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Crafts embody the history and heritage of their country of origin and can play an essential role in the country's socioeconomic development by providing significant job opportunities for the rural population. This article investigates the significant challenges that artisan entrepreneurs face when creating, communicating and selling handcrafted goods to potential customers in emerging economies. This study attempted to rate the impediments based on their severity using the voices of artisan entrepreneurs.

A mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative data analysis was followed to identify the leading causes of the artisans' pain points. In the first phase, empirical observations were gathered through focus group discussions with artisan entrepreneurs, and the identified factors were quantitatively ranked using the analytic hierarchy process in the second phase.

The mixed-method research assisted in identifying the primary constraints affecting the efficient and effective operation of the artisan-driven small handicraft business. This study identified six factors that were ranked based on the voices of artisan entrepreneurs during the survey, as barriers to effective handicraft marketing.

Few studies on the handcraft industry have sought to explore the issues faced by artisan businesses holistically. The voices of artisan entrepreneurs were gathered for this study to identify and rate the present obstacles influencing the functioning of small handicraft firms in emerging nations. Handicraft marketing will become more effective and efficient if these barriers are removed.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on development of enterprising rural women as custodians of seed, food and traditional knowledge for climate change resilience in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 768 rural women respondents were sampled across the rural areas of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicated that the meagre interventions of MOCs’ CSR targeted at the empowerment of rural women as custodians of seed, food and traditional knowledge for climate change resilience recorded significant success in improving the role of women in agricultural production, especially in women’s involvement across value chains.

This suggests that any increase in the MOCs’ CSR targeted at increasing rural women’s access to seed preservation facilities, food processing facilities and extension systems that impact a strong body of knowledge and expertise that can be used in climate change mitigation, disaster reduction and adaptation strategies will enhance women’s responsibilities in households and communities as stewards of natural and household resources and will position them well to contribute to livelihood strategies adapted to changing environmental realities.

This implies that MOCs’ GMoUs’ policies and practices should enhance women’s participation, value and recognize women’s knowledge and enable women as well as men farmers to participate in the decision-making process in agriculture, food production and land governance, as women need to be acknowledged and supported as the primary producers of food in the region, able to both cultivate healthy food and climate change resilience through small-scale agro-ecological farming system.

This research contributes to gender debate in agriculture from a CSR perspective in developing countries and explains the rational for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that business has an obligation to help solve problems of public concern.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the key risks and challenges of Short-Term Study Abroad (STSA), so higher education practitioners and global mobility providers can design effective and safe STSA programmes. The Institute of International Education defines STSA as programmes of up to eight weeks in length, with this standard now widely accepted by both practitioners and scholars (Iskhakova and Bradly, 2022).

This study draws from a comprehensive review of STSA risks literature, cases of published “incidents”, “safety practices”, “risk lists” and examples by global mobility professionals. The paper also draws upon the extensive practical experiences that the authors have acquired through their management of risks while delivering numerous STSA international business programmes for undergraduate students across seven different global destinations (India, USA, UAE, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia and Vietnam).

Through the analysis, the authors identify 42 types of risks and challenges that may be encountered in the delivery of STSA programmes that we group into 12 categories.

The results serve as an effective guide for planning, designing and delivering effective and safe STSA programmes for global mobility practitioners worldwide. The authors also provide an agenda and specific directions for future research on the topic to global mobility scholars.

For those designing STSA programmes, an in-depth understanding of the nature and range of risks during study tours is needed, including how to ensure in-country experiences are safe for all participants while achieving the intended learning outcomes.

Today, as we hurtle towards imminent planetary destruction in the age of the Anthropocene, we believe it may be instructive to try and understand if the ancient science of spirituality can prove useful in humankind's ability to change course, even at this late hour. We argue that such a paradigm shift is critically essential for human survival and that without the inner transformation proposed by this science, it may prove impossible to build a society based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. This chapter draws from foundational texts and authoritative sources across multiple religious traditions, based upon which it outlines a brief sketch of the ancient science of spirituality. We begin with an account of the differentia specifica of this science, where we delve into what kind of science this is. Since it is centrally concerned with inner transformation, we briefly outline the theory of change embedded in this science and the kind of rejuvenation it enables, which makes it possible for us to clearly perceive the key elements and the structure of reality. We then spell out the impact this has on the nature of human action, continually teasing out implications for policy and practice in our time. We provide a few concrete illustrations of the same. Inter alia, we also show how many of these insights can be found even within modern scientific and philosophical traditions, thereby indicating possibilities of convergence and synthesis between ancient and modern science, following thereby the guidance of genuine spirituality.

This study aims to examine the potential adaptability and resilience of rural micro-businesses within a business environment affected by successive crises, specifically drawing conclusions on crisis management, while simultaneously highlighting enterprises’ capabilities in managing the current energy crisis, basis the experiences and best practices that they themselves have gained previously.

Convenience sampling was applied, effectively identifying 18 micro-entrepreneurs in rural Greece. Subsequently, qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured in-depth interviews.

Rural micro-businesses have shown adaptability and resilience to both economic and health crises through financial support received and interventions implemented. However, different crises’ types carry different business risks. The energy crisis has led to business operation’s energy costs and raw material prices multiplying exponentially. Additionally, they received limited financial support causing them to respond to the energy crisis though concrete defensive strategies and innovative interventions.

Future research should examine local bodies and trade unions’ perception on the energy crisis’ impact towards rural entrepreneurship.

The findings are useful to Greek and European policy-makers and rural micro-entrepreneurs as the experience of dealing with several previous crises can be a useful tool when dealing with current and future crises.

This paper adds to international literature on rural micro-businesses resilience, operating in crisis mode. Additionally, it constitutes novel research exclusively focused on the new challenges faced by rural micro-businesses during the recent energy crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which entrepreneurial resourcefulness and competencies theories and practice can be applied in small youth entrepreneurship in Ghana as well as develop an entrepreneurial resourcefulness model for youth entrepreneurs that incorporates their competencies.

A qualitative exploratory approach using semi-structured in-depth interviews amongst 32 youth entrepreneurs in Accra, Ghana was used.

Youth entrepreneurial resourcefulness embraces some relevant concepts of traditional entrepreneurial resourcefulness and competencies. It also emerged that there were other competencies including discipline, understanding business numbers and being empathic which are competencies associated with youth entrepreneurial resourcefulness.

This paper was limited to a small sample of youth entrepreneurs in Ghana; thus, the generalisation of findings should be done with care.

A “3Ps” model for entrepreneurial resourcefulness in youth micro-entrepreneurship is proposed, which encompasses the attributes of personal, people and political competencies. This paper is one of the few attempts to study and explain the type of competencies and resources embedded in youth entrepreneurial resourcefulness.

With technological innovation elements and the competitive market environment becoming increasingly complex, numerous firms utilize network embeddedness to achieve and sustain innovation. However, empirical research has not conclusively established which form of network embeddedness more effectively facilitates corporate innovation. Drawing on the heterogeneous network resources perspective, this study explores the impact of market network embeddedness, technology network embeddedness and their synergy on the green innovation performance of manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, it investigates the moderating role of resource orchestration capability in these relationships.

Through an online questionnaire survey of Chinese manufacturing SMEs, 293 sample data were collected, and the hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis.

The results indicate that market and technology network embeddedness significantly enhance green innovation performance, with the former exerting a more significant impact. Furthermore, the synergy between market and technology network embeddedness positively influences green innovation performance. Additionally, resource orchestration capability strengthens the positive effects of both market and technology network embeddedness on green innovation performance, while the moderating effect of resource orchestration capability on the relationship between the synergy of the two and green innovation performance was insignificant.

The study faced many limitations, such as collecting primary data, which relied on a questionnaire only, using cross-sectional data and examining only manufacturing SMEs.

Based on the heterogeneous network resources perspective and integrating social network theory and resource orchestration theory, this study explores the impact of network embeddedness on the green innovation performance of manufacturing SMEs, which sheds new light on the network embeddedness research framework and also enriches the antecedents of green innovation. In addition, this study provides implications on how manufacturing SMEs effectively utilize network embeddedness and resource orchestration capability to enhance green innovation performance.

Immigrant entrepreneurship, particularly immigrant women entrepreneurship, has recently gained socioeconomic attention. However, this issue does not seem to have found proper recognition yet within academic management studies. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop a rigorous and comprehensive historical overview of the field, highlighting the key research issues that scholars are following to date and the most intriguing research directions worthy of further development.

To reach its goal, the paper develops a systematic literature review based on the rigorous criteria of 83 papers focused on immigrant women entrepreneurs.

Findings from this study highlight that some relevant arguments related to immigrant women entrepreneurs should deserve more in-depth investigation. As an example, a clear understanding of those factors positively affecting immigrant women firms’ performance is currently missing and it may help to gain knowledge that is able to effectively support such firms. Moreover, there is a strong need to go beyond the tolerance and proclamations toward the relevance of immigrant women entrepreneurs to really understand and manage the differences and ethnic resources that immigrants have and, therefore, overcome their marginalization.

This research enhances a clear understanding of issues related to immigrant women entrepreneurship. The advancement, in terms of knowledge, of such a pivotal topic for today’s economies helps both scholars and policymakers in better targeting education plans as well as in planning ad hoc support and targeted policies, management, entrepreneurship, gender, women entrepreneurs and immigrant entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is one of the pillars of economic development and helps to green the economy. This study investigates the factors that affect green entrepreneurship (GE) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Saudi Arabia.

Using quantitative modes, this study's findings are based on 334 valid cases from Saudi Arabian SME employees.

Using path analysis, this study’s findings reveal that green entrepreneurial skills (GES), green opportunities (GOs), entrepreneurial motivation (EM), green incentives (GIs), availability of capital (AoC) and green entrepreneurial self-efficacy (GESE) have positive and significant effects on GE. Moreover, GESE mediates GE's relationships with GES, GOs, EM, GIs and AoC.

This study's findings support the development of green business practices in terms of green business planning, training and skills. The research provides opportunities for green businesses. Policymakers and SME authorities would benefit from this study's findings in producing green goods and services.

This study empirically confirms the role of various factors such as GESE and GE among Saudi Arabian SMEs.