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All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.

This conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.

A literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.

This work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to investigate the role of field-configuring events (FCEs) and situational context in the institutionalisation of sustainability reporting (SR) in Pakistan.

This paper uses insights from the institutional logics perspective and qualitative research design to analyse the interplay of the institutional logics, FCEs, situational context and social actors’ agency for the institutionalisation of SR among leading corporations in Pakistan. A total of 28 semi-structured interviews were carried out and were supplemented by analysis of secondary data including reports, newspaper articles and books.

The emerging field of SR in Pakistan is shaped by societal institutions, where key social actors (regulators, enablers and reporters) were involved in the institutionalisation of SR through FCEs. FCEs provided space for agency and were intentionally designed by key social actors to promote SR in Pakistan. The situational context connected the case organisations with FCEs and field-level institutional logics that shaped their decision to initiate SR. Overall, intricate interplay of institutional logics, FCEs, situational context and social actors’ agency has contributed to the institutionalisation of SR in Pakistan. Corporate managers navigated institutional logics based on situational context and initiated SR that is aligned with corporate goals and stakeholder expectations.

For corporate managers, this paper highlights the role of active agency in navigating and integrating institutional logics and stakeholders’ expectations in their decision-making process. For practitioners and policymakers, this paper highlights the importance of FCEs and situational context in the emergence and institutionalisation of SR in developing countries. From a societal point of view, dominance of business actors in FCEs highlights the need for non-business actors to participate in FCEs to shape logics and practice of SR for wider societal benefits.

From a societal point of view, dominance of business actors in FCEs highlights the need for non-business actors to participate in FCEs to shape logics and practice of SR for wider societal benefits.

This paper focuses on the role of FCEs and situational context as key social mechanisms for explaining the institutionalisation of SR.

In this final chapter, we summarize the core challenges to leadership in complex organizational systems as well as the lessons that we believe leaders can learn from the contributions presented in this book. Building on Complexity Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009), we argue that high levels of complexity characterize the contexts described, and that they are unusual because they deviate from the setting of standard business organizations. Since these contexts are not often discussed in the general leadership literature, there seems to be a largely unused potential in terms of leadership learning. Specifically, in order to better contextualize leadership, scholars and practitioners need to take organizational complexity into account. With reference to the underlying structure of the book, core challenges to leadership are proposed, clustering around four main foci: sports and competition, high risk, creativity and innovation, care and community. Subsequently, we derive six lessons for leadership: adaptability, perseverance, handling paradox, leading with values, inventing the future, and sharing responsibility. We thereby hope to stimulate fruitful discussions that put leadership into context and capitalize on complexity theory as an innovative approach to leadership research and practice.

This chapter compares two protected natural parks as specific experiential contexts providing two different experiences for visitors: extraordinary and memorable versus ordinary and mundane (Carù & Cova, 2006, 2007). Each experiential context enables the distinction of actual visitors’ experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1999) inside each park. A qualitative study collected information to differentiate each protected natural park based on three dimensions: the geophysical environment, the recreational practices, and product and service offer management. A quantitative study analyzed the effect of a specific experiential context through a comparison of actual visitors’ experiences on four dimensions (esthetics, escapism, education, and entertainment) in both countries (500 in each country). Results of the qualitative study show that the Taiwanese park provides an experiential context with more extraordinary and memorable experiences while the French park provides an experiential context with more ordinary and mundane experiences. The results of the quantitative study show the distinction of actual visitors’ experiences inside each park: more immersion through esthetics and escapism in Taiwan and more absorption through education and entertainment in France. Each park manager has to build one’s own positioning and should offer a unique experiential context based on the three dimensions to provide more extraordinary and memorable or more ordinary and mundane experiences. this study highlights the interest of an analysis framework of experiences adapted from Carù and Cova (2006, 2007) and Pine and Gilmore (1999) underlining the link between experiential context and actual experiences.

The flow of human capital into and out of organizations is a crucial aspect of organizational functioning, yet the bulk of the theory and research adopts a US-centric perspective. The purpose of this edited volume is for scholars embedded in contexts around the world to describe the relevance and implications (or lack thereof) of turnover theories in their particular context. We take a broad view of talent, focusing on the departure of human capital in general without necessarily restricting the analysis to those who disproportionately contribute to organizational success, and the authors focus on institutional contexts and culture because of their role in shaping employee norms and behaviors. We partnered with author teams embedded in countries and regions with a focus on capturing variance in contexts across the GLOBE clusters: Anglo (England), Confucian Asian (China; South Korea), Eastern European (Bulgaria), Germanic European (Germany), Latin American (Mexico), Latin European (Spain), Middle Eastern (Turkey), Nordic European (Denmark), Southern Asian (India), and Sub-Saharan African (South Africa). We provided each author team discretion to express their own voice, while also providing a common set of goals across chapters for consistency of contribution: a description of the institutional, legal, and cultural context as it relates to employee mobility, a review of context-specific research literature leading to a description of how the mechanisms and processes in prominent turnover theories may operate differently in a particular context, and implications for research and practice related to talent turnover and retention. Considering the contributions as a set, we identify important themes and overarching recommendations for scholars interested in studying employee retention and turnover around the globe.

Ideology is discussed as the missing link between material practices and symbolic constructions in defining institutional logics. Institutional streams are proposed as disembedded institutional logics traveling as ideologies that are taken for granted. They affect specific (inter)action contexts on a global level providing institutional entrepreneurs and workers with symbolic elements to translate into local institutional arrangements. Such translations can give rise to institutional change. Local translation of nonlocal elements advances the interests of the elites of the “sending” institutional context, as well as it may advance those of the receiving one. Dominant transnational streams may or may not coalesce to form a global world order.

Recently scholars have been interested in examining social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence, but none have examined all these in a comparative study of cultures. Here an empirical examination is conducted of a high-context culture, India, versus a low-context culture, the United States. Linear regression was conducted and findings indicate that the hypothesized relationships, that high-context cultures will have a higher social, emotional, and cultural intelligence, are not supported. In fact, social intelligence was found to be higher in the U.S. sample. Managerial implications and avenues for future research are presented.

The purpose of this research is to study the moderating role of the personality trait Discomfort With Ambiguity (DWA) on the processing of mixed emotions in advertising. Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, the emotions between the medium context and the embedded advertisement were mixed. In the second experiment, the emotions in an advertisement were mixed by manipulating emotions in the text and picture. Results indicate that DWA, being a proxy for how well people are able to deal with mixed emotions, has a moderating effect on advertising processing. Individuals having a high DWA appear to respond less positively to mixed emotions.

This chapter uses Sandra Bem’s scholarship to demonstrate the intersections between developmental and social psychological approaches to understanding masculinity and femininity.

To highlight Sandra Bem’s contributions, we examined masculinity and femininity, broadly defined, from a socio-developmental theoretical perspective, conceptualizing gender development as embedded within a socio-historical context.

Our review of the literature illustrates that both age and social contextual features influence femininity and masculinity and more specifically that in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, femininity and masculinity vary depending on the sex (same- vs. other-sex) of those in the social context. Along with demonstrating the current utility and extensions of Sandra Bem’s research, we also emphasize the feminist and social justice applications of her body of work.

Weaknesses in the existing methodology where instruments are designed based on the assumption that masculinity and femininity are stable traits rather than characteristics that vary are discussed. Limitations to research focused on either social or developmental perspectives are highlighted and suggestions for a more integrative approach are provided.

Similar to how Sandra Bem’s work showed that sex and gender need not be linked, research and theory on the developmental and contextual specificity of gender also demonstrate that there is freedom in the expression of gender.