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Argues that the general area of commercial sponsorship activity, while attracting increasing interest from marketing practitioners as an important strategic option in marketing communications, has not been the subject of sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive investigation by theoreticians. States the purpose is to establish and consolidate the available body of knowledge combining an overview of the standard conceptual approaches to marketing communication with an examination of the recent academic research in sponsorship, while maintaining a focus on current marketplace practice. Argues for a coherent and structured approach to the management of sponsorship expenditure through the application of a ‘management by objectives’ approach. Parameters are established in terms of a working definition of sponsorship, a review of its commercial development and an overview of current activity. Develops a commercially ration framework within which sponsorship activity may be undertaken. Views objective‐setting as the cornerstone of sponsorship management and outlines a classification of sponsorship objectives that subsumes current practice clarifies the range of potential benefits. Examines the criteria that govern rational sponsorship selection and proposes an evaluation strategy based on stated criteria. Methods of evaluating effects of marketing communications (sponsorship particularly) are examined and new evaluation techniques are advanced to facilitate the implementation of this rigorous scientific approach.

This chapter presents a study on the work of commercial diplomats as international business promoters at foreign posts. Research has largely overlooked the actual roles and activities of commercial diplomats in explaining the effectiveness of commercial diplomacy and international business support. In this study, it is assumed that commercial diplomats’ behavior is influenced by informal institutions. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 23 commercial diplomats at foreign posts from different countries were conducted and analyzed. The results show three different types of role behavior and differences in proactivity per type. Informal institutions such as background, skills, and experience, cultural differences, and the working environment suggest to explain the differences in levels of proactive international business support behavior of commercial diplomats. Further research is needed to assert these findings.

There is an ongoing controversy over whether or not to extend commercial banks' nonbanking powers. Although the Glass‐Steagall Act of 1933 and the McFadden‐Pepper Act of 1927 restrict commercial banks' activities, the technological and financial innovations of the last several years have raised new questions. Whether banks should be allowed to undertake nonbanking activities? How profitable are these businesses? Whether banks will gain monopolistic powers? Will they increase FDIC's liabilities? And several other related questions. This study looks at the nonbanking activities of bank holding companies using a relatively new data source, i.e. FR‐Y11AS reports for the years 1989 and 1990. The performance of nonbanking subsidiaries is then compared with that of commercial banks and bank holding companies. Some meaningful inferences are drawn on issues such as market concentration, profitability, capitalization, and level of problem‐loans of nonbanking and banking subsidiaries, as well as, consolidated bank holding companies. Results from two prior studies are further utilized to look for possible trends. Since these studies have used the same data source (FR‐Y11Q and FR‐ Yl1AS) for the years 1986 through 1988, this facilitates a trend analysis over a five year period 1986–90. The main conclusions are that the BHC's nonbanking activities are heavily concentrated among the top five or ten firms within each activity. However, both the number of firms as well as total assets held in most nonbanking subsidiaries have declined over the five year period. Activities considered traditional, e.g. commercial and consumer finance and mortgage banking have suffered significant losses in terms of total assets and number of firms. Some interesting conclusions can be drawn from these results. First, due to the growing liberalization in interstate banking laws, BHCs can now carry on these activities in their bank subsidiaries and do not have to acquire a nonbanking subsidiary in order to capture business across state lines. Second, the glass walls separating banking from commerce may be cracking. Several states have started allowing banks to carry out some of the nonbanking activities, hence, considerably neutralizing the Glass‐Steagall Act. Insurance agencies and underwriting business of BHCs show the most significant growth over the five years, 1986–1990. Securities brokerage has held constant. Another finding is that the return on equity (ROE) for nonbanking firms has been lower than both the banking firms as well as the BHCs. However, this is mainly due to the relatively low equity capital levels for banks and BHCs. The nonbanking subsidiaries show fairly stable and relatively high capital ratios. Finally, for most part, nonbanking subsidiaries have a higher rate of problem‐loans.

The purpose of this study is to explore stakeholders’ perceptions on money creation and the impact of the accounting treatment for commercial banks’ money lending activity in Malaysia.

A phenomenological approach was used to examine the stakeholders’ perceptions through experience-sharing. A semi-structured interview approach was used to collect the data. Ten individuals from different stakeholder groups have been interviewed with their prior consent. For the data analysis, the current study adopted the inductive thematic approach.

Perceptions on money creation are influenced by the informants’ understanding and awareness of the research issue. Informants have agreed on the accounting treatment (debit loan and credit deposits) but explained the impact of this accounting treatment differently. The accounting treatment creates an opportunity for the commercial banks to create money as they want, and hence, the excess created money can create inflation and threat for the potential financial crisis. On the contrary, it is argued that money creation results from the systematic approach of the fractional reserve banking (FRB) in Malaysia. In addition, this money creation is not a threat to the economy as long as there is a strong controlling role of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).

Stakeholders’ perception indicates that awareness of the research issue can be a cause of crucial consequence for money lending activity. Moreover, this study may stimulate the chief regulatory body such as BNM, the central bank of Malaysia, to be more cautious in controlling the commercial banks’ money lending activity to prevent the potential future crisis. Furthermore, findings may help to explain the conflicting concept between the textbook explanation for FRB and current commercial banks’ money lending practice through the accounting treatment.

Monitoring and controlling of money creation and commercial banks’ money lending activity by BNM can be benefited from the stakeholders’ perceptions on this research issue. Because this is the first time study of the stakeholders’ perceptions on money creation and commercial banks’ money lending activity in Malaysia and hence, findings of this study may be worked as the input in the process of monitoring and controlling the money creation activity in Malaysia.

The aim of this research is to contribute to the understanding of how commercial diplomats lobby for public procurement contracts. The institutional environment has ramifications for the manner of lobbying and for the practice of commercial diplomacy. This research brings together these streams of literature, and a conceptual model is developed. By means of an in-depth, single-case study, investigating the lobbying activities of EU diplomats in Indonesia, the study aimed to illustrate the model and draw the list of lobbying activities applicable for commercial diplomats. The findings reveal that in a weak institutional development environment, the diplomats focus on informational lobbying and rely heavily on their networks. If the decision-making powers are decentralized, the diplomats target more decision-makers. If diplomats do not have an access to decision-makers then ‘voice’ lobbying is applied. If the decision-makers are not elected, the diplomats do not engage in constituency-building lobbying. The findings illustrate the plausibility of the introduced conceptual model. They also suggest that domestic factors, such as interest in the host country, priority status of the host country and historical bilateral ties can positively influence the lobbying activities of the diplomats as well.

In an ongoing process of globalization and technology improvements and due to an increase in worldwide actors in the economic sector, commercial diplomacy is an important tool for countries to support their business community during the internationalization process and afterwards. Nevertheless, commercial diplomacy literature is still in its infancy. Therefore, this chapter reviews existing research on the topic and develops a framework, which integrates the topics examined so far and provides the reader with a more complete picture of the topic at hand.

By means of a literature review, this chapter shows that the body of literature involving research of both disciplines, International Relations and International Management, is still rather limited. As a consequence, we determine a future research agenda and call for more empirical studies, especially in the field of (political) economy.

This cross-national study of entrepreneurship seeks to investigate the perceptual and institutional determinants of entrepreneurial entry. To do so, the authors distinguish between social and commercial entrepreneurial activities, taking the position that the concept of entrepreneurship is not a monolithic one.

The authors construct a large cross-national data set and employ hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to run a multi-level analysis on individual-level data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and country-level data from Polity IV and GLOBE, representing 47 countries.

Individuals' perceptual characteristics (i.e. perceived self-efficacy, opportunity perception, and fear of failure) and informal institutions in the form of supportive cultures impact social entrepreneurship more strongly than commercial entrepreneurship. On the other hand, the formal institution of the rule of law, specifically the protection of property rights, is more conducive to commercial entrepreneurship.

The results of this study contribute to theory by illuminating the complicated relationships between environmental conditions, individual-level psychological factors, and entrepreneurial decisions. Furthermore, the authors’ multi-level model contributes to a more detailed conceptualization of entrepreneurial entry by identifying institutional settings that facilitate commercial versus social entrepreneurship. The authors also clarify why commercial entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship attract different types of individuals.

This paper discusses the concept of social economy. Based on an economic‐historical perspective, reciprocity is seen as the fundamental principle for the social economy. In contrast to the “official” definitions, social economy is not restricted to only certain juridical forms. From the perspective outlined in this paper, social economy and commercial economy emerge not as opposite poles to each other but as parts of a continuous spectrum. Economic activities dominated by social objectives are also performed in other forms than the juridical forms of the social economy. Commercially‐dominated activities contain social elements as well. There are also many examples of social‐economic activities that expand, increase their commercialisation rate and subsequently are transformed to commercial enterprises. Studies on social features of the economy may thus be performed on a very wide field.

The purpose of this paper is to extend to accounting and accounting texts the arguments of Phillips which suggest that organisational analysis can be enriched by a greater interface with narrative fiction as a means to bring organisations to life. The paper also introduces the work of Bottin which argues that accounting manuals can be considered as source documents for economic history, more than simply being of purely pedagogical value. Both approaches inform the research into the specialised accounting manual, the Guide du Commerce of Gaignat de l'Aulnais.

This paper uses archival‐based historical methods to examine the Guide du Commerce and the social and economic milieu presented therein. It has developed its analysis through the examination of both primary and secondary sources to underscore the business and social networks of the milieu and to illustrate accounting as narrative.

In his manual, Gaignat recreates merchant activities and commercial relations of eighteenth century France. Gaignat does not content himself with re‐copying material at his disposal or with creating fictitious examples. Rather, through his in‐depth development of case studies and examples of actual accounting methods, he offers the reader insights into the strategic nature of the social and economic milieu in which commercial success might be achieved.

The research approach is transferable to other settings, motivating renewed interest in the history of accounting literature. The stories related in the Guide du Commerce point to the potential value of accounting manuals and other similar documents as historical sources when such sources no longer exist or are limited.

The research method is original in that the methodological approach is new to accounting history, but part of a debate within history more generally.

This paper aims to examine the interplay among forms of entrepreneurship and the gendered entrepreneurial divide. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and the World Values Survey (WVS), the authors investigate the likelihood that females will venture in the commercial entrepreneurial ventures versus social entrepreneurial ventures. The authors draw on the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to explain gender variance in the organizational forms of commercial and social entrepreneurship. Specifically, the authors investigate whether pursuing an opportunity in a society that highly values ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity impacts the probability of venturing in either of these kinds of organizations.

To test the hypotheses, the authors use GEM data from 2009 (n = 14,399) for nascent entrepreneurs and baby businesses owners in 55 counties. They also use the WVS to measure the ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity at the country level. The authors estimate a logistic multilevel model to identify the drivers of social venturing over commercial venturing. Data are nested by countries, and the authors allow random intercepts by countries with a variance components covariance structure.

The findings demonstrate that there is a divide in entrepreneurial activity, as women entrepreneurs are more likely to start social ventures than commercial ventures. They also find that hegemonic masculinity decreases the incidence of social entrepreneurship, whereas emphasized femininity increases the incidence of social entrepreneurship. Moreover, the authors find evidence that women in societies with a strong view on hegemonic masculinity are less likely to pursue social organizational forms than male entrepreneurs are. Furthermore, in societies with strong views of emphasized femininity, the probability increases that female founders will pursue social organizational forms. The findings highlight the considerable impact of the gender ideologies on entrepreneurship.

Although the authors use the terms “gender” and “sex” in this paper interchangeably, they recognize that these two terms are not equivalent. For the purposes of this manuscript, the authors use a gender analysis approach activity based on biological sex to investigate empirical differences in entrepreneurial. The findings suggest that women ultimately, and unintentionally, are consenting to the practices and norms that reiterate the masculinity of entrepreneurship. In this way, the patriarchal ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and masculinization of entrepreneurship ultimately leave women unable to fully take up the identity of “woman” alongside that of “entrepreneur”. Future research can build upon our findings by applying a more nuanced view of gender via constructivist approaches.

The findings empirically demonstrate the gendered nature of entrepreneurial activity, leading to specific stereotypical female social organizational forms and male commercial organizational forms. Furthermore, the authors are able to provide theoretical explanations based on hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity to understand why social entrepreneurship appeals to women.