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To provide insights into the role of formal and informal accounts in preventing the liquidation of a professional football club and in post-crisis rebuilding.

This case study, framed as a conflict arena, covers an eight-year period of a high-profile struggle over the future of a professional football club. It uses a mixed methods design, including direct engagement with key actors involved in administration proceedings and transformation to a hybrid supporter-owned organisation.

Our findings suggest that within the arena:• formal accounting and governance were of limited use in managing the complex network of relationships and preventing the abuse of power or existential crises. • informal accounting helped mobilise critical resources and maintain supporters’ emotional investment during periods of conflict. • informal accounts enabled both resistance and coalition-building in response to perceived abuse of power. • informal accounts were used by the Club as part of its legitimation activities.

This study provides theoretical and empirical insights into an unfolding crisis with evidence gathered directly from actors involved in the process. The conceptual framework developed in this paper creates new visibilities and possibilities for developing more effective accounting practices in settings that enable continuing emotional investment from supporters.

This exploratory study aims to investigate the financing issues faced by Indian small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. It also classifies the financing constraints into four financing gaps, namely, demand, knowledge, supply and benevolence.

The study uses the convergent interviewing technique to highlight the key issues being faced by SME owners in financing. Forty-four owners from different industries and having dispersed demographics have been interviewed in the study.

The findings reveal the real-time issues being faced by SME owners. SMEs faced both demand- and supply-side constraints. The most common financing challenges are high cost of credit, complex procedures of lending institutions, information asymmetry, creditworthiness and self-abstaining from external financial resources. Issues pertaining to lack of knowledge and awareness about the financial products and services are also being noticed by the researchers.

This study identifies the major financing concerns of SMEs and thereby provides a directional approach to the policymakers in the area of SME financing.

The study offers a better and data-based understanding of financing issues being faced by the SME owners. The usage of convergent interviewing allows the researchers to highlight the common issues raised by the SME owners.

The purpose of this paper is to study land title’s credit effect from a financial inclusion perspective in China. The focus is both small land holding and poor farmers. Formal and informal finances are considered to test their differences in land title’s credit effect.

The authors use augmented inverse-probability weights of the doubly robust method to test the effect of land titling on the rural credit market by addressing self-selection, endogeneity and heterogeneity concerns.

Results show that the poor, non-poor and small land holders with land titles are willing to borrow more from formal financial institutions. Land titling increases loan accessibility for non-poor and small land holding farmers. As for informal financing, large land holding and non-poor farmers show a decrease in informal lending. Land titling has a financial inclusion effect for some farmers, but poor farmers’ credit restrictions are not entirely solved by land titling.

This is the first study that focuses on the financial inclusion effect of farm land titling in China.

Women's financial inclusion has become a global research agenda, and past studies provide mixed evidence on the determinants of financial inclusion among women entrepreneurs across the globe. However, the impact of digital financial literacy on women's financial inclusion has seldom been addressed in the past literature.

The authors perform a cross-sectional analysis of 144 countries using the World Bank Global Findex Database.

This study’s probabilistic regression results indicate that women entrepreneurs with a higher degree of digital financial literacy are more likely to engage in formal banking channels.

The study findings have practical implications in terms of allowing regulators and banks to draw effective policies to attract women customers. Lack of effective regulatory intervention could lead to women exploring financial crimes, such as money laundering, due to their lack of involvement with the formal banking channel.

The authors explore the impact of digital financial literacy on women's financial inclusion. Such evidence is rare in the existing literature.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2022-0277

Research on Science parks (SPs) has attracted a growing interest in the last decades. This widespread innovation policy initiative pursues technology-based industrial and entrepreneurial growth through business development and technology transfer across new and mature firms. Despite the common agreement on SPs' potential benefits, literature have showed mixed results regarding the performance of SPs. To explain this findings, current research pointed out at the lack of a common guiding framework. To cover this knowledge gap, this manuscript proposes an integrative definition and research model together with a multidimensional measurement instrument suitable to encompass the diverse reality of this global phenomenon.

Based on a systematic literature review of 281 indexed journal articles published between 1990 and 2018, the paper provides an integrative framework of enabling factors of SPs' performance.

The results illustrate an integrative conceptual framework of SPs that allows further comparison and generalization of research. At the same time, this manuscript provides valuable insights for managers and entrepreneurs as it conveys a standardized view of SPs' internal context useful for benchmarking.

Grounded in the resource-based view (RBV), the paper conducts a thorough literature review to develop an integrative research model featuring three value streams: physical infrastructures, formal links and support services. In addition, a multidimensional measurement tool to operationalize these three dimensions is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on gender, and specifically, women and entrepreneurship as well as present a process model of gender and entrepreneurship to guide future research.

Following research from Baron and Henry, the literature is organized into a process model of gender and entrepreneurship and a brief review of the research on each stage of the model is presented. Further, building on the process model, specific propositions associated with each stage that are motivated by expectancy theory are developed.

Research on women and entrepreneurship has increased over the last two decades and there is much research yet to be done.

Practical implications include that women may engage in networking activities focused on family and friends for obtaining financial resources.

Based on this review, evidence suggests societal attributions and socialization processes relative to the sexes may create barriers to entry for women due to the uneven distribution of assets, educational foci, and daily life activity expectations amongst the sexes. These factors, in effect, create the glass ceiling that women are often described as facing that extends to entrepreneurship. To lessen these effects, women might be advised to pursue education within fields more closely linked to high‐growth industries.

The authors review research on women and entrepreneurship from 1993‐2010 and organize the literature within Baron and Henry's process model of entrepreneurship. As such, the paper illuminates a process model of gender and entrepreneurship that builds from and extends research linking the I/O psychology and entrepreneurship literatures.

Middle market businesses – entities from $50 million‐$1 billion in revenue – are a significant force in the economy, generating $3 trillion in annual revenues and employing 20 million here in the USA alone. They are particularly besieged, and vulnerable, and yet they are unlikely to use strategic planning systematically to help set priorities and improve performance. The article aims to explore the internal and external forces arrayed against these firms, then prescribe a practical process for developing strategy –what it is, who does it, when – to improve competitive advantage, management perspective, and overall performance.

The practical strategy development process described in the article focuses on developing a strategic databank, convening and managing the strategy team, and setting the stage for practical implementation , when broad objectives need to be translated into specific actions, schedules, budgets, and metrics. The approach described balances internal and external analysis and stakeholder input, captures the key decisions in an accessible, common format, and creates a practical roadmap for managers to help guide decision‐making throughout the course of the year. Dozens of middle‐market firms across a wide array of industries have used the methodology, which derives from two decades of strategy consulting and senior operating experience.

Formal strategy development is underdeveloped or ignored in many middle‐market businesses, even as market and industry forces grow more antagonistic. This practical, streamlined methodology delivers substantial process and content dividends – giving managers strategic perspective, a forum for debating resource allocation, and an accessible platform for setting priorities and making key decisions. Equally important, is it is a straightforward approach to securing stakeholder input, enhancing the firm's ability to carve out competitive advantage and enhance stakeholder satisfaction.

The guidelines and logic are universal for middle market businesses, but some of the parameters described may need to be adapted to fit the planning cycle and technology of each firm, and refined over time to dovetail with the firm's budgetary process.

Middle‐market businesses need to institute a streamlined, rational, balanced, and participative strategy development process to navigate the forces that confront them. The process can be compressed to eight weeks, and will deliver a small set of focused, practical strategies and performance metrics that can be communicated to key stakeholder groups. Careful process management will induce managers to commit to implementation, and clarify the rationale for allocating the firm's precious resources. By breaking down lofty, abstract statements into practical, actionable, measurable activities, the firm's leaders can better chart the future, respond to threats and opportunities, and enhance performance.

The rational, practical approach described offers middle market business managers a toolkit for formulating strategies that can be implemented – for bridging the gap between aspirations and real performance. The article outlines a straightforward process, providing hands‐on guidelines for optimizing performance, and galvanizing the management team.

This study aims to examine the experiences and lessons from formalisation initiatives in four sub-Saharan African countries. Drawing upon the three main theories that explain the existence of business informality – the exclusion model, rational exit model and dual economy model – the study offers an alternative path to business formalisation.

The researchers adopted a descriptive-qualitative method, and through the triangulation of data, identified emerging themes and patterns.

The findings suggest that the informal sector has a small layer that responds to the simplification of regulations and a larger one that requires a different formalisation framework. This shift in paradigm, indirect or group formalisation, where business associations facilitate traceability (registration), self-regulation, access to resources and services for members was observed in all four of the economies studied: Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Tanzania.

As with every qualitative study, subjectivity and interpretation inevitably affect the replicability and generalisability of the findings. However, the rich meanings emerging from the qualitative analysis of the text are critically insightful.

Developing countries should explore indirect formalisation. Provision of workspace and construction of business premises for informal operators should be given high priority. The model for building structures for micro enterprises should change in favour of ownership by the operators through their own associations or other private sector investors.

A pioneering study on cross-country analysis based on sub-Saharan African nations to unearth a new paradigm, a shift towards indirect or group formalisation.

The purpose of this study is to systematically review the literature on the intersections among family, migration and entrepreneurship in the context of Vietnam. This paper aims to shed light on the current state of knowledge of the research field by highlighting some key bibliographic trends among existing literature, mapping existing knowledge in the field of research and recommending future research agenda.

This study adopts a systematic literature review approach with five steps. A list of 24 papers that are extracted from a pool of 643 papers in the Core Collection of Web of Science and Scopus were selected as the most relevant to the research questions used for further in-depth analysis.

Bibliometric analysis indicates that this research field is considered an infant research stream that is dominated by qualitative empirical studies. Content analysis reveals how Vietnamese migrant families mobilize and use various kinds of cultural, social, human and financial capital for entrepreneurship. They also generate resources to develop family-owned enterprises that are expected to be continued over generations. Five research gaps for future research are identified: functions of family, downsides of networks, the role of transnational and returnee entrepreneurs, gender and methodology.

The choice of a limited number of keywords and access to only two databases (Web of Science and Scopus) are limitations of this study. Furthermore, the selection of the articles for content analysis is subjective although research triangulation is applied in this review.

This research is a pioneering systematic literature review that sheds light on the interconnectedness of family, migration and entrepreneurship in the case of Vietnamese migrant entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess determinants of returns to male and female entrepreneurship in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda at selected quantiles along the distribution, as well as examine gender gaps in returns to entrepreneurship and factors contributing these gaps.

Employing a unique data set collected in the three countries on entrepreneurial motivations, constraints and performance, the authors apply unconditional quantile regression technique to assess the determinants of returns to entrepreneurship at various quantiles along the distribution. Additionally, the authors employ decomposition techniques to assess gender gaps in returns to entrepreneurship at various points along the distribution. The data contain extensive information on entrepreneur’s personal characteristics, including parental background and household composition and structure.

The study finds substantial differences in determinants of returns to male and female entrepreneurship along the distribution, with firm asset increasing returns to entrepreneurship. There is also the presence of gender gaps in returns to entrepreneurship at the lower-end of distribution, however, gaps disappear at the upper tail of the distribution, indicative of sticky floors in returns to entrepreneurship in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. The authors also find gender bias against female entrepreneurship in the three countries, as unobserved characteristics largely responsible for the gender gaps in entrepreneurial returns.

This work has been undertaken by the authors and has not been carried out by any other person. The study will add to the existing literature on gender and returns to entrepreneurship.