Search results

Social entrepreneurs often make public appeals for funding to investors who are motivated by nonfinancial considerations. This emerging research context is an opportunity for researchers to expand the bounds of entrepreneurship theory. To do so, we require appropriate research tools. In this chapter, we show how computer-aided text analysis (CATA) can be applied to advance social entrepreneurship research. We demonstrate how CATA is well suited to analyze the public appeals for resources made by entrepreneurs, provide insight into the rationale of social lenders, and overcome challenges associated with traditional survey methods.

We illustrate the advantages of CATA by examining how charismatic language in 13,000 entrepreneurial narratives provided by entrepreneurs in developing countries influences funding speed from social lenders. CATA is used to assess the eight dimensions of charismatic rhetoric.

We find that four of the dimensions of charismatic rhetoric examined were important in predicting funding outcomes for entrepreneurs.

Data collection and sample size are important challenges facing social entrepreneurship research. This chapter demonstrates how CATA techniques can be used to collect valuable data and increase sample size. This chapter also examines how the rhetoric used by entrepreneurs impacts their fundraising efforts.

Much of the environmental sociology literature calls for economic development to lead to environmental destruction, but growing bodies of work on “ecological modernization” and “environmental Kuznets curves” (EKCs) argue that, beyond a certain point, socioeconomic development can lead to environmental improvement. A third hypothesis (Boyce) argues that inequality may be more relevant than levels of prosperity. Published findings have been sufficiently mixed to warrant more detailed analyses. This chapter considers both cross-sectional and two-wave panel data and the three competing expectations, considering air emissions and toxic manufacturing releases for U.S. counties. Air emissions tend to correlate positively with economic prosperity, supporting the “core” environmental sociology hypothesis, while toxic emissions show greater support for the EKC/ecological modernization hypothesis. The most consistent theoretical support is found among indicators of inequality and power that support the Boyce hypothesis. The findings suggest implications for policy as well as for future research.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to scrutinize the apparent alliance between international and local disability rights movements by contextualizing the process in which the disability rights model is being diffused globally. It seeks to critically examine the transplantation and promotion of the international disability rights movement's rights-based model in China.

Approach: This chapter draws from 18 in-depth interviews with local and international disability rights activists through multisite ethnographic fieldwork in China in 2019.

Findings: This chapter finds that despite opening up spaces for resistance and emancipation locally, the international disability rights movement nevertheless constitutes what I call an enclave of rights that insulates the international rights model from the political, social, and economic realities on the ground. In the case of China, the authoritarian politics that define the relationship between the state and civil society, as well as the economic vulnerability of people with disabilities in the post-socialist market economy, limit, if not invalidate, the rights model espoused by the international disability rights movement.

Implications: The findings of this chapter challenge and complicate the current scholarship of the transnational disability rights movement beyond its normative claims of emancipation. They also explore potential spaces and direction for building a new transnational alliance that takes into account the local experience of disability in a rapidly globalized world.

Purpose: This paper presents a review of the current state and potential capabilities for application of robots, artificial intelligence and automated services (RAISA) in hotel companies.

Design/methodology/approach: A two-step approach was applied in this study. First, the authors make a theoretical overview of the robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) in hotels. Second, the authors make a detailed overview of various case studies from global hotel practice.

Findings: The application of RAISA in hotel companies is examined in connection with the impact that technology has on guest experience during each of the five stages of the guest cycle: pre-arrival, arrival, stay, departure, assessment.

Research implications: Its implications can be searched with respect to future research. It deals with topics such as how different generations (guests and employees) perceive RAISA in the hotel industry and what is the attitude of guests in different categories of hotels (luxury and economy) towards the use of RAISA. It also shows what is the attitude of different types of tourists (holiday, business, health, cultural, etc.) and what kinds of robots (androids or machines) are more appropriate for different types of hotel operations.

Practical implications: The implications are related to the improvement of operations and operational management, marketing and sales, enhancement of customer experience and service innovation, training and management.

Originality/value: This book chapter complements and expands research on the role of RAISA in the hotel industry and makes some projections about the use of technologies in the future.

To explore the effects of circadian rhythms on mental performance in the context of the high-stakes CPA exam and to give exam candidates and practitioners insights about ways to better align rigorous mental tasks with the timing of peak mental performance.

Empirical methodology using data on CPA exam candidate characteristics and performance.

We provide evidence consistent with the belief that circadian rhythms affect CPA exam performance. After controlling for other performance factors, we document lower CPA exam scores and pass rates for those exams begun in the early workday hours or in the afternoon, relative to those exams begun in the late morning.

As is typical with empirical methodology, our findings may be due to factors/variables other than those under consideration.

Insights regarding circadian rhythms can potentially be used to better align rigorous mental tasks with the timing of peak mental performance, thereby yielding better performance by the CPA profession.

Among the goals of the CPA profession is the protection of the public. Thus, improved performance by the CPA profession can yield benefits to society at large.

To our knowledge, ours is the first study to explore the possible effect of circadian rhythms on CPA exam performance. Given the high-stakes nature of the exam, we believe our chapter can give exam candidates and practitioners valuable insights about ways to better align rigorous mental tasks with the timing of peak mental performance. This can benefit them both for the CPA exam as well as during their careers.

Organizational theorists and strategy scholars are both interested in how organizations deal with ambiguity, especially in relation to implementation. This chapter examines one source of ambiguity that organizations face, which is based on their efforts to implement moral mandates. These mandates, which are related to areas such as environmental sustainability and diversity, are inherently ambiguous, as they lack a shared understanding regarding their scope and associated practices. They are also often broad and systemic and may be unclearly aligned with an organization's strategy. Due to these challenges, in this chapter, we theorize that collective action at the field level is necessary for organizations to advance and concretize moral mandates. We examine this theorizing through the case of the implementation of sustainability in higher education. We hypothesize and find support for the idea that when an organization's members engage in collective action at the field level, those organizations have an increased likelihood of achieving sustainability implementation. To gain insight into this field-to-organization relationship, we qualitatively examine 18 years of conversations from an online forum to develop a process model of moral mandate implementation. We theorize that collective action functions as a field-configuring space, in which actors from a variety of organizations come together to (1) refine the scope of the mandate and (2) create an implementation repertoire that actors can draw on when seeking to bring sustainability to their own organizations. Overall, our study provides a model of how ambiguous moral mandates can be implemented by highlighting the important role of collective action across organizations in concretizing those mandates and providing actors with the tools for their implementation.

Behavior problems are common in toddlers and preschoolers. Richman, Stevenson, and Graham (1975) identified difficulties with eating, sleeping, toileting, temper, fears, peer relations, and activity as typical in this young population. While all young children should be expected to experience behavior problems as part of their normal development, an ongoing challenge in the field has been to determine when these “normal” developmental problems rise to the level of being considered “clinical” behavior problems (Keenan & Wakschlag, 2000). For example, when does a two-year-old child's tantrum behavior, a three-year-old's urinary accidents, and a four-year-old's defiance become clinically significant? To answer these questions, clinicians must examine the frequency, intensity, and durability of these difficulties, their potential to cause injury to the child or others, the extent to which they interfere with the child development, and the degree to which they disrupt the lives of their siblings, caregivers, peers, teachers, and others.

The upper-echelons model of Hambrick and Mason ((1984). Academy of Management Review, 9, 193–206) launched a new area of research and provided the first overall theoretical framework for use in understanding how the experiences, backgrounds, and values of senior executives in organizations can influence the decisions that they make. The model is typically assumed to be what Rousseau ((1985). In: B. M. Staw, & L. L. Cumming (Eds), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 7, pp. 1–37). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press) calls “multi-level,” as it describes how both individuals and top management teams (TMTs) make decisions in line with their preferences, biases, and values; the same model is applicable to both individuals and groups. However, the levels issues in the model have never been subjected to rigorous analysis. This chapter juxtaposes levels concepts and theories on the upper-echelons model, in an effort to highlight its strengths as well as its weaknesses. While the majority of researchers use the model to describe team-level decision making, the analysis presented here reveals that the model is inherently individual-level in focus, and several important limitations must be overcome before the model will provide a full explanation of team-level decision making.

Climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are complex and have multifaceted effects on countries in an unpredictable and unprecedented manner. While both COVID-19 and the climate crisis share similarities, they also have some notable differences. Being both systemic in nature with knock-on and cascading effects that propagate due to high connectedness of countries, COVID-19, however, presents imminent and directly visible dangers, while the risks from climate change are gradual, cumulative and often distributed dangers. Climate change has more significant medium and long-term impacts which are likely to worsen over time. There is no vaccine for climate change compared to COVID-19. In addition, those most affected by extreme climatic conditions have usually contributed the least to the root causes of the crisis. This is in fact the case of island economies. The chapter thus investigates into the vulnerability and resilience of 38 Small Islands Developing States (SIDs) to both shocks. Adopting a comprehensive conceptual framework and data on various indices from the literature and global databases, we assess the COVID-19 and climate change vulnerabilities of SIDs on multiple fronts. The results first reveal a higher vulnerability across all dimensions for the Pacific islands compared to the other islands in the sample. There is also evidence of a weak correlation between climate change risk and the COVID-19 pandemic confirming our premise that there are marked differences between these two shocks and their impacts on island communities.