study conceptualizes Digital Human Touch as a relational construct, exploring how empathy, authenticity, warmth, and care are enacted through digital channels. The study’s research design encompasses dyadic buyer–supplier interviews conducted prior to, during, and following the onset of the pandemic with a large-scale analysis of customer reviews. The findings identify core dimensions of Digital Human Touch: digital authenticity, warmth and care, and openness in communication; during the pandemic also: forgiveness and tolerance, and reconciliation. The post-Covid-19 emergence of real-time connectedness was also identified. The findings indicate that Digital Human Touch fosters relational continuity and value co-creation. By challenging the assumption that human touch always requires physical interaction, this study contributes to the advancement of theory on relationship management.Publishe
Employing big data capability in the face of fierce competition: Exploring the synergy between market orientation, marketing strategies, and innovation capabilities
No full textFueled by big data, the information age offers firms opportunities to enhance marketing efficiency and drive innovation. For that, based on conceptualizing big data capability as a three-factor construct integrating business, human, and technology resources and employing a resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities theory (DCT), we build a model showing how market orientation leads to the advancement of marketing and innovation capabilities through the effective use of big data, thereby, positioning big data capability as a mediating factor. We then highlight how the competitive intensity of a firm's industry, as a moderator, strengthens the capacity for big data to translate to capabilities. This model highlights the operational impact of big data capability and extends the RBV and DCT by integrating the moderating effects of competitive intensity on these capabilities. This investigation introduces an advanced understanding of the link between market orientation and big data capability. It offers theoretical contributions and practical recommendations for professionals in competitive markets.Publishe
Sustainable governance and technological innovation: Moderating environmental risks of resource rents
Full text linkOver the years, the over-extraction and unsustainable utilization of natural resources has started to pose a severe environmental risk, necessitating immediate action on issues related to climate change. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between natural resources rent and environmental risk, and whether financial technology (FinTech) and institutional quality moderate this relationship in the context of the top 27 contaminating countries from the years pertaining to 1995 to 2022. Using the novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) approach, our study analyzes heterogeneous long-run coefficients across 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th quantiles of environmental risk. In this regard, the MMQR findings have revealed that natural resources rent leads to an increase in the environmental risk, while FinTech and institutional quality tend to mitigate it. The moderation effect models revealed that both FinTech and institutional quality suppress the adverse environmental outcomes that are exerted by the natural resources rent. The Driscoll and Kray standard error (DKse) and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) estimation techniques confirm the robustness of the MMQR findings. These findings emphasize that policymakers and think tank initiatives should promote FinTech and robust institutions to encourage sustainable resource utilization in order to mitigate the environmental crisis.Publishe
Decision trees
No full textThis entry describes the value of and methods for using decision trees within the social sciences. An overview of the basic theory behind decision trees coupled with a summary of binary, multi-way, robust, and optimal decision tree algorithms support social scientists in the use of these supervised machine learning tools for both exploratory and predictive analytic contexts.Includes bibliographical reference