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1 – 10 of over 6000Patrick Ebong Ebewo, Elona N. Ndlovu-Hlatshwayo, Phakisho Wilson Mehlape and Semukele Hellen Mlotshwa
Despite a large volume of theoretical and empirical research, defining the ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ within the cultural and creative sector, a sector with high…
Abstract
Despite a large volume of theoretical and empirical research, defining the ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ within the cultural and creative sector, a sector with high heterogeneity in organisational and other aspects across its various segments remains challenging. In this regard, there should be a wide variety of differences in the characteristics and challenges of cultural entrepreneurs across industries, countries and regions. Nonetheless, the key role of the arts and cultural sector has increasingly piqued the interest of policymakers and the private sector, and it has been recognised for its importance within the South African economic landscape; as a result, the government has prioritised arts and culture as a pillar in their development strategies. Furthermore, while there has been some consensus over the past decade on what constitutes a creative industry, many questions about defining arts and cultural entrepreneurship still need to be answered, necessitating further definitional and policy coherence. As a result, some efforts at definitions are required to advance the sector and develop useful knowledge in policy formulation.
This chapter proposes an understanding of arts and cultural entrepreneurship as an exploration of a person, a community or a network's artistic resources (arts, creative and cultural) in value creation. It utilises meta-analysis, a non-empirical method, to review and analyse the existing literature. Further research is needed to investigate and evaluate the efficacy of established arts incubators, and the extent to which perceived entrepreneurial competencies affect organisational performance. Moreover, additional research is required to examine the entrepreneurial factors inhibiting or stimulating the influence on start-up financing (capital acquisition) in the South African arts and cultural industry.
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Alexandra Oancă, Franco Bianchini, Juliet Simpson, Enrico Tommarchi and David Wright
This study focuses on the use of guanxi by African returnees from China in Africa. It explains how returnees understood and leveraged guanxi to collaborate with Chinese partners.
Abstract
Purpose
This study focuses on the use of guanxi by African returnees from China in Africa. It explains how returnees understood and leveraged guanxi to collaborate with Chinese partners.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses semi-structured interviews to document how guanxi is increasingly extending beyond Chinese borders. It focuses on Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania and analyzes the returnees' mobilization of guanxi in Sino–African business contexts.
Findings
African returnees play an increasingly important role in guanxi internationalization in Africa. Returnees' understanding of guanxi is shaped by their African traditions and their Chinese experiences, creating their new cultural capital and a dynamic Sino–African business mindset.
Originality/value
This paper reveals an emerging shift in the business mindset among African returnees once initiated in guanxi. In addition, guanxi is increasingly practiced by African organizations.
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Xin Feng, Lei Yu, Weilong Tu and Guoqiang Chen
With the development of science and technology, more creators are trying to use new crafts to represent the cultural trends of the social media era, which makes cultural heritage…
Abstract
Purpose
With the development of science and technology, more creators are trying to use new crafts to represent the cultural trends of the social media era, which makes cultural heritage innovative and new genres emerge. This compels the academic community to examine craft from a new perspective. It is very helpful to understand the hidden representational structure of craft more deeply and improve the craft innovation system of cultural and creative products that we deconstruct the craft based on Complex Network and discover its intrinsic connections.
Design/methodology/approach
The research crawled and cleaned the craft information of the top 20% products on the Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products online and then performed Complex Network modeling, constructed three craft representation networks among function, material and technique, quantified and analyzed the inner connections and network structure of the craft elements, and then analyzed the cultural inheritance and innovation embedded in the craft representation networks.
Findings
The three dichotomous craft representation networks constructed by combining function, material and technique: (1) the network density is low and none of them has small-world characteristics, indicating that the innovative heritage of the craft elements in the Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products is at the stage of continuous exploration and development, and multiple coupling innovation is still insufficient; (2) all have scale-free characteristics and there is still a certain degree of community structure within each network, indicating that the coupling innovation of craft elements of the Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products is seriously uneven, with some specific “grammatical combinations” and an Island Effect in the network structure; (3) the craft elements with high network centrality emphasize the characteristics of decorative culture and design for the masses, as well as the pursuit of production efficiency and economic benefits, which represent the aesthetic purport of contemporary Chinese society and the ideological trend of production and life.
Originality/value
The Forbidden City’s cultural and creative products should continue to develop and enrich the multi-coupling innovation of craft elements, clarify and continue their own brand unique craft genes, and make full use of the network important nodes role.
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Shiv Chaudhry, Dave Crick and James M. Crick
This study investigates how a competitor orientation (knowledge of and acting on competitors' strengths and weaknesses) facilitates coopetition activities (collaboration with…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates how a competitor orientation (knowledge of and acting on competitors' strengths and weaknesses) facilitates coopetition activities (collaboration with competitors), within networks of competing micro-sized, independent, family restaurants, owned by entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Design/methodology/approach
An instrumental case study features data collected from interviews with 30 owners (as key informants) of micro-sized, independent, family-owned restaurants, in two urban clusters within the Midlands (UK). Specifically, the context involves restaurants offering South Asian cuisine and where the owner originated from the Indian sub-continent (Bangladesh, India or Pakistan). Secondary data were collected wherever possible. These two clusters (not named for ethics reasons) are highly populated by members of these respective ethnic communities; also, they contain a relatively large number of restaurants offering South Asian cuisine.
Findings
A competitor orientation facilitated strong coopetition-oriented partnerships comprised of extended family and intra-community members that helped enhance individual firms' performance, maintained family employment and sustained their cluster. It also helped owners develop subtle counter strategies where weak ties existed, such as via inter-community networks. For example, strategies attracted customers that were not loyal to a particular restaurant, or indeed, sub-ethnic cuisine (within Bangladesh, India or Pakistan, like the Punjab region). Subtle as opposed to outright counter strategies minimised retaliation, since restaurant owners wanted to avoid price wars, or spreading misinformation where the reputation of a cluster may suffer alongside the likely survival of individual businesses within that regional cluster.
Originality/value
Mixed evidence exists in earlier studies regarding the competitive rivalry in certain sectors where ethnic minority ownership is prominent; not least, restaurants located in regional clusters. However, this investigation considers the notion – what if some of these earlier studies are wrong? More specifically, does certain prior research under-represent the extent that rival entrepreneurs of an ethnic minority origin collaborate rather than compete for mutually beneficial purposes? New evidence emerges regarding ways in which a competitor orientation can influence the performance-enhancing nature of coopetition activities among business owners originating from both intra and inter-ethnic communities.
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This paper's purpose centres on advancing the current financialisation strategies within digital transformation (DT) through a rebalanced synthesis of both financialisation and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper's purpose centres on advancing the current financialisation strategies within digital transformation (DT) through a rebalanced synthesis of both financialisation and people/centric, non-financialisation strategies of the DT field. Based on empirical data from Bahrain's energy sector, a new framework on People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership is developed, capturing DT's human values deficit and proposing a new model on financialisation and non-financialisation strategies showing ‘how’ and ‘why’ DT is implemented in contemporary organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted a mixed methodology of narrative interviews, case studies and reviewed significant contributions from the DT, leadership and change management debates. A total of 26 operational and high-level leaders from Bahrain, 8 top energy companies and Braun and Clarke's 6-phase analysis were combined to form four empirical thematic bundles on ‘how’ and ‘why’ leaders adopted financialisation and non-financialisation strategies to resolve organisational sustainability issues in an Arabic context.
Findings
Four sets of findings (bundles 1–4) highlight participants' financial and structural understanding when implementing DT initiatives, the different leadership styles ranging from authoritarian to network leadership, the socio-economic, political and cultural ramifications of their practices and the urgency of staff reskilling for organisational resilience and strategic sustainability. Based on the eight energy cases and interviews, a new values-driven, People-centric Sustaining Network Leadership Model is developed to show a more effective and efficient use of financial and non-financial resources when organisations implement DT initiatives in efforts to resolve global energy sustainability problems.
Research limitations/implications
Leadership, change management, DT, energy and environmental sustainability is a huge area of scholarship. While new studies emerge and contribute to this growing body of knowledge, this investigation has focused on those that significantly highlight how to make effective use of financialisation and non-financialisation resources. Therefore, all the literature on the topic has not been included. Although this study has filled the non-financialisation gap in current DT studies, a further rebalancing of the financialisation versus non-financialisation debates will be needed for theoreticians, practitioners and policy makers to continue addressing emerging and more complex socio-economic, political and cultural issues within and beyond organisations. Limitations are the study's focus on the Bahrain energy sector and the limited sample of 26 leaders.
Practical implications
The study provides practitioners and policy makers with an approach for the successful implementation of DT initiatives in the oil and gas sector. For academics, this study provides empirically unique and interesting thematic bundles, insightful analyses into leadership, organisational change, digital transformation and network leadership theories to develop an innovative and creative People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership Approach/Model on the practical barriers, implications/impacts of various leadership styles and potential solutions via a socio-cultural values-based alternative to the current financialisation discourse of DT.
Originality/value
While there is a growing body of literature on DT, Leadership and Organisational Transformation and Change, there is a dearth of scholarship on the human-orientated strategies of DT implementation outside of western contexts. A contemporary and comprehensive, empirically evidenced analysis of the field has led to the development of this study's People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership model which frames, captures, synthesises and extends the dominant cost-minimisation rhetoric of DT discourse to include a shared set of leadership practices, behaviours, intentions, perceptions and values. This helped to reveal the previously missing ‘how’ and ‘why’ of DT’s operational and strategic implementation.
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This study aims to examine digital consumer culture and behavior in the community, namely, 180° Movement Digital Training Center (DTC), in Jakarta, Indonesia. It aims to describe…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine digital consumer culture and behavior in the community, namely, 180° Movement Digital Training Center (DTC), in Jakarta, Indonesia. It aims to describe the dynamics of digital consumer culture in contemporary society, particularly as experienced by the youth community in Jakarta in the context of socio-technology relations and incorporates it into the diagram of digital consumer culture network.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses a constructivist qualitative approach and socio-technical relation analysis through actor-network theory and digital consumer culture.
Findings
The study finds that the individual model of digital consumption is constructed through the process of problematization, interessement, enrollment and mobilization of individuals. It generates a culture in which consumers are constantly up to date with high-intensity information, but within increasingly shorter timeframes, while also considering principles of affordability, needs, desires and satisfaction. The network of digital consumer culture construction among informants is peculiar and unstable.
Research limitations/implications
The study of digital consumer culture within the 180° Movement DTC community highlights how consumer behaviors of its members are facilitated and interconnected within a digital cultural network. However, this research is constrained by the dialectical interplay between Christian principles and the emerging values of consumer culture, a result of the scarcity of theoretical resources and information. This study also provides a specific contribution as a foundation for mapping the volatile digital consumer culture for researchers.
Practical implications
Understanding the socio-technological relationships and consumption behavior of the youth community could help digital platforms tailor their services more effectively. It could also guide the 180° Movement DTC in developing programs that resonate with the youth, bridging the gap between the physical and virtual realms. Ultimately, this could lead to a more engaged and digitally literate society.
Social implications
This study contributes to a broader societal understanding of how digital technology is shaping consumer behavior and identity within youth communities, which can influence social dynamics and interactions. It provides insights into the potential social impacts of digital technology, such as changes in relationships, communication patterns and self-perception, informing societal discourse on digital culture.
Originality/value
In addition to presenting socio-technological analysis on Indonesian consumer culture using actor-network theory, some also show that studies on digital connectivity ambivalence that concern the relationship between humans as actors and non-humans as actors have become one of the popular sociology studies at present.
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Neuza C.M.Q.F. Ferreira and Anabela R.L. Dinis
This study generates an aggregated overview of the literature on national culture and entrepreneurship (NC&E). The aim is to map the NC&E field via a systematic literature review…
Abstract
Purpose
This study generates an aggregated overview of the literature on national culture and entrepreneurship (NC&E). The aim is to map the NC&E field via a systematic literature review of 130 articles published in refereed academic journals up to the end of 2022
Design/methodology/approach
Two different citation analysis methods are used: bibliographic coupling and co-citation
Findings
The results include the most influential studies, top-cited references and journals, and five major thematic clusters. The latter are (1) cultural models, frameworks and case studies; (2) social entrepreneurship, perceived barriers and entrepreneurial intentions; (3) institutions and sociocultural environments; (4) entrepreneurial orientation, cognition and networks; and (5) economic growth, entrepreneurial activity and firm performance
Originality/value
In contrast to previous NC&E literature reviews, this research employs a combination of bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. The findings offer a clearer understanding of the intellectual structure of this field and suggest new avenues for future investigations, including several relationship links with the resource-based view
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