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This study aims to present a step-by-step implementation of the culturo–techno-contextual approach (CTCA) in a university classroom to teach industry and competitive analysis in the Ghanaian undergraduate entrepreneurship development curriculum. It further investigates the efficacy of the CTCA in breaking difficulties related to the study of industry and competitive analysis as a difficult concept in the Ghanaian entrepreneurship development curriculum. In doing this, the CTCA is compared with the lecture method.

The study adopts a quantitative approach. A quasi-experimental design is employed to gather data from 215 level 400 (4th-year undergraduate students) entrepreneurship development students at a Ghanaian public university. The experimental group was taught with CTCA, while the control group used the lecture method. The data was collected using the industry and competitive analysis achievement test (ICAAT). As random assignment to experimental and control groups were not possible, the data were subjected to an analysis of covariance approach with pre-test scores added as a covariate.

The results show that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. The results further indicate the efficacy of CTCA in improving undergraduate students’ performance in complex concepts of entrepreneurship.

Researchers usually test alternative teaching methods to break down barriers to study difficulties. The study’s uniqueness stems from the CTCA’s ground-breaking application to the study of entrepreneurship development in a Ghanaian public university.

This article focuses on the assessment of entrepreneurship competence by selected vocational teachers in Italy. The exploratory research question addresses the extent to which entrepreneurship assessments are competence based, and the research seeks to identify fully fledged assessment programmes with both a formative and summative component, and the use of assessment rubrics. It also explores the extent to which entrepreneurship competence is referred to in school documentation and later assessed, and the tools and strategies used for such assessment.

This case study is part of a larger European research project promoted by Cedefop; in Italy it focused on six selected vocational IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeship schemes. It used a wide range of instruments to ensure triangulation and multiple perspectives: analysed policy documents and undertook online interviews with experts and policy makers. At VET providers' premises it deployed: analysis of school documents; observations of learning environments; interviews and focus groups with (in schools) teachers, directors and vice directors, learners and alumni (in companies) instructors, company tutors and employers, apprentices and alumni.

Assessment tasks were rarely embedded within fully fledged assessment programmes involving both formative and summative tasks, and assessment rubric for grading. Most of the time, entrepreneurship programmes lacked self-assessment, peer assessment and structured feedback and did not involve learners in the assessment process. Some instructors coached the students, but undertook no clear formative assessment. These findings suggest institutions have a testing culture with regard to assessment, at the level of both policy and practice. In most cases, entrepreneurship competence was not directly assessed, and learning outcomes were only loosely related to entrepreneurship.

One limitation concerned the selection of the VET providers: these were chosen not on a casual basis, but because they ran programmes that were relevant to the development of entrepreneurship competence.

At the policy level, there is a need for new guidelines on competence development and assessment in VET, guidelines that are more aligned with educational research on competence development. To ensure the development of entrepreneurship competence, educators need in-service training and a community of practice.

So far, the literature has concentrated on entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level. Little is known about how VET instructors assess entrepreneurship competence. This study updates the picture of policy and practice in Italy, illustrating how entrepreneurship competence is developed in selected IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeships.

Sustainability is viewed as an encompassing perspective, as endorsed by the international policy context, driven by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We aim to examine how women entrepreneurs transform capitals to pursue sustainability, and to generate policy insights for sustainability actions through tourism entrepreneurship.

Applying qualitative approach, we have generated empirical evidence drawing on 37 qualitative interviews carried out in Turkey, whereby boundaries between traditional patriarchal forces and progressive movements in gender relations are blurred.

We have generated insights into how women entrepreneurs develop their sustainability practice by transforming their available economic, cultural, social and symbolic capitals in interpreting the macro-field and by developing navigation strategies to pursue sustainability. This transformative process demonstrates how gender roles were performed and negotiated in serving for sustainability pillars.

In this paper, we demonstrate the nature and instrumentality of sustainable tourism entrepreneurship through a gender lens in addressing some of these SDG-driven challenges.

We advance the scholarly and policy debates by bringing gender issues to the forefront, discussing sustainable tourism initiatives from the viewpoint of entrepreneurs and various members of local community and stakeholder in a developing country context where women’s solidarity becomes crucial.

Firms embedded in networks of relations are theorized through Gnyawali and Madhavan’s (2001) (G&M) structural embeddedness model to gain competitive advantage from topological characteristics. Empirical studies to support their theory have never been executed in full. Our study provided a full empirical test of their model in a digital trading network to achieve a higher degree of certainty that those network structural characteristics can have a major impact on the degree to which certain firms lead to competitiveness in a digital trading network environment.

To examine how firms respond in competitive situations, we chose the hyper-active digital trading network, eBay as our empirical context. We used eBay auction data to analyze how the network characteristics of eBay resellers impact their competitive behaviors.

Our study found strong support for the G&M model of competitiveness. We offer explanations for where support was not as strong as the Gynawali and Madavan theory proposes.

Our research is limited by our chosen context and findings in support of part of G&M model. Future studies in other digital contexts are needed to enhance the modeling of network topologies and further study the impacts of network density and structural autonomy on competitive action.

Our study suggests that managers proceed cautiously in forming partnerships, weighing circumstances where the firm can find itself with increased information power and avoiding, to the greatest extent possible, situations where the playing field is roughly equal.

Theory-making in this domain has begun as well as initial empirical testing. Much more needs to be accomplished, though, before embeddedness modeling can be thought of as being well established.

The G& M Model of competitiveness is an SNA explanation of why some competitive units succeed and others do not. Our study is the first, full blown empirical analysis of the theory.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how inter-firm cooperation and firm age moderate the relationship between family ownership and productivity.

We first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large sample of Italian firms observed over the period 2010–2018 and then apply a Poisson random effects model.

TFP is, on average, higher for non-family firms (non-FFs) than for FF. Furthermore, inter-organizational cooperation and firm age mitigate the negative effect of family ownership. In detail, it is found that belonging to a network acts as a moderator in different ways according to firm age. Indeed, young FFs underperform non-FF peers, although the TFP gap decreases with age. In contrast, the benefits of a formal network are high for older FFs, suggesting that an age-related learning process is at work.

The study provides evidence that FFs can outperform non-FFs when they move away from Socio-Emotional Wealth-centered reference points and exploit knowledge flows arising from high levels of social capital. In the case of mature FFs, networking is a driver of TFP, allowing them to acquire external resources. Since FFs often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge and resources, they must be aware of the value of business cooperation. While preserving the familiar identity of small companies, networks grant FFs the competitive and scale advantages of being large.

Despite the wide but ambiguous body of research on the performance gap between FFs and non-FFs, little is known about the role of FFs’ heterogeneity. This study has proven successful in detecting age as a factor in heterogeneity, specifically to explain the network effect on the link between ownership and TFP. Based on a representative sample, the study provides a solid framework for FFs, policymakers and academic research on family-owned companies.

This study aims to analyze the factors that drive or prevent interorganizational data sharing in the context of digital transformation (DT). Data sharing appears as a precondition for companies to capture emerging opportunities in supply chain management and for product-related servitization; however, there are ongoing concerns, and data are often perceived as the “new oil.” It is thus important to gain a better understanding of the determinants of firms’ decisions.

The authors develop an embedded case study analysis involving 16 firms within an extended supply network in the automotive industry. The authors focus on the peculiarities of the new context, as opposed to elements highlighted by research prior to the advent of the latest technologies. Abductive reasoning is applied to the theoretical foundations of the resource-based view, resource dependence theory and the complex adaptive systems perspective.

Data sharing is largely underpinned by factors identified prior to DT, such as data specificity, dependence dynamics and protection mechanisms and the dynamism of the business context. DT, however, can influence the extent of data sharing. New factors concern complementarities whenever data are pooled from different sources and digital platforms, as well as different forms of data ownership protection.

This study stresses that data sharing in the context of DT can be explained through established theoretical lenses, providing the integration of elements accounting for new technological opportunities.

This study illustrates the economic and financial dynamics of the sector, analysing the evolution of the main ratios of profitability and financial structure of 1,559 Italian real estate companies divided into the three macro-regions: North, Centre and South, in the period 2011–2020. In this way, it is also possible to verify the responsiveness to the 2020 pandemic crisis.

The analysis uses descriptive statistics tools and the ANOVA method of analysis of variance, supplemented by the Tukey–Kramer test, to identify significant differences between the three Italian macro-regions.

The study shows the increase in profitability after the 2008 crisis, despite its reverberation in the years 2012–2013. The financial structure of companies improved almost everywhere. The pandemic had modest effects on performance.

In the future, other indices should be considered to gain a more comprehensive view. This is a quantitative study based on financial statements data that neglects other important economic and social factors.

Public policies could use this study for better interventions to support the sector. In addition, internal management can compare their company's performance with the industry average to identify possible improvements.

The research analyses an economic field that employs a large number of people, especially when considering the construction and real estate services covered by this analysis.

The study contributes to the literature by providing a quantitative analysis of industry dynamics, with comparative information that can be deduced from financial statements over the years.

This study aims to investigate the effects of board cultural diversity (BCD) and board gender diversity (BGD) of the board of directors on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector using resource-based view (RBV) theory. In addition, this study analyses the linkages between BCD and BGD and knowledge sharing on the board of directors to improve ESG performance.

This study selected a sample of European-listed banks covering the period 2021. ESG and diversity variables were collected from Refinitiv Eikon and analysed using the ordinary least squares model. This study was conducted in the European context regulated by Directive 95/2014/EU, which requires sustainability disclosure. The original population was represented by 250 banks; after missing data were excluded, the final sample comprised 96 European-listed banks.

The findings highlight the positive linkages between BGD, BCD and ESG scores in the European banking sector. In addition, the findings highlight that diversity contributes to knowledge sharing by improving ESG performance in a regulated sector. Nonetheless, the combined effect of BGD and BCD negatively impacts ESG performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to measure and analyse a regulated sector, such as banking, and the relationship between cultural and gender diversity for sharing knowledge under the RBV theory lens in the ESG framework.

Since previous literature provides fragmented and conflicting results about the use of digital data for product innovation, the article aims to comprehensively explore and shed light on how agri-food firms utilise external and internal digital data sources when dealing with different product innovations, such as incremental, architecture and radical innovation.

This paper adopts an exploratory multiple-case study and a theory-building process, focussing on the agri-food industry. We collected primary and secondary data from eight manufacturing companies.

The findings of this research show an empirical framework of six agri-food firms’ digital data utilisation behaviours: the supervisor, the passive supervisor, the developer, the passive developer, the pathfinder and the conjunction behaviour. These digital data utilisation behaviours vary according to a combination of data sources, such as internal data related to inside phenomenon measures (e.g. data generated by sensors installed in the production plan) or external data (e.g., market trends, overall sector sales), and innovation purposes.

This article offers guiding principles that assist agri-food companies when utilising internal and external digital data sources for specific product innovation outcomes such as incremental, architectural and radical innovation.

The significance of external and internal data sources in stimulating product innovation has garnered substantial attention within academic discussions, highlighting the critical importance of analysing digital data for driving such innovation. Nonetheless, the predominant approach is to study a single innovation outcome through the lens of digital technology. In contrast, our study stands out by adopting a fundamental perspective on data sources, enabling a more nuanced explanation of the overall product innovation outcomes within the agri-food sector.

This study aims to investigate the impact of service quality (SQ), perceived value (PV) and consumer satisfaction on Thai street food, with customer satisfaction (CS) as a mediator for customer loyalty and repurchase intention (RI). It also explores how consumer trust (CT) in Thai street food safety moderates these relationships.

Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilised to analyse the complex interrelationships between various constructs. Multi-group analyses were conducted to investigate the moderating effects of CT on the structural model, considering two distinct groups based on trust levels: low and high.

The findings revealed that SQ and PV significantly influenced CS and behavioural intention, while the perceived quality of Thai street food had no significant impact on post-COVID-19 consumer satisfaction. The study highlighted the critical role of CT in moderating the relationships between SQ, PV and CS, with distinct effects observed in groups with varying trust levels.

The research emphasises the importance of enhancing SQ and delivering value to customers in the context of Thai street food, which can contribute to increased CS, RI and positive word-of-mouth. Furthermore, the study underscores the critical role of building CT in fostering enduring customer relationships and promoting consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

This research offers valuable insights into consumer behaviour and decision-making processes, particularly within the realm of Thai street food. It underscores the significance of understanding and nurturing CT, especially in the post-COVID-19 landscape, emphasising the need for effective business strategies and consumer engagement.