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Project management scholars and practitioners have long debated how best to harness social interactions to optimise knowledge exchange and enhance stakeholder alignment and value. This study aims to assist project managers to understand and manage fuzziness and create enduring front-end value. It views the project life cycle as a potential source of co-created value. The paper uses a social capital lens to provide a deeper understanding of the project front-end; it uses a three-dimensional view (structural, relational, cognitive) to explore how stakeholder social capital can overcome front-end fuzziness to enhance decision-making and, thus, value creation.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers from teleconnections companies, which, when combined with secondary data, established the impact, nature and dimensions of social capital within a project management setting.

The research found that social capital can help to reduce complexity, uncertainty and equivocality in the early stages of projects, making them more clearly defined and thus helping to create greater stakeholder value in the later stages of the project. A surprising finding was that some project team members engaged in intentional equivocality to try to promote their own benefits rather than those of the organisation.

This paper reconceptualises the impact of social capital on stakeholder value creation in the front-end of projects. The paper contributes to a more holistic view of the front-end of project management, focusing social capital to reduce the sources of front-end fuzziness.

This paper aims to explore the motivations behind women in a developing South Asian country – Sri Lanka – to embark on entrepreneurship in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, which is a doubly masculine hegemony operating within a culturally nuanced gendered context.

The study employs a qualitative research approach, conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 STEM women entrepreneurs, following the theoretical lenses of push and pull motivation theory and gender role theory.

Although the motivations of STEM women entrepreneurs cannot be exclusively categorized as either push or pull factors, the pull factors had a greater influence on the participants in motivating them to become entrepreneurs. The primary motivators for starting businesses in STEM were: inspiration from something or someone, inner calling, the identification of business opportunities, the need for flexibility, necessity and/or desire to help society. It was often difficult to identify one dominant motivator in many instances, as many factors were interlinked to motivate women to start a business. The study also revealed that gender ideologies could stifle the participants' motivation, while the inner need to break these gender ideologies implicitly stimulated their motivation.

The study contributes to and expands the knowledge of STEM women entrepreneurs in general and to the limited existing knowledge of STEM women entrepreneurs in developing countries specifically. The paper brings contextual novelty as Sri Lanka produces more female STEM graduates than men, which is unique compared to most other parts of the world.

The study deploys Anthias' intersectional framework of social spaces and her concept of translocational positionality to explore the barriers to entrepreneurship for refugee entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, the study aims to assess how migrant identities require a specific form of business support.

A total of 32 semi-structured interviews with 14 refugee entrepreneurs and 18 business support agents were conducted between April and October 2022 and, together with field notes, were combined for thematic analysis in NVivo 12.

Organisational, representational, intersubjective and experiential barriers combined to create practical and psychological deterrents to entrepreneurship for refugees. However, an explicitly humanistic and de-centred approach to business support was (partially) able to counter such barriers.

Policymakers and business support agencies should consider intersectional characteristics and the importance of a compassionate and individual approach when designing business support programmes for refugee entrepreneurs.

Two intersectional concepts of social spaces and translocational positionality are brought into conversation with each other, creating a novel approach to framing the barriers to entrepreneurship for refugees.

Forcibly displaced refugee entrepreneurs face extra challenges that are beyond the barriers that face immigrants and hosts in their journey towards starting up, growing and developing their businesses. This study aims to critically examine the opportunity identification (OI) of forcibly displaced refugee minority women entrepreneurs in Glasgow.

Qualitative semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 10 participants were conducted, including 6 forcibly displaced women entrepreneurs and 4 stakeholders. A six-step thematic framework for data analysis with NVivo 11 was used.

Findings revealed 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.

This study was only conducted in Glasgow areas, although this is where most of the forcibly displaced groups live. The research team suggests that further studies with a large sample cutting across more local authorities beyond Glasgow should be conducted.

The empirical findings serve practitioners, local authorities business managers, researchers and policymakers. The study reveals a gap and lack of support and specific training and programmes that could positively benefit forcibly displaced refugee women entrepreneurs within the host communities.

The novelty of this study lies in the research topic which is still understudied. This is together with the new empirical findings of entrepreneurial OI and the provision of insights related to challenges facing forcibly displaced refugee women entrepreneurs in Glasgow.

The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly diverse health needs. This paper aims to bring together findings and analyses from three adaptations-focussed projects, drawing on perspectives from key stakeholders alongside the lived experiences of service users acquiring adaptations.

Following an Adaptations Framework developed from interviews and focus groups with older people and key stakeholders, the paper discusses barriers experienced by older people and front-line workers in receiving and delivering adaptations through all stages of the process.

This paper reveals how experiences around adaptations might diverge with unseen, hidden investment and need amongst individuals, and how conceptual and cost-focussed evidence gaps impact wider understandings of adaptations delivery. In so doing, this paper highlights how the adaptations process is perceived as a “fight” that does not work smoothly for either those delivering or receiving adaptations services.

The paper suggests a systematic failure such that the adaptations process needs to be rehauled, reset and prioritised within social and public policy if the housing, health and social care sectors are to support healthy ageing and prepare for the future ageing population.

The paper brings together insights from key stakeholders alongside service users' experiences of adaptations to highlight key policy drivers and barriers to accessing and delivering adaptations.