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Recent studies have questioned the direct relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance (e.g., Rauch, Wiklund, Lumpkin, & Frese, 2009; Wales, Gupta, & Mousa, 2013). Following this stream of research, this study examines this relationship by identifying the intermediate steps between these two variables (Alegre & Chiva, 2013; Wales, 2016; Zahra, Sapienza, & Davidsson, 2006). EO is considered essential for new market entry and new business foundation, which is why this study focuses on startups. Startups search for viable business opportunities, and this search is highly dependent on organizational learning (Kreiser, 2011). Previous studies suggest that organizational learning mediates the relationship between EO and performance (e.g., Real, Roldan, & Leal, 2014; Wang, 2008). This study investigates the role of organizational learning in this relationship by analyzing how EO and absorptive capacity (AC) interact. We propose a more direct and fine-grained measure of entrepreneurial success by developing a conceptual model that includes opportunity identification as an early outcome measure for startups. Drawing on a sample of 95 academic spin-offs in the Netherlands, this study examines the mediating role of AC and market readiness in the relationship between EO and market opportunities. The findings indicate that AC and market readiness mediate the direct effect of EO on market opportunity identification. By using opportunity identification as an outcome measure for EO, this study adopts a more direct measure for firm performance, resonating with recent discussions on the main effect of EO for organizations. These findings suggest that academic spin-offs’ AC leads entrepreneurial efforts to achieve a better product-market fit, and in return, helps to identify more market opportunities.

This study collected perceptual data from 162 manufacturing managers to assess whether their perception of organizational learning is related to firm profitability or whether the relationship is indirect through firms’ competitive advantage (quality improvement, cost improvement, cycle-time improvement). The results indicate that managers perceive that organizational learning is significantly related to competitive advantage that, in turn, is positively related to profitability. The results also indicate that the relation between organizational learning and profitability is fully mediated by firm competitive advantage.

The purpose of this chapter is to determine the optimal path of development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian countries by performing a scenario analysis of the development of social entrepreneurship and analyzing the opinions of interested parties regarding the outcome of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian states. The authors’ recommendations for the practical implementation of the optimal path of social entrepreneurship development are described.

The scenario analysis of statistical data showed that the existing practice of standardization of social companies’ activities hinders their executing their functions on raising the quality of life. With the expansion of freedom of social entrepreneurship, the population’s quality of life grows; on the contrary, the increase of state regulation leads to its reduction. The findings show that social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian countries is interested in private investments and social companies’ employees. That is why the representatives of these categories of concerned parties support de-regulation. Consumers of social goods and services are interested in obtaining them freely and thus prefer standardization.

This chapter presents a new direction of social entrepreneurship analysis – by determining the correlation between economic freedom and quality of life. This opens an opportunity for thorough social entrepreneurship research based on authentic and objective quantitative (statistical) data. The obtained conclusions and offered recommendations allow using the mechanism of public–private entrepreneurship for turning social entrepreneurship into something more valuable and useful – a tool for increasing the quality of the population’s life.

This paper proposes a new theoretical framework to explain enterprise unionism and conducts the first systematic comparative study of union structure in nine Asian countries. Our framework emphasizes political dynamics and the role of the state in labor relations and argues that the initial period of the collective bargaining era constituted a critical juncture (state labor policy) that occurred in distinctive ways in different countries and that these differences played a central role in shaping the different union structures in the following decades. The nine countries are mainly divided into three groups, depending on the type of state labor policy: enforcement of enterprise unionism; centralization/laissez-faire (non-enterprise unionism); and dual unionism/gradual transition (middle-ground). Governmental data were used for the study. A clear correspondence between state labor policy and union structure in each of these groups was found. We believe that our framework significantly enhances our understanding of the Asian cases. Future research should explore the validity of the proposed framework through comparative studies of Latin American cases where enterprise unions have also been observed.

This chapter relies on comparative case analysis to examine how and why particular social entrepreneurs in a higher Asian middle income economy broke new grounds in private higher education. The study provides arguments as to why these private higher education entrepreneurs, when viewed inclusively, are social entrepreneurs. Findings from the study suggest that social entrepreneurs distinctively used prior insights from their working experiences to harness the financial power of local capital to fund the scaling up of their social ventures while simultaneously engaging with the country’s economic and social challenges.