Guest editorial: Community and opportunities for sustainable development in crisis-2-crisis conditions

Citation

Ramadani, V., Bexheti, A., Abazi-Alili, H. and Rexhepi, G. (2024), "Guest editorial: Community and opportunities for sustainable development in crisis-2-crisis conditions", Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 725-727. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEC-08-2024-227

Aims and scope

This special issue is related to the 6th International Scientific Conference on Business and Economics (ISCBE 2023) on the topic: “Economic recovery, consolidation, and sustainable growth: Crisis-2-crisis evidence, debate, and prospects,” which was held on May 12–13, 2023, in the Faculty of Business and Economics, South East European University, Tetovo, Republic of North Macedonia. This theme has been chosen after careful deliberation, to reflect the fact that there have been fundamental changes to both the character and the dynamics of the non-EU transition economic development countries from the pandemic through the Ukraine war, and energy crisis until inflation. Therefore, the conference addressed a wide range of areas relevant to contemporary business and economic issues such as economic shocks, high inflation, energy crisis, COVID-19, growth prospects, economic forecast, labor market, gender inequalities, migration, entrepreneurship and family businesses, firm development and innovations and technological transformation. Researchers had the opportunity to discuss emerging challenges and perspectives of business and economics from the perspective of postcrisis economic recovery, consolidation and stability.

Selected papers

Some of the presented papers at the conference were sent for consideration to be published in the Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy. After undergoing the review process, following the journal rules and policy, seven papers were accepted.

The first paper, “Promotion, public policies, and decent work: how to foster community cohesion and common vision?” written by Ganimete Podvorica and Valon Murati, aims to investigate the perceptions of the employees on decent work and explore the path how employees, employers, social partners and public policymakers contribute to a united response to the implementation of sustainability dimensions to foster community cohesion and promote common vision. The author found that there is a strong positive correlation between having the rights of employees protected and safety at the workplace; equal treatment at the workplace and receiving fair pay; the positive impact of social partners and protection of employees; and finally, efforts of the government to create conditions for decent work and its active support of decent employment.

Lahcene Makhloufi in his paper “Predicting the impact of big data analytics capability and green absorptive capacity on green entrepreneurship orientation and eco-innovation,” based on collected 268 questionnaires from employees working in Chinese manufacturing firms, aims to draw for the first time the missing link between big data analytics capabilities (BDAC) on both green absorptive capacity (GAC) and green entrepreneurship orientation (GEO). The author argued that theoretically, it is necessary to address how BDAC levels up the GAC to achieve the same level of GEO and then respond to their green business agenda. In addition, the author of this study introduces knowledge sharing (KS) and green organizational ambidexterity (GOA) as potential moderating factors in the relationship between GEO and eco-innovation and explores the mediation role of GAC in the BDAC–GEO relationship. The findings show that BDAC positively and significantly influences GAC and GEO, positively impacting eco-innovation. The KS and GOA's moderation effect strengthens the relationship between GEO and eco-innovation. GAC partially mediates the relationship between BDAC and GEO.

Liridon Kryeziu, Besnik A. Krasniqi, Mehmet Bağış, Vjose Hajrullahu, Genc Zhushi, Donika Bytyçi and Mirsim Ismajli wrote the paper “The effects of institutions, firm-level factors and rational decision-making on entrepreneurial behaviors of MSMEs: lessons and opportunities for transition communities.” The authors aimed to examine the impact of regulatory, normative and cultural cognitive institutions and firm and individual factors on entrepreneurial behavior. Findings indicate that, within transition economies, normative and cultural-cognitive institutions have a positive impact on entrepreneurial behaviors. The authors could not determine the effect of regulatory institutions on entrepreneurial behavior. It was also discovered that young firms are more inclined toward entrepreneurial behavior than older firms and microfirms display a stronger entrepreneurial behavior than small firms. Furthermore, family businesses showed a greater tendency for entrepreneurial behavior than nonfamily firms. Interestingly, when rational decision-making interacts with regulatory institutions, the effect on entrepreneurial behavior is negative. The authors have collected data from 316 MSMEs in Kosovo and performed exploratory factor analyses, correlation and regression analyses on the data using SPSS 26 and STATA software.

The paper “Green product consumption behaviour, green economic growth and sustainable development: unveiling the main determinants” is written by Barış Armutcu, Rasim Zuferi and Ahmet Tan. This paper aims to expand the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model and contribute to the relevant literature by investigating the factors of social media usage, social media marketing and digital marketing interactions that have not been investigated before in relation to green product purchasing behavior. This study examines the effect of the extended TPB model on consumers’ intention to buy green products in Türkiye. The authors have collected from 409 participants. The authors found that all the structural elements of TPB (attitude, subjective norms, personal behavior controls) and social media marketing and digital marketing interactions contribute to consumers’ green product purchasing behavior. The study findings also demonstrated that the use of social media is not effective in the purchasing of green products.

The paper “Forcibly Displaced Refugee Women Entrepreneurs in Glasgow-Scotland” is written by Dina Modestus Nziku and Chanel Bikorimana. The authors critically examined the opportunity identification of forcibly displaced refugee minority women entrepreneurs in Glasgow, Scotland. They have used qualitative semi-structured face-to-face interviews with ten participants, including six forcibly displaced women entrepreneurs and four stakeholders. A six-step thematic framework for data analysis with NVivo 11 was used. The authors found that forcibly displaced refugee women’s entrepreneurial opportunities occur through a dynamic identification, discovery, recognition and exploitation of opportunities. Women-led businesses remain underdeveloped due to restrictions imposed by the Scottish Government, Westminster Government and local council authorities.

Arbenita Kllokoqi, Ardi Parduzi and Jeton Mazllami in “Comparative approach to the financing of agricultural enterprises in the Republic of Kosovo and EU countries” highlighted the difficulties and opportunities that agricultural enterprises have in Kosovo and the eventual benefits that they might have from the experiences of the EU countries. This paper argues which form of financing for these enterprises would be appropriate and what benefits it would bring to the economy in general. This study analyzes the factors that affect financing agricultures enterprises in Kosovo on one side and the impact of trying to be a partner member of the EU on the other side. The study is based on the results of the survey on financial needs and access to finance of EU agricultural enterprises for EU countries and findings from a questionnaire applied to the 50 agro-entities in Kosovo. The authors found that in countries with a less developed economy, agricultural enterprises have a greater role, as in the case of Kosovo and the model of debt financing due to the lack of access to credit.

Khodor Shatila, Frank Boateng Agyei and Wassim J. Aloulou authored the paper, entitled “Impact of transformational leadership on leadership effectiveness: the mediating effect of emotional skills in the Lebanese small and medium-sized enterprises context.” This study examines the impact of transformational leadership on leadership effectiveness and the mediating effect of emotional skills in this relationship. The authors found that transformational leadership positively impacts leadership effectiveness, and this relationship is partially mediated by emotional skills. Specifically, adaptability, assertiveness and relationship management partially mediate the relationship of transformational leadership to leadership effectiveness.