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Shane and Venkataraman (2000) and Venkataraman (1997) suggest that the field of entrepreneurship seeks to understand how opportunities are discovered, created, and exploited, by whom, and with what consequences (italic added). Surprisingly and despite the fact that the person – the entrepreneur – is central to the creation of new ventures, entrepreneurship scholars are reluctant to explicitly include individual differences in formal models of new venture formation. For example, notwithstanding the important role that entrepreneurs play in forging new wealth and creating new jobs, research to identify cognitive processes, attitudes, behaviors, traits, or other characteristics that distinguish entrepreneurs from others who opt to work as employees remains somewhat marginal. Indeed, only very few studies on individual differences have been published in leading management journals. One possible explanation for this reluctance is that in the past researchers might have classified most individual differences as traits research and thus criticism spilled over to include all individual difference research, regardless of whether the focus was trait, cognitions, emotions, attitudes, behaviors, or other characteristics.

From one angle, abortion law appears to confirm the regime politics account of the Supreme Court; after all, the Reagan/Bush coalition succeeded in significantly curtailing the constitutional protection of abortion rights. From another angle, however, it is puzzling that the Reagan/Bush Court repeatedly refused to overturn Roe v. Wade. We argue that time and again electoral considerations led Republican elites to back away from a forceful assertion of their agenda for constitutional change. As a result, the justices generally acted within the range of possibilities acceptable to the governing regime but still typically had multiple doctrinal options from which to choose.

Overconfidence in one’s entrepreneurial abilities is often assumed to motivate the behaviors of founders of high growth ventures. However, when founders encounter significant obstacles in the firm growth process, some begin to doubt their efficacy of their abilities to manage these growth processes successfully. In these circumstances, prior research suggests that such self-doubt creates significant cognitive constraints on an entrepreneur’s growth ambitions. Similar to other types of resource constraints, cognitive constraints are thought to impact firm performance outcomes negatively. Despite these claims, in this study, phenomenological analysis of the experiences of a group of entrepreneurs creating and managing high-growth ventures based largely in Silicon Valley suggests that a number of these entrepreneurs experience significant levels of self-doubt but still persist in growing their ventures. Yet current entrepreneurship theory provides limited guidance regarding how entrepreneurs overcome these self-doubts and persist in creating a new venture. To address these theoretical limitations, in this chapter, we examine the cognitive process through which entrepreneurs wrestle with self-doubt in order to overcome self-imposed, cognitive constraints on firm growth. Based on this analysis, we develop a process model using a unique sample of interviews with 27 high-tech, high-growth entrepreneurs who have received venture capital funding. This model suggests entrepreneurs overcome self-doubt by managing the emotional impact derived from the discrepancy between their ideal and actual selves. Furthermore, entrepreneurs engage in an active process of transforming negative mental states by leveraging their intentionality, engaging in forethought, taking consistent action, and relying on the support of others. Overall, we find that entrepreneurs display a high level of entrepreneurial agency when attempting to transform negative mental states in order to persist with their ventures. Implications of these findings for cognitive theories of entrepreneurial action are discussed.

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.

This chapter explores the sustainability of the workforce in the Chilean logging sector, the factors that affect the sustainability of this critical element for the Chilean forestry sector and explores the reasons for each factor.

To achieve the aim of this research, an ergonomics approach was used, specifically an ergonomics questionnaire, to identify elements in the work system that affect forestry workers.

The initial results show that elements in the Chilean forestry sector that affect the sustainability of the workforce, both in terms of occupational health (OH) problems and lack of interest in working in this sector, include organizational factors, physical elements of the environment, economic issues, and physical aspects of the work. The study also showed workers in this sector have a low perception of the benefits of working in the sector, because they recognize the sector has a high degree of risk in terms of safety and health aspects.

It is expected that the result of this research will help to refocus policies towards solving OH problems and, at the same time, potentially improve the market attractions of working in this sector.

Cognition has always been central to the popular way of thinking about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs imagine a different future. They envision or discover new products or services. They perceive or recognize opportunities. They assess risk, and figure out how to profit from it. They identify possible new combinations of resources. Common to all of these is the individual’s use of their perceptual and reasoning skills, what we call cognition, a term borrowed from the psychologists’ lexicon.

With respect to university technology transfer, the purpose of this paper is to examine the literature focused on the relationship between university research faculty and technology transfer office staff. We attempt to provide greater understanding of how research faculty’s personal values and research universities’ organization values may differ and why. Faculty researchers and tech transfer office (TTO) staff are perceived to be virtuous agents. When both are meeting each other’s needs, a “love” relationship exists. However, when these needs are not met, a “hate” relationship exists that is replete with doubt and uncertainty. This doubt and uncertainty creates tension and subsequent conflicts. There are many accounts where faculty researchers have not followed university policies and expectations, often violating policy and ethical standards. Likewise, faculty report numerous examples of how TTO staff members’ negligence in servicing their attempts to be good institutional citizens have failed them. This paper explores this love/hate relationship and reveals numerous conflicts that call into question ethical concerns. It also provides a set of recommendations for reducing and potentially alleviating these concerns. Literature review. Results from a thorough review of the literature on the relationship between faculty and university TTOs reveals that perceived job insecurity is the primary reason that some research faculty members as well as some TTO staff, unethically violate their university policy to disclose invention disclosures and select to not provide full services, respectively. One way to alleviate the conflict between faculty’s personal values regarding their inventions and university’s organizational values is to enact measures that build trust and reduce insecurity among faculty members and TTO staff. In this paper, we not only examine this faculty/TTO staff ethical conflicts, but we offer a set of recommendations that we believe will reduce the likelihood of unethical behavior while encouraging greater institutional commitment and trust.