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1 – 3 of 3Silvia Baiocco and Paola M.A. Paniccia
This paper aims to better understand how business model innovation (BMI) occurs in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship, emphasizing the dialectical nature of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to better understand how business model innovation (BMI) occurs in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship, emphasizing the dialectical nature of entrepreneurial relationships. To do so, key interdependencies and reciprocal influences between internal/firm-specific and external/environmental factors underlying BMI for sustainability are analysed through co-evolutionary lenses.
Design/methodology/approach
A co-evolutionary framework is developed and applied to a longitudinal business model (BM) analysis of 15 Italian widespread hotels, which creatively use historic villages at risk of abandonment to establish their hotels.
Findings
Largely influenced by the interplay between internal and external factors, BMI of widespread hotels occurs through multilevel co-adaptations, which are recognised as virtuous by all stakeholders involved. Effective variations of the BM value elements are selected resulting in circular economy practices, which are retained for successful BMI, radical (first) and incremental (thereafter). Knowledge of specific local and multi-local conditions, time awareness and a future-oriented temporal perspective, by both entrepreneurs and policymakers, favour this dynamic.
Practical implications
Developing targeted policies and practices based on increased organisational knowledge supported by indicators can help in selecting and retaining successful variations of BMs appropriately in/with time with positive effects on firms' performance and sustainable development.
Originality/value
This study provides a novel co-evolutionary framework that explicitly links sustainable entrepreneurship and BM concepts in the accommodation sector. It further proposes a dynamic and holistic explanation of BMI for sustainability from which the crucial roles of the time-knowledge binomial and circular practices emerge.
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Patrick Arthur and Samuel Koomson
There is evidence of country-level contextual variations regarding the benefits of practical experience acquired by students during higher education. This paper, therefore…
Abstract
Purpose
There is evidence of country-level contextual variations regarding the benefits of practical experience acquired by students during higher education. This paper, therefore, analyses the benefits of student internships in the Ghanaian context.
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, two structured but distinct surveys were distributed to senior members and students of six specialised technical education institutions (TIs). Study 2 involved in-depth interviews with the heads of organisations in the tertiary education sector, including trade groups, industries and government agencies.
Findings
Internship provides soft skills, confidence, career development, sense of responsibility, employability, income, knowledge sharing and networking for students/interns. For TIs, it contributes to the professional development of faculty supervisors and helps them to update the content they teach. For employers, it unveils talented and promising students who can be employed immediately after graduation at a relatively cheaper cost.
Research limitations/implications
There is still the need for additional research in different contexts: both developed and developing economies to clear doubts on the controversies surrounding the relevance of internship in the 21st century.
Practical implications
TIs should continue to champion student internship programmes. This study highlights the need for employers to place internship students in areas that relate to their fields of study. It also underscores the need for students to embrace internship since it is the cornerstone to their employability in the labour market.
Social implications
Undeniably, student internships provide a critical platform for career beginners.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to knowledge by offering contextual literature in Ghana on the benefits of student internship programme for interns/students, TIs and employers, all together.
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Laura Knowlson and Rachel Marshall
Over the last five years, N8 AgriFood has united the expertise of food systems thinkers across the eight most research intensive universities in the North of England, in a…
Abstract
Over the last five years, N8 AgriFood has united the expertise of food systems thinkers across the eight most research intensive universities in the North of England, in a programme working to address key issues around food systems resilience across the themes of food production, supply chains and consumer health. As the programme moves towards focusing the results of its research and combined multidisciplinary expertise into policy guidance, the authors of this paper from within N8 AgriFood take an overview of the work undertaken across the programme's eight member institutions. It explores work around linking communities to food, and the vital potential of the research to inform new policy that encapsulates societal sustainability into food systems thinking.
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