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The purpose of this study is to explore the early stage of development of a cluster. The literature on early stage of cluster development shows that there are often random effects such as an entrepreneur and spin-off companies, and in this study, a coordinated approach for cluster development is described.

A single exploratory case study approach is followed. The aerospace cluster in the Spokane region, State of Washington, is described. Data from a variety of sources are triangulated to enhance the credibility of the case study findings.

It was found that although there are many types of collaborations occurring in the region, which involve policy and government organizations, the main driver of the early-stage cluster development is manufacturers-led coordinating mechanism. Individual manufacturers are too small to be successful in the aerospace industry, and they are collaborating to present a united “front” to out-of-the-region customers. Once customers place an order, then within this coordinating mechanism, the work is divided among different manufacturers.

The research has two main limitations. First, it is a single case study, and therefore, the results may not be generalizable. Second, the cluster is in an early stage of development, so it is not (yet) clear whether this manufacturers-led coordinated approach will have long-term success.

The studies offer potential for cluster development that go beyond relying on a single entrepreneur or on mostly government- or policy-driven initiatives. Instead, this is an approach that can be used by industry to lift the overall competitiveness of their region.

This cluster development approach offers potential for economic development of smaller regions which mainly consist of small- and medium-sized companies without endowment benefits or a large local customer base.

This study adds to the existing knowledge on clusters and cluster types. The identified cluster approach does not fit with the main types of clusters that have been identified in the literature. The companies involved are mainly small- to medium-sized companies, but by coordinating their capabilities, they are able to present core capabilities in a much more attractive manner to customers. This cluster development approach is not driven by or achieved through advantages in innovation, vertical or horizontal supply chain competition and advantages, creation of spin-off firms, or a regional demand base as customers are located outside the region. It deviates in terms of the types of companies involved and, mostly, in a sense that it acts as one unit to customers who are located outside the region.

The coatings industry, as well as the chemical industry of which it is a part, is being subjected to stress. There are numerous ways to react to stress. One way to react to stress is to prognosticate, and the coatings industry has not been without those who wish to forecast its future. To attempt to delve into the future is both interesting and important and, accordingly, in this report we shall examine some of these forecasts. But first let us review briefly the origin of the stress to which the coatings industry is being subjected.

In this chapter, we review and examine the differences and similarities between social, sustainable, and environmental entrepreneurship. We explore the concepts, key questions, empirical methodologies, and disciplinary roots that differentiate and relate these emergent interest areas. The result of this comparative analysis inevitably raises the question of whether these new literature streams are inclusive or separate from the traditional domain of entrepreneurship research. We find that these three areas share many similarities, yet are distinguishable from one another and from more traditional, commercial forms of entrepreneurship. However, we determine that although these three areas of entrepreneurial scholarship raise unique questions and highlight different types of phenomena, they are not their own fields of study, but rather promising contexts for studying key questions of the entrepreneurship field.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

We examine the roles of sample initial conditions and unobserved individual effects in consistent estimation of the dynamic binary response panel data model. Different specifications of the model are estimated using female welfare and labor force participation data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. These include alternative random effects (RE) models, in which the conditional distributions of both the unobserved heterogeneity and the initial conditions are specified, and fixed effects (FE) conditional logit models that make no assumptions on either distribution. There are several findings. First, the hypothesis that the sample initial conditions are exogenous is rejected by both samples. Misspecification of the initial conditions results in drastically overstated estimates of the state dependence and understated estimates of the short- and long-run effects of children on labor force participation. The FE conditional logit estimates are similar to the estimates from the RE model that is flexible with respect to both the initial conditions and the correlation between the unobserved heterogeneity and the covariates. For female labor force participation, there is evidence that fertility choices are correlated with both unobserved heterogeneity and pre-sample participation histories.

Entrepreneurship education has had a remarkable evolution over time and the number of entrepreneurship textbooks has multiplied given the increased interest in entrepreneurship programs in higher education. Yet, studies that review the coverage of textbooks focusing on entrepreneurship are scarce. This study provides an inventory of entrepreneurship textbooks and the topics they cover as well as specific emerging topics they do not cover by analyzing the content of 57 textbooks. Our results suggest that most textbooks provide significant coverage of such topics as the nature of entrepreneurship, business plans, financing, marketing, and cases. Among emerging concepts, social media has been relatively well covered with increasing coverage in more recent textbooks, while business canvas, as an example of alternatives to conventional business plans, is rarely covered. Most textbooks have provided little coverage of such topics as sales, family business, women and minorities, as well as ethics and sustainability. This study not only reveals areas that are covered by existing textbooks but also themes that future textbooks and research could cover to address the challenges of future entrepreneurship education.

The purpose of the article is to present MARC, a model for assessing – and improving – the health of organisations from a humanistic point of view.

The model has been developed in an organisational development clinical research tradition. The validity of the model rests on logical reasoning grounded in organisational and salutogenic research, and on it appearing useful to clients and members in organisations where it has been employed.

When using the MARC model to structure analyses and facilitate discussions in organisations that have sought aid, the model has helped reveal major sources of imbalance between its four aspects: meaning, authority, rationality and care. A major survey revealed no statistically significant differences between men and women. This indicates that the MARC concepts are general rather than gender‐specific. The results also contradicted the often stated notion that men emphasise “hard” aspects (A and R) while women emphasise “soft” ones (M and C).

The paper demonstrates that support for the importance of each of the four aspects – meaning, authority, rationality and care – as perspectives in analysing and understanding organisations can be found in the organisational research literature. The authors' contribution is to argue the case that they represent four important human needs that need to be attended to in balance in an organisation if cooperation between the individuals in the organisation is to be sustainable from a human‐centred perspective. MARC is designed to help visualise and focus this balance.

Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

Nurses who are more engaged in their work, and have the right job characteristics and positive organizational factors, are expected to perform better. The purpose of this study is to improve the performance in the healthcare sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), thus this study explored the job characteristics and organizational factors that affect work engagement and job performance of nurses.

Nurses (N = 2,369) working in the public healthcare sector in the UAE were asked to provide their perceptions on work engagement and its antecedents, their performance and how they perceive justice in their workplace.

Regardless of job demands, nurses’ job performance remained unaffected by demographic factors, which was a striking finding: nurses provide quality services and manage to accomplish their tasks, at any level of demand. Justice acted as a moderator of the relationship between job resources and work engagement, which was a new addition to the literature. Nurses with low overall perceptions of justice had stronger links between job resources and work engagement. Even if the level of justice was perceived as low, work engagement remained unaffected.

Work engagement is a critical issue, but has received little attention, with most focusing on its relationship with performance as the outcome variable. This paper has therefore enriched the literature and is significant in both country and sector.