Search results

The purpose of the article is to gain more insight into factors that can explain students' success in business subjects. The focus is on the connection between performance in introductory courses in business mathematics (BM) and business statistics (BS) and success in various business subjects.

Use of a regression model with administrative data from a business school in Norway over a period of 10 years.

The findings show a strong correlation, especially in quantitative subjects. The results suggest that statistical skills are more strongly related to academic success than mathematical skills.

The data are collected from only one school. No information on undergraduates' personalities and behaviours is available.

There are limited published studies that have explored the relationship between success in statistics and later achievements in business courses. This is useful knowledge for planning the content of the bachelor's programme.

This paper aims to explore and analyse stakeholders’ perceptions of the development priorities and suggests more effective strategies to assist sustainable economic growth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The authors use the World Bank data set, which collects various stakeholders’ opinions on the UAE development. First, the exploratory factor analysis has been applied to detect the main groups of development priorities. Second, the fuzzy cluster analysis has been conducted to detect the groups of stakeholders with different attitudes towards the importance of extracted groups of priorities. Third, clusters have been compared according to demographics, media usage and shared prosperity goals.

The two main groups of development priorities have been extracted by the exploratory factor analysis: economic priorities and sustainability priorities. Four clusters have been detected according to the level of motivation when it comes to the economic and sustainability priorities: Cluster 1 (High economic – High sustainability), Cluster 2 (High economic – Medium sustainability), Cluster 3 (High economic – Low sustainability) and Cluster 4 (Low economic – Low sustainability). Members of the cluster that prefer a high level of economic and sustainability priorities (Cluster 1) also prefer more diversified economic growth providing better employment opportunities and better education and training for young people in the UAE.

Limitations stem from the survey being conducted on a relatively small sample using the data collected by the World Bank; however, this data set allowed a comparison of various stakeholders. Future research should consider a broader sample approach, e.g. exploring and comparing all of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries; investigating the opinions of the expatriate managers living in the UAE that are not from GCC countries; and/or including other various groups that are lagging, such as female entrepreneurs.

Several practical implications were identified regarding education and media coverage. Since respondents prioritize the economic development factors over sustainability factors, a media campaign could be developed and executed to increase sustainability awareness. A campaign could target especially male citizens since the analysis indicates that males are more likely to affirm high economic and low sustainability priorities than females. There is no need for further diversification of media campaigns according to age since the analysis did not reveal relevant differences in age groups, implying there is no inter-generational gap between respondents.

This paper contributes to the literature by comparing the perceived importance of various development goals in the UAE, such as development priorities and shared prosperity indicators. The fuzzy cluster analysis has been used as a novel approach to detect the relevant groups of stakeholders in the UAE and their developmental priorities. The issue of media usage and demographic characteristics in this context has also been discussed.

In recent years, data science has become a high-demand profession, thereby attracting transmuters (individuals who want to change their profession due to industry trends) to this field. The primary purpose of this paper is to guide transmuters in becoming data scientists.

An exploratory study was conducted to uncover the challenges faced by data scientists according to their educational backgrounds. An extensive set of responses from 31 countries was received.

The results reveal that skill requirements and tool usage vary significantly with educational background. However, regardless of differences in academic background, the data scientists surveyed spend more time analyzing data than operationalizing insight.

The collected data are available to support replication in various scenarios, for example, for use as a roadmap for those with an educational background in art-related disciplines. Additional empirical studies can also be conducted specific to geographical location.

The current work has categorized data scientists by their fields of study making it easier for universities and online academies to suggest required knowledge (courses) according to prospective students' educational background.

The conducted study suggests the required knowledge and skills for transmuters to acquire, based on their educational background, and reports a set of motivational factors attracting them to adopt the data science field.

Several inferential procedures are advocated in the literature. The most commonly used techniques are the frequentist and the Bayesian inferential procedures. Bayesian methods afford inferences based on small data sets and are especially useful in studies with limited data availability. Bayesian approaches also help incorporate prior knowledge, especially subjective knowledge, into predictions. Considering the increasing difficulty in data acquisition, the application of Bayesian techniques can be hugely beneficial to managers, especially in analysing limited data situations like a study of expert opinion. Another factor constraining the broader application of Bayesian statistics in business was computational power requirements and the availability of appropriate analytical tools. However, with the increase in computational power, connectivity and the development of appropriate software programmes, Bayesian applications have become more attractive. This chapter attempts to unravel the applications of the Bayesian inferential procedure in marketing management.

Czechia is a small open economy and a member state of the European Union. Several important trends and episodes that have determined economic growth can be identified over the last two decades. This chapter deals with some macroeconomic features like macroeconomic and labour market performance within the business cycle, the Czech National Bank (CNB) exchange rate commitment and interest rate policy, increasing indebtedness and budget deficits, foreign trade and the international investment position. We applied publicly available data from Eurostat, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and CNB databases. The data show that the Czech economy was significantly converging to the average economic level of the European Union. We also identified key turning points in business cycles. Macroeconomic data on economic development of the economy indicate an atypical course of the business cycle between 2020 and 2022, which can be evaluated as different from the one that followed the global financial crisis.

This paper aims to present demographic characteristics and postgraduate employment trends of business doctoral graduates, especially the proportion that are underrepresented minorities (URMs) over time.

The authors analyze the near census of individuals receiving doctoral degrees in a wide range of business disciplines from US-accredited universities from 1973 to 2018 (n = 50,091) contained with the National Science Foundation Survey of Earned Doctorates. The authors analyze how the proportion of URM graduates, by discipline, has changed over time both in terms of receiving a doctoral degree and entering an academic position.

The proportion of URM graduates fluctuated between approximately 5% and 15% annually, steadily increasing across decades. Overall, 64.4% of all graduates entered an academic position, with notably higher rates among whites (72.1%) compared to Blacks (51.8%), Hispanics (60.4%) and other URMs (56.4%) (p < 0.001). In adjusted models, the proportion of URMs that entered academic positions significantly increased overtime, beginning in the 1990s and peaked in the 2000s. Although the few institutions that graduated the highest number of URMs do not currently have an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business school, the authors identify several exemplar institutions where URM graduates entered academic jobs at the highest rates.

The authors provide demographic trends that shed light on ways to influence an increase in URM doctoral graduates from business disciplines into academic careers. This discussion is of interest to university administrators and other stakeholders interested in diversity issues in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to review and provide propositions about survey assessment tools of the key sustainability competencies (KSCs) of education for sustainability. UNESCO points out how education plays an important role in transforming societies towards a sustainable future and achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. To plan education for sustainability, teachers need to know the students’ competencies for sustainability before they come to class. Thus, a formative assessment about student competence for sustainability is needed.

Firstly, a structured literature review of assessment tools used to measure sustainability competencies by questionnaire survey is presented. Secondly, the authors’ conceptualise how the competencies influence each other and provide propositions for future research.

The literature demonstrates that there is much ambiguity between prior research about the scales used and what they represent. A lack of validation across disciplines is apparent and an assessment tool that includes all eight KSCs could benefit education for sustainability. Future research could investigate how the competencies influence each other and which drivers are stronger for each discipline across different countries. A formative assessment tool can address this need.

The findings provide a new analysis about questionnaire assessment tools used in prior research to measure sustainability competence. The authors’ offer a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses found in prior research and propose suggestions for future research. Their conceptualisation also provides propositions for validating the KSCs presented in a recent framework.

Bootstrapping is a practitioner-based term adopted in entrepreneurship to describe the techniques employed in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to minimise the need for external funding by securing resources at little or no cost and applying strategies to effectively use resources. Working capital management (WCM) is a term used in financial management to define a set of practices used to manage business resources, including cash management. This paper explores the overlap and divergence between these two disciplinary distinct concepts.

A dual methodology is employed. First, the usage of the two terms in prior literature is analysed and synthesised. Second, the study uses factor analysis to explore how bootstrapping practices described by owners of 167 established MSMEs relate to the components of WCM in financial management.

The factor analysis identifies two main bootstrapping practices employed by MSMEs: (1) delaying payments and owner-related bootstrapping and (2) customer-related bootstrapping. Delaying payments is an integral practice in trade payables management and customer-related bootstrapping includes practices that are integral to trade receivables management. Therefore, links between bootstrapping practices and WCM practices are firmly established.

The study is not without limitations. Based on cross-sectional evidence for established firms in Ireland only, future studies could explore cross-country longitudinal panel data to fully examine life cycle and sectoral effects, as well as other external shocks (for example, COVID-19) on bootstrapping and WCM practices. This study does not explain why some factors (for example, joint utilisation and inventory management) are present in some bootstrapping studies and not in others; further case study research might help explain this. Finally, changes in the business environment facing start-ups and established enterprise, including increased digitalisation, online trading, self-employment, remote hub working and sustainability, offer new avenues for bootstrapping research.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore the conceptual and empirical links between bootstrapping and WCM. This study will enable researchers and practitioners in these two distinct disciplines to learn from each other. Accounting researchers and practitioners can broaden their understanding of how WCM “works” in MSME settings. Similarly, entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners can deepen their understanding of how bootstrapping can be adopted by businesses to manage resources effectively.

This paper aims to examine which role governments can play in facilitating the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)' environmental capabilities in a global marketplace. It also investigates whether the extent of the impact of government intervention on firm performance varies depending on country-specific policies.

The authors develop a series of hypotheses that are predicated on the ecological modernization theory and the institutional theory. To test those hypotheses, the authors collected cross-national data reflecting both Korean and Chinese SME practices and then used the structural equation model. In addition, the authors utilized cross-validation techniques for methodological rigor.

A series of hypotheses test results revealed that government intervention had a positive impact on the MNF's environmental innovation capabilities and technological innovation capabilities. In addition, the authors discovered that SMEs' reaction to government intervention had a mediating effect between government intervention and the SME's performance. This discovery verifies the ecological modernization and institutional theories.

This is one of the few studies that conducted cross-cultural analyses of two different nations with contrasting government structures (i.e. capitalistic versus socialistic).

The purpose of this paper is to examine small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) level of participation in human resource development activities during a labor shortage. Drawing on human capital theory, it examines whether SMEs’ profiles, determined according to their participation in different types of training activities, relate to perceived benefits of training, barriers to participation in training and learning culture.

This study applies latent profile analysis (LPA) to 10 training practices of 427 SMEs in Quebec, Canada.

The LPA distinguished four profiles of SMEs, reflecting differing capacities for mobilizing training resources during a labor shortage. These four profiles show differences with regard to perceived training benefits, barriers to participation in training and learning culture.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to focus on the specific ability of SMEs to invest in their human capital in the unique and recent context of a labor shortage.