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This chapter explores the impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO), Sustainable Orientation (SO), and Human Resource Orientation (HRO) – the key dimensions of the strategic posture known as Humane Entrepreneurship – on the success of 142 equity crowdfunding campaigns hosted on the US-based platform WeFunder. Utilizing text analysis in conjunction with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a configurational research method, the study identifies diverse combinations of these dimensions that lead to successful funding outcomes. The analysis, encompassing both minimum and maximum funding targets and supplemented by robustness tests, indicates that successful equity crowdfunding campaigns are characterized by pitches displaying high levels of autonomy, innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking, with a lesser focus on competitive aggressiveness. It is also observed that campaigns emphasizing HRO consistently achieve their fundraising goals, independent of the funding target set. Notably, a startup’s SO does not seem to significantly influence campaign success within the equity crowdfunding context.

Global environmental and social threats challenge humans’ well-being and the survival of posterity. Industry 4.0 (I4.0) transformed the industry sector, enabling process automation and scalability, increasing manufacturers’ productivity, efficiency, and profitability, and supporting manufacturing innovation and firms’ competitive advantage. Despite this, the I4.0 paradigm, as currently conceived, does not fit for purpose in the context of the climate crisis and planetary emergency, nor does it address deep social tensions.

Therefore, a new revolution focusing on human and environmental needs is strongly required to address society’s economic and social problems. Combining digitalization and social purposes may address local, national, and international issues by involving a human-centered perspective in traditional business-oriented entrepreneurship.

Depending on the above, this chapter provides an in-depth understanding of Digital Entrepreneurship (DE), Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE), and how entrepreneurs may employ digital technologies to reach business and social aims.

Drawing on the microfoundations theory and rational choice sociology, this study aims to investigate knowledge-sharing microfoundations through knowledge sabotage behaviours in the workplace. As such, it aims to shed light on the adverse impact of knowledge sabotage on a knowledge-sharing climate.

As a quantitative deductive study, it is based on information collected from 329 employees of European companies by self-administered online surveys. Data validity and reliability has been assessed through a confirmatory factor analysis, and data analysis was carried out by using a covariance-based structural equation modelling technique.

The findings from the empirical investigation supported the baseline hypotheses of the multilevel conceptual model, which is the positive relationship between organizational trust and environmental knowledge sharing. Then, recurring to a microfoundational exploration, this study supports the mediating indirect effect of job satisfaction and knowledge sabotage in affecting knowledge sharing as a social outcome.

This study concurs to broaden knowledge-sharing awareness among scholars and practitioners, by focusing on knowledge sabotage as its most pernicious counterproductive behaviour. Furthermore, this research provides valuable guidance for the future development of research based on multilevel investigations.

This study builds on the need to explore the numerous factors that affect knowledge sharing in economic organizations, specifically focusing on knowledge sabotage. Adapting Coleman’s bathtub, the authors advance the first multilevel conceptual model used to unveil the knowledge-sharing microfoundations from the perspective of a counterproductive knowledge behaviour.

While the entrepreneurship literature historically supported the idea that the center and finality of the research is the entrepreneur or the entrepreneurial firm, current developments highlight the importance of the context in which the entrepreneur or the entrepreneurial firm operates. This modern view challenges how the entrepreneurship field has been evolved and illustrates the transformation of the research that calls for an accurate overview of where the entrepreneurship field is going. This chapter aims at providing the historical evolution of the field of entrepreneurship by highlighting the state of the art, the main theories, the research gaps, the trends, the current research discussion, and where the field of entrepreneurship is going. Thanks to this historical view, scholars could learn of the origins of the field, how the research discussion has been evolved and how some popular trends appear or disappear and therefore find some research directions and a future research agenda for the future of entrepreneurship.

The paper positions social and technological innovation as pivotal counterforces to conservative resistance against change, particularly in light of the recurrent economic and technological upheavals characterizing the present shape of capitalism.

The research adopts a qualitative methodology, rooted in a comparative case study approach, offering a critical retrospective analysis of societal disruptions and transformations. Central to this methodological framework is the construct of sensemaking, which is characterized as the process by which collective entities retrospectively develop plausible narratives that rationalize their experiences. The approach is informed by the dynamics of socio-ecological systems, which are understood to undergo cyclical phases of growth, stabilization, collapse, and regeneration.

The study shows evidence that resilience and adaptability are more authentically gauged by socio-technological responses to cyclical disruptions and recoveries. It delineates sensemaking as a crucial socioecological mechanism through which elicitation emerges and societies and organizations navigate these cycles, forging shared narratives from collective experiences that are driven by plausibility rather than mere accuracy.

The research calls for the development of policies that synthesize disruptive innovations with strategies for social cohesion. Such policies must ensure the protection of the socioeconomic texture from implicit structural precariousness arising from innovation. The ability to integrate and institutionalize change is emphasized as crucial, demanding a synergy between innovative creativity, new normative frameworks, and the preservation of fundamental societal values.

The paper challenges reductionist technological interpretations of societal changes, advocating for a holistic perspective that accounts for the redistributive and elicitation roles as vital to the evolution of socio-economic systems. The value of this research lies in its comprehensive framing of these transformations, underscoring the importance of a multi-faceted understanding in the effective management of socioeconomic change.

This study aims to test the relationship between knowledge sharing and employee engagement. In particular, the mediating and moderating roles of competency development and social climate, respectively, are also the focus of this research.

Of self-completed questionnaires collected from luxury hotels in India, 507 are usable for data analysis. The structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to examine the proposed hypotheses.

The structural equation modeling–based results illustrate a positive significant association between knowledge sharing and employee engagement. Also, there is a significant support to establish the mediating effect of competency development and the moderating effect of social climate on this relationship. The expansion of competencies of employees achieved through knowledge sharing leads to higher engagement.

This work is carried out in Indian hospitality sector and may not be generalizable to other cultural settings.

This study’s results add to the knowledge sharing scholarship by envisaging a possible association with an employee attitudinal outcome, i.e. employee engagement.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to unravel the social processes through which knowledge sharing enhances competency development, and subsequently employee engagement, mainly through the influence of social climate.

Open innovation (OI), by now one of the major concepts for the analysis of innovation, is seen as a methodology for collaboratively designing and implementing solutions by engaging stakeholders in an iterative and inclusive service design process. This paper aims to empirically investigate OI capacities, defined as a cooperative, knowledge-sharing innovation ecosystem, and to explore how it can lead to improved performance of firms in Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Southeastern European (SEE) countries.

The study builds on the World Bank/European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD’s) Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) dataset for 2009, 2013 and 2019. Primarily, the research model was estimated using log-transformed ordinary least squares (OLS). Taking into consideration that this method might produce substantial bias, yielding misleading inferences, this study is fitting Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimators with robust standard errors and instrumental variable/generalized method of moments estimation (IV/GMM) approach for comparative results. Secondarily, the research model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the relationship between five OI capacities and firm performance.

The findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between most OI capacities and firm performance, except for innovation, which did not show a statistically significant relationship with firm performance. Specifically, research and development (R&D), knowledge and coopetition are statistically significant and positively associated with firm performance, whereas transformation is statistically significant but negatively associated with firm performance. The IV/GMM estimations’ findings support the view that the firm performance is significantly affected by OI capacities, together with some control variables such as size, age, foreign ownership and year dummy to have a significant impact on firm performance.

This paper fills an identified gap in the literature by investigating the impact of OI on firm performance executed in the specific CEE and SEE country context.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of risk culture on employee performance by exploring the mediating roles of employee satisfaction and employee engagement in the relationship between risk culture and employee performance.

The study employed partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to assess both the direct effects and mediation effects, using a sample of 311 employees from the banking and insurance sectors. In contrast to PLS-SEM, a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) technique was also applied to discern the causal configurations that lead to improved employee performance.

The findings revealed a significant direct effect of risk culture on employee performance, employee satisfaction and employee engagement. The findings also revealed that employee satisfaction significantly mediated the relationship between risk culture and employee performance, whereas the mediating role of employee engagement is partially significant. The fsQCA findings illustrated that a diverse combination of risk culture dimensions, employee satisfaction and employee engagement can result in enhanced employee performance.

This study provides important implications for the banking and insurance industries, suggesting that organizations should prioritize the development of a strong risk culture to improve employee-related outcomes such as performance, satisfaction and engagement, which are key factors for achieving optimal organizational success.

The paper specifically highlights the importance of integrating risk culture into human resource management, providing valuable insights for organizations seeking to enhance their risk management practices and culture.

The aim of this research is twofold: first, to get more insights on digital maturity to face the emerging 4.0 augmented scenario by identifying artificial intelligence (AI) competencies for becoming hybrid employees and leaders; and second, to investigate digital maturity, training and development support and HR satisfaction with the organization as valuable predictors of AI competency enhancement.

A survey was conducted on 123 participants coming from different industries and involved in functions dealing with the ramifications of Industry 4.0 technologies. The sample has included predominately small-to-medium organizations. A quantitative analysis based on both exploratory factor analysis and multiple linear regression was used to test the research hypotheses.

Three main competency clusters emerge as facilitators of AI–human interaction, i.e. leadership, technical and cognitive. The interplay among these clusters gives rise to plastic knowledge, a kind of moldable knowledge possessed by a particular human agent, here called hybrid. Moreover, organizational digital maturity, training and development support and satisfaction with the organization were significant predictors of AI competency enhancement.

The size of the sample, the convenience sampling method and the geographical context of analysis (i.e. California) required prudence in generalizing results.

Hybrids’ plastic knowledge conceptualized and operationalized in the overall quantitative analysis allows them to fill in the knowledge gaps that an AI agent-human interplay may imply, generating alternative solutions and foreseeing possible outcomes.

This paper draws on the thinking of the nineteenth-century Italian philosopher and poet Giacomo Leopardi and scholars who studied his thoughts on the relationship between nature and humans. Leopardi's philosophy of nature recognizes the alienness of nature in relation to humankind, thus challenging human governance of the planet. The poet’s thoughts align with the dilemma identified in the Anthropocene literature: who speaks for nature? This dilemma has accounting implications in terms of the frameworks and disclosures to be adopted. Therefore, Leopardi’s thoughts can become the basis for a more articulated and complex understanding of some key concepts and issues at the roots of SEA.

The paper utilizes content analysis to examine four essays by Giacomo Leopardi, which serve as the source of our data.

Leopardi recognizes the alienness of nature with respect to humanity and the voicelessness of nature as a generative of conflict. He also warned of the consequences of human governance that does not take nature’s needs into account. These findings open a discussion on the complex accounting implications of the distance between humanity and nature. They can inspire SEA scholars to change the status quo by developing new accounting frameworks from the perspective of nature and adopting forms of governance of nature that recognize the need to protect it as a voiceless stakeholder.

Through Leopardi’s humanistic and poetic philosophy, the perspective of nature can be infused into SEA studies, thereby promoting the need for a multidisciplinary and complex approach to the discipline.