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Globally, urban planners and decision makers are pursuing place-based initiatives to develop and enhance urban infrastructure to optimise city performance, competitiveness and sustainability credentials. New discourses associated with big data, Building Information Modelling, SMART cities, green and biophilic thinking inform research, policy and practice agendas to varying extents. However, these discourses remain relatively isolated as much city planning is still pursued within traditional sectoral silos hindering integration. This research explores new conceptual ground at the Smart – Natural City interface within a safe interdisciplinary opportunity space. Using the city of Birmingham UK as a case study, a methodology was developed championing co-design, integration and social learning to develop a conceptual framework to navigate the challenges and opportunities at the Smart-Natural city interface. An innovation workshop and supplementary interviews drew upon the insights and experiences of 25 experts leading to the identification of five key spaces for the conceptualisation and delivery at the Smart-Natural city interface. At the core is the space for connectivity; surrounded by spaces for visioning, place-making, citizen-led participatorylearning and monitoring.The framework provides a starting point for improved discussions, understandings and negotiations to cover all components of this particular interface. Our results show the importance of using all spaces within shared narratives; moving towards ‘silver-green’ and living infrastructure and developing data in response to identified priorities. Whilst the need for vision has dominated traditional urban planning discourses we have identified the need for improved connectivity as a prerequisite. The use of all 5 characteristics collectively takes forward the literature on socio-ecological-technological relationships and heralds significant potential to inform and improve city governance frameworks, including the benefits of a transferable deliberative and co-design method that generates ownership with a real stake in the outcomes.

Despite the gains that have been made by adopting contemporary theories of practice in entrepreneurship studies, the field still lacks a comprehensive practice theory of entrepreneurial learning. In this article, we develop a practice theory of entrepreneurial learning by elaborating on the relations between practicing, knowing and learning.

Using a video ethnography of a two-day “Startup Weekend for Refugees” event in Amsterdam, our aim is to further theorise the relational, material and embodied nature of entrepreneurial learning through analysing video fragments of naturally occurring practices.

Our findings demonstrate that entrepreneurial learning transpires through, and is emergent from, practices and their relations. On the one hand, practitioners learn to competently participate in various practices by sensing, observing and experimenting with the meaning of others' gestures and utterances. On the other, the learning of new opportunities for value creation emerges as practitioners connect various practices to one another through translation.

This article contributes by illustrating and explaining real-time instances of learning to develop a practice theory of entrepreneurial learning. This contributes to the literature by detailing the relations between learning, knowing and practising entrepreneurship, which leads to a novel alternative to existing individual- and organisational-level learning theories.

Learning as the way in which labor acquire new knowledge and skills has important strategic implications for the competitive advantage of an organization. The purpose of this paper is to present an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach to investigate the learning behavior of workers. The effect of interactions among different workers as well as the factors affecting the workers’ learning behavior is assessed using the proposed ABM approach.

For this purpose, the processes through which the competency value of worker is changed are understood and the workers’ learning behavior is modeled, taking account of various influencing factors such as knowledge flow, social ability to teach and forgetting factor.

The proposed model is implemented on a real steel structure project to evaluate its applicability and performance. The variation in the competency value of different workers involved in the project is simulated over time taking account of all the influencing factors using the proposed ABM approach.

In order to assess the effect of interactions among welders as well as the welders’ characteristics on their learning behavior, the competence value of different welders is evaluated.

This research presents an ABM approach to investigate the workers’ learning behavior. To evaluate the performance of the proposed ABM approach, it was implemented on a real steel structure project. The learning behavior of different welders (agents) was simulated taking account of their interactions as well as the factors affecting the welders’ learning behavior. The project involved the welding of a 240-ton steel structure. The initial project duration was estimated as 100 days. In this project, it has been planned to execute the welding process using three different welders namely welder A, B and C.

This paper aims to investigate whether loan officers' risk taking in credit decisions are associated with their personal financial risk preference and personality traits or solely with bank-contextual and loan-relevant factors.

An online survey administered in six large Swedish banks to 163 loan officers responsible for assessing credit risk and approval of loan applications. The loan officers rated their likelihood of approving fictitious loan applications from business companies.

The loan officers' credit risk taking is associated with bank-contextual factors, directly with perceived organizational credit risk norms and indirectly with self-confidence in assessing credit risks through attitude to credit risk taking. A direct association is also found with personal financial risk preference but not with personality traits.

Increased awareness of that loan officers' personal financial risk preference is associated with their credit risk taking in loan decisions but that the banks' risk policy has a stronger association. Banks' managements and boards should therefore assure that their credit risk policy is implemented, followed and being aligned with their performance incentives.

Increased awareness of that loan officers' credit risk taking is associated with personal financial risk preference but more strongly with the banks' risk policy that motivate banks' managements and boards to assure that their credit risk policy is implemented, followed and being aligned with their performance incentives.

The first study which directly compare the associations of loan officers' risk taking in credit approvals with personal risk preference and personality traits versus bank-contextual factors and loan-relevant information.

Health services continue to face economic and capacity challenges. Quality improvement (QI) methods that can improve clinical care processes are therefore needed. However, the successful use of current QI methods within hospital settings remains a challenge. There is considerable scope for improvement of elective clinical pathways, such as hip and knee replacement, and so the use and study of QI methods in such settings is warranted.

A model to manage variability was adapted for use as a QI method and deployed to improve a hip and knee replacement surgical pathway. A prospective observational study, with a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design (quantitative emphasised) that consisted of two distinct phases, was used to assess its effectiveness.

Following the use of the novel QI method and the subsequent changes to care processes, the length of hospital stay was reduced by 18%. However, the interventions to improve care process highlighted by the QI method were not fully implemented. The qualitative data revealed that staff thought the new QI method (the model to manage variability) was simple, effective, offered advantages over other QI methods and had highlighted the correct changes to make. However, they felt that contextual factors around leadership, staffing and organisational issues had prevented changes being implemented and a greater improvement being made.

The quality of QI reporting in surgery has previously been highlighted as poor and lacking in prospective and comprehensively reported mixed-methods evaluations. This study therefore not only describes and presents the results of using a novel QI method but also provides new insights in regard to important contextual factors that may influence the success of QI methods and efforts.

This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and knowledge management (KM) on firm performance (PERF), as well as the mediating role of KM in the EO–PERF (EO-PERF relationship). In particular, this study aims to explain the impact of KM on the relationship between the EO dimensions and PERF; dimensions are risk-taking (RT), innovativeness (IN) and proactiveness (PR).

This study uses structural equation modelling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methodologies to explore target relationships. The sample consists of 150 small furniture manufacturers operating in Poland (out of 1,480 in the population).

The study findings show that KM partially mediates the IN–PERF relationship. Furthermore, fsQCA reveals that KM accompanied by IN is a core condition that leads to PERF. Moreover, the absence of KM (accompanied by the absence of RT and IN) leads to the absence of PERF. In addition, the results show that all the variables examined (RT, IN, PR and KM) positively impact PERF.

This study explores the role of KM in the context of EO and its impact on PERF in the low-tech industry. The study uses simultaneously two methodologies that represent different approaches in the search for the expected relationships. The findings reveal that KM mediates the EO-PERF relationship.

Focused feedback, such as mentoring and coaching, is a crucial ingredient for generating the intellectual capital needed for successful venture creation and has become a structural resource offered to entrepreneurs in business incubator/accelerator programs. Yet so far, literature has remained silent on the way that entrepreneurs differ in their engagement with focused feedback in such programs. This study poses the question of how focused feedback engagement shapes cognitive development during value creation (i.e. business opportunity development), aimed at the construction of a taxonomy of such feedback engagement.

Focusing on cognitive learning outcomes, we carried out a qualitative analysis using NVivo to perform content analysis on the logbooks of 70 entrepreneurs engaged in business opportunity development in a highly regarded accelerator program.

Results show that engagement with focused feedback and its effects relate to the state of tangibility of the entrepreneur’s value offer and to the amount of prior entrepreneurial experience. We also develop a promising taxonomy to classify entrepreneurs on their learning needs and outcomes (e.g. procedural versus declarative knowledge).

This study brings together types of human learning (types of knowledge acquired) with types of focused feedback. This connection has been speculated to exist in entrepreneurial settings; this study provides strong initial evidence that argues for more explicit consideration in practice. Adding the intellectual capital perspective further enabled this study to better address implications for practice as well as motivate powerful new directions for research.

The coach−athlete relationship mediates the relationship between sports participation and student-athlete character, health and well-being outcomes. High school athletic administrators (AAs) can provide critical leadership, mentorship and direction for coaches to optimize student-athlete performance and human development. Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an evidence-based approach to developing adult and student competencies for holistic development across the lifespan that has been primarily performed and researched in the classroom. The purpose of this research is to capture the lived experiences of AAs applying a novel SEL-based curriculum (InSideOut Initiative, ISOI) with coaches and student-athletes in high school sports.

Interviews of 10 AAs captured their lived experiences of applying SEL-based leadership and coaching and their perception of its impact on coaches and student-athletes in high school athletics.

AAs described leadership and coaching that are characterized by (1) safety, support and mentorship; (2) skill and support-based behavior modeling; (3) trusting, loving and supportive relationships; (4) self-reflection of values/beliefs and behaviors that impact self, student-athlete and culture; (5) the influence of emotions on the aforementioned; (6) the ability to have a long-term, sustainable impact on student-athletes and (7) alignment with their immediate environmental context.

The data captured in this study suggest that ISOI-trained AAs practice SEL-competent leadership and coaching. Evaluation of the novel application of SEL-based interventions in athletics will be useful to understanding their effects on participant social and emotional competencies and outcomes traditionally associated with classroom-based SEL applications.

Athletic administrator interviews describe an approach to high school sports that requires a reconceptualization of the purpose of athletics. When the high school sport operates as a curriculum, integrated opportunity for its student-athletes and athletic administrator and coach leadership aligns with this overarching philosophy, there may be increased potential for positive youth development.

The results of this research are valuable in demonstrating preliminary evidence of how SEL-based leadership and coaching is applied and impacts adult and student-athletes in a unique sport context.