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Employee engagement literature pertaining to professional salespeople has revealed several antecedents and consequences that lead to greater performance and turnover reduction. However, engagement literature in the field of human resource development (HRD) does not account for Generation Z (Gen Z), the latest in the workforce who has been noted to be vastly different from previous generations. This study aims to explore how to engage Gen Z in the context of professional selling by identifying the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement based on individual characteristics and organizational needs of this group.

A systematic literature review was conducted. In total, 21 papers relevant to employee engagement, professional selling and Gen Z were critically analyzed.

Findings indicate that Gen Z’s organizational need for mentoring and their individual characteristic of wanting job control and ownership are vital antecedents that could increase employee engagement. In addition, competitive rewards are important consequences that could improve individual sales performance.

HRD practitioners and organizational leaders must understand the unique characteristics of Gen Z to effectively engage them in the workplace. For sales organizations, there is a critical need to offer mentoring opportunities and competitive rewards from the start of Gen Z salespeople’s employment.

This research expands current engagement literature by addressing an emerging, under-explored issue – how to engage the newest workforce, Gen Z, in the context of professional selling.

The purpose of this study is to examine the disruption-adaptation associated with knowledge management (KM) of entrepreneurial multitasking of top strategy and tactics executive (TSTE) succession in positions responsible for both S and T. This provides insight into KM and firm performance during turbulent periods.

The study examines investor’s opinions of human capital in the context of managerial succession. The data was based on 900 publicly available appointment announcements between 2006–2014, allowing for the examination of 459 observations of succession in 51 industries.

The findings indicate that the relationship between KM of entrepreneurial multitasking and firm performance was more positive for high innovation firms than for low innovation firms. As well, the relationship between investors’ opinions of a top executive manager’s human capital and firm performance is more positive for small firms than for large firms and more positive for high innovation firms than for low innovation firms.

The study contributes to the literature by systematically examining the announced appointment of executives in one context where KM of entrepreneurial multitasking is prevalent – across marketing strategy and sales tactics (hereafter, S and T) responsibilities – for multiple firms listed at major US stock exchanges across a wide range of industries, using lagged performance data to discern performance outcomes. It highlights important issues related to organizational structure and human capital for firm performance and KM in dynamic environments. Further research could examine the impact on firm performance of a change in structure – from a joint sales and tactics position to a sales or tactics position and vice versa. By studying the impact of change to and from an intertwined position, future scholars can determine the level of risk stemming from coordination uncertainty changes with time.

Of practical relevance, the study shows that vesting dual responsibility for S and T in one executive during managerial succession may not be as universally valuable or adaptive as previously thought. One practical extension of this research may also be that larger firms that are more likely to have clearly defined silos may find that such vesting of multitasking responsibility not as valuable. High innovation and small firms may gain from new executives’ multitasking responsibility for S and T. Thus, firms should think twice before vesting S and T responsibilities with one incoming executive during the leadership change.

Responsibility for both S and T compounds ambiguous accountability, frequently leaving the locus of customer-related problems unclear, and therefore unsolved.

Extant research has overlooked the relationship between the top management team’s (TMT) abilities to multitask firm performance over time across contexts of external and internal change, operationalized as firm innovation and firm size. Nor have studies explored the firm performance implications of external stakeholders’ opinions of such human capital across these contexts. A novel measure of executive-specific human capital – abnormal returns generated the appointment announcement, is introduced. Understanding the capability of a top executive to simultaneously multitask both S and T responsibilities is a critical component of KM; also relevant are investors’ opinions of their human capital, a particular oversight given the challenge of the “great transformational leader” with servant leadership theory (Carayannis et al., 2017; Gregory Stone et al., 2004).

The link between SME performance, growth and development is well established; however, the characteristics of SMEs that allow firms to be successful in the long run in an underdeveloped country context, i.e. Pakistan, are still unclear. This paper aims to bridge this gap by identifying the SMEs’ characteristics that set them apart from their rivals and become successful.

This study uses Storey’s development framework to identify the SMEs’ characteristics. Data is gathered using the case study method from SMEs with a metropolitan context in Pakistan. A narrative methodological framework was used during the data gathering and analysing stages.

Findings of this study indicate that the prosperity of SMEs in Pakistan is dependent on a combination of characteristics, including entrepreneurial characteristics of owner–managers, knowledge of business operating models, social networks and relationship building and innovation in business style. Additionally, other factors such as governance structure, strategic planning of market diversification and export characteristics also influence the prosperity of an SME. These findings may have several important implications for key stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, SMEs and policymakers in the government.

This research provides evidence about factors that can help an SME to become successful in uncertain situations surrounding a business environment. Theoretically, the contribution of this research is that it demonstrates that entrepreneurial characteristics and the effective leadership style of owner–managers can help SMEs achieve prosperity in external unforeseeable situations.

Considerable evidence suggests that although they overlap, entrepreneurial and employee stressors have different causal antecedents and outcomes. However, limited empirical data explain how entrepreneurial traits, work and life drive entrepreneurial stressors and create entrepreneurial strain (commonly called entrepreneurial stress). Drawing on the challenge-hindrance framework (CHF), this paper hypothesises the causal effect of hindrance stressors on entrepreneurial strain. Furthermore, the study posits that entrepreneurial stressors and the resultant strain affect entrepreneurial behaviour.

The study adopts an SEM-based machine-learning approach. Cross-lagged path models using SEM are used to analyse the data and train the machine-learning algorithm for cross-validation and generalisation. The sample consists of 415 entrepreneurs from three countries: India, Oman and United Arab Emirates. The entrepreneurs completed two self-report surveys over 12 months.

The results show that hindrances to personal and professional goal achievement, demand-capability gap and contradictions between aspiration and reality, primarily due to unique resource constraints, characterise entrepreneurial stressors leading to entrepreneurial strain. The study further asserts that entrepreneurial strain is a significant predictor of entrepreneurial behaviour, significantly affecting innovativeness behaviour. Finally, the finding suggests that psychological capital moderates the adverse impact of stressors on entrepreneurial strain over time.

This study contributes to the CHF by demonstrating the value of hindrance stressors in studying entrepreneurial strain and providing new insights into entrepreneurial coping. It argues that entrepreneurs cope effectively against hindrance stressors by utilising psychological capital. Furthermore, the study provides more evidence about the causal, reversed and reciprocal relationships between stressors and entrepreneurial strain through a cross-lagged analysis. This study is one of the first to evaluate the impact of entrepreneurial strain on entrepreneurial behaviour. Using a machine-learning approach is a new possibility for using machine learning for SEM and entrepreneurial strain.

The last three decades have witnessed a fundamental shift in the structure of many western economies, which have seen a decline in the number of large enterprises and a marked increase in the number of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Cooper, 1998). In1999 there were 3.7 million enterprises in the UK, of which 24,000 were medium sized (50–249 employees) and there were only 7,000 large firms (250 or more); SMEs accounted for 38% of national turnover (Hawkins, 2001). There is growing recognition that the future of work for many will lie in SMEs, as small firms play an increasingly important role in economic development and growth, and opportunities for life-long careers in large firms decline (Cooper, 1997). The rate of technological and economic change will also lead to individuals as well as employers having a greater variety of careers; thus, the concept of the portfolio career is likely to become much more common (Henderson & Robertson, 2000). Such trends imply that the world of work, which today's graduates are entering, is very different from that which their counterparts stepped into a decade ago. Today's resource-constrained small firm represents a fast changing, dynamic environment in need of adaptable, flexible and multitasking employees, who are able to contribute and add value to the organisation from a very early stage. The challenge for education is to develop future employees who not only have the right skills but also the ability to learn from experience and adapt to a dynamic and rapidly changing environment.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the transformation from a second-generation university to an entrepreneurial university. The work is practical and innovative, which provides the foundation for further work in this field.

Based on a systematic review of relevant studies on entrepreneurial universities, this paper proposed an evaluation framework with clear logic and practicability. This paper also provided a basis for further research. The restrictions of each factor were defined by the readiness framework, and the consequences of entrepreneurial activities on local economic development were analyzed by using the proposed model. The proposed conceptual framework aided policymakers in completing a much-needed assessment of the impact of organizational policies, practices and structures on the entrepreneurial activities and transformation from second-generation universities to third-generation organizations.

The proposed readiness framework led to the development of organizational interventions that facilitated successful entrepreneurial activities. The quantitative indicators of different university types were demonstrated in this study. The quantitative validation of the integrated framework suggested that university heads and policymakers can encourage and develop academic entrepreneurship by using a comprehensive systems approach for the identification, protection and commercialization of university’s intellectual property.

This paper provides a framework for policymakers or decision makers to better understand whether a local university is ready for entrepreneurship. This framework also provides a direction for future quantitative research.

Utilizing boundary theory as a guiding framework, this study aims to explore facets of work–life balance (WLB) that women entrepreneurs experience in the context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It sheds light on strategies women entrepreneurs use to manage and shape boundaries between their personal and professional lives.

In this qualitative study, we conducted in-depth interviews with 50 women entrepreneurs to gain a deeper understanding of their WLB challenges.

Integration is a boundary management approach used by most women in our sample, facilitated by the thin work–life boundary inferable from their entrepreneurial careers. Integration has all the hallmarks of being imposed on women entrepreneurs because of family role challenges and societal expectations, on top of their entrepreneurial obligations. Women are reactors; they shoulder societal, family and entrepreneurial roles while having little control over events and circumstances.

Boundary theory suggests two roles must be interconnected to coexist successfully. Women entrepreneurs can benefit from the synergy between their personal and professional lives. As their roles tend to be more complex, it is essential to consider the consolidation of both spheres as an ongoing process to maximize their benefits.

Today’s independent forms of working are contingent on flexible work arrangements, work intensification and wireless communication. Understanding how women entrepreneurs find balance amid boundarylessness adds to our limited knowledge of people in comparable environments.

The main objective of this paper is to identify the factors associated with a successful transition through the entrepreneurial ladder for both men and women in a sample of nine Latin American countries.

The authors classify individuals according to five categories of increasing entrepreneurial engagement and estimate separate generalized ordered logit models to account for possible gender differences. Compared to previous literature, this is a more efficient methodology that allows us to identify the factors that have a significant and persistent relationship across stages and those that are only significant to specific engagement levels.

The authors find that factors such as parent business ownership, access to loans and autonomy increase the probability of progressing in the entrepreneurial ladder for both men and women and through all the stages. The authors also find that span of activity and the proxy for income increase the likelihood of moving to the next stages only for men, while higher education and autonomy do so only for women.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify the factors promoting progress through the different stages of the entrepreneurial ladder in Latin America. Separate regressions for women and men provide insight into the differential role of each variable by gender. Results from this study suggest that the gender dimension, currently absent in most policies, should be incorporated or strengthened in the design of entrepreneurship promotion programs in Latin America.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

By analyzing variables from the fields of business and neuropsychology, this document examines alternative combinations of behavioral economics and neuropsychological characteristics that would explain a successful entrepreneurial profile.

The research is based on information gathered through a survey of 1,080 entrepreneurs. The findings offer interesting perspectives for academics, professionals and government institutions, which illustrate various neuropsychological characteristics that a person must have to be a successful entrepreneur. The method consists of a novel perspective that integrates qualitative comparative analysis (QCAs), a method based on Boolean algebra that offers a study from a configurational perspective.

From the mixture of configurations, the paper explores following possible traits of an entrepreneurial mindset: cognitive flexibility, risk-taking, decision-making and teamwork.

This paper contributes to the literature on emerging attempts and approaches to understand the entrepreneurial mindset and the possible skillset that underpins successful entrepreneurship.

Mediante el análisis de variables de los campos de los negocios y la neuropsicología, este documento examina combinaciones alternativas de la economía del comportamiento y las características neuropsicológicas que llevan a los emprendedores en perfiles exitosos.

La investigación se basa en información recopilada a través de una encuesta a 1.080 emprendedores. Los hallazgos ofrecen perspectivas interesantes para académicos, profesionales e instituciones gubernamentales, que ilustran diversas características neuropsicológicas que una persona debe tener para ser un emprendedor exitoso. El método consiste en una perspectiva novedosa que integra el análisis comparativo cualitativo (QCA), un método basado en el álgebra de Booleana que ofrece un estudio desde una perspectiva configuracional.

A partir de la mezcla de configuraciones, el artículo explora los siguientes rasgos posibles de una mentalidad emprendedora: flexibilidad cognitiva, toma de riesgos, toma de decisiones y trabajo en equipo.

este documento contribuye a la literatura sobre intentos y enfoques emergentes para comprender la mentalidad emprendedora y el posible conjunto de habilidades que sustenta el emprendimiento exitoso.