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Introduction: Amidst Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA), turbulence is a vital component of an entrepreneurial landscape. VUCA world has set a new dynamic in the business environment and organisation’s settings. In such an environment, it is pertinent for entrepreneurs to exhibit creativity, innovative service behaviour, and performance.

Purpose: The study investigates whether creativity, innovative service behaviour, and performance of entrepreneurs are fostered through employee engagement practices in a highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment.

Methodology: The methodology involves a systematic review and meta-synthesis. By identifying the major topics, a systematic literature review helped critically analyse and synthesise the literature.

Findings: According to the study, corporate entrepreneurial factors like (management reinforcement, reward/reinforcement, job autonomy/discretion, time attainability, and organisational boundaries) entrepreneurial potential, entrepreneurial orientation, human capital, self-efficacy beliefs lead to employee engagement, which, in turn, fosters creativity, innovative service behaviour, and performance among entrepreneurs in the VUCA world.

Family governance is a topic of substantial practical relevance that merits much more attention in family business research (Gersick & Feliu, 2014; Suess, 2014). The purpose of this book chapter is to use the framework of a fair process to gain a better understanding of how family governance practices can help an entrepreneurial family firm flourish. Central to the analysis is the case of a 100-year-old entrepreneurial family firm that will serve as a best practice. Interviews with key members of the family and the business were held, and secondary data were gathered and analyzed. The chapter starts with a theoretical outline of the family as strategic resource and the family governance as a mechanism to manage this strategic resource. The principles of fair process are introduced as an underlying framework for the well-functioning of family governance practices. This is followed by the introduction of the case and the discussion of the key findings. This chapter ends with some concluding remarks.

Social entrepreneurship is an area that has been extensively researched from a variety of angles and across a broad range of academic disciplines. Parallel to this, practitioners have applied social entrepreneurship ideas to a variety of industries and at varying degrees of complexity. The purpose of this study is to understand how the social capital of an entrepreneur drives the growth of social enterprises by contributing to the social entrepreneur skills. A systematic assessment of available literature was carried out based on searches of major academic databases (Web of Science, EBSCO and CAPES Portal de Periódicos), with an initial list of 3,106 publications being narrowed down to 472 articles that were subjected to content analysis after being narrowed down. Further, a theoretical proposal and research propositions were developed, highlighting the relationship between social capital and the activities of social entrepreneurs, as well as their relationships with the collective actors and institutions that make up social entrepreneurship in its totality. The conclusion of the chapter is that the interface between social entrepreneurship and social capital is a latent field for research. Further contributions of the chapter are a theoretical model to help researchers consolidate their efforts by identifying three key themes identified by intensive literature: creation of social capital by the social entrepreneur, relationships between institutions and the formation of groups and social capital as a formation of groups. In these words, a future agenda for discussing these topics is outlined for discussion.

Purpose: Process innovations are becoming increasingly significant in a changing digital society. The goal of this study is to focus on the service industry, particularly on how this sector has lately been influenced by sustainable development and digitalisation. The main focus will be on education. The cohabitation of three aspects (innovation, digitalisation, and sustainability) is declared as a fact in the competitive landscape.

Methodology: This study uses a multi-case approach emphasising the new system of processes in educational institutions in Canada, Ontario. These case studies are relevant to exceptional results consistently produced by various educational institutions.

Findings: The Waterloo region is known as a digitalisation triangle in Canada. Personal experiences and research findings serve as an example of the value of the global digitalised economy as a partnership principle in the educational and entrepreneurship fields.

Significance: The obtained experience and the attempt to share the knowledge and results of this work and research will be useful in future for other academic environments, cities, and countries.

Practical Implications: Cohesion between the purpose of this study and practice is explained as a need to see educational institutions as an important factor of innovation and economic development. In this case, the author shows how this successful case of Ontario, Canada created a stronger base for competitiveness and economic growth.

Entrepreneurship is a prominent area of inquiry which is enriched by an ample literature base and challenged by definitional deficiencies. Over the years, multiple perspectives of entrepreneurship have emerged and a holistic approach to entrepreneurship has been proposed. This can facilitate the continued enlargement of the entrepreneurship field and allow for interdisciplinary research within the African region. This chapter contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship in developing economies by providing an extensive review of the various approaches that entrepreneurship has been conceptualised. Nine themes are explored: the great person, economic perspective, psychological perspective, sociological perspective, behavioural perspective, management, intrapreneurship, cognitive perspective and leadership perspective. This is followed by an examination of entrepreneurship as a process, as a new venture creation and as an art of opportunity recognition and exploitation. In the last section of this chapter, a clarion call is made for more African scholarship and research in the field of entrepreneurship.

The ongoing economic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon national and international economies has provided a novel set of challenges and barriers for organisations; particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This has led to an increased focus on sustainable decision-making and long-term survival and growth strategies, such as internationalisation opportunities, for SMEs during obscure times and fluctuating economies. Thus, examining how SMEs within ambiguous economies are adopting innovative decision-making to continue to sustain and grow their enterprises provides a vital perspective and understanding of not only enterprise survival but enterprise growth during times of economic uncertainty. This chapter proposes a conceptual framework that explores internationalisation opportunities through an intersectional lens. The framework depicts that intersectionality as an enabler during ambiguous times for Maldivian women entrepreneurs generates innovative decision-making towards internationalisation as part of sustainable growth practices. The conceptual framework offers theoretical implications for empirical studies of an inductive or deductive nature and offers pragmatic importance for women entrepreneurs considering internationalisation through sustainable growth during obscure times and fluctuating economies. This chapter contributes to the growing body of knowledge in the field of international entrepreneurship, particularly innovative decision-making, and sustainable growth through internationalisation opportunities of women entrepreneurs, whilst advancing our understanding of gender and entrepreneurship studies. Studying innovative decision-making and sustainable growth practices of women entrepreneurs additionally provides a new perspective on intersectional works within entrepreneurial growth during uncertain times.

Purpose: The main goal of this discussion is to explain how competitiveness could be an important source of knowledge and economic power in a society, especially in the period of higher demands on knowledge, innovation and organisational base growth. Our focus of the discussion will be tourism as an important service sector economic activity in countries all over the world.

Methodology: The chapter will be conceptually based on its goal to develop the theories of competitiveness and to discuss how competitiveness influences knowledge, organisational processes and forms with a focus on tourism services.

Findings: Competitiveness in tourism depends on many factors. As an intangible source of knowledge, organisational culture processes and organisational forms generally influences tourism activity. For this reason, not only is comparative advantage important in the competitiveness concept, but also competitive advantage and the way of deploying resources play an important role.

Significance: Resources are not only based on labour, capital and land (neoclassical theory approach), but resource-advantage theory underlines the importance of financial, physical, legal, human, organisational, informational and relational capital. In this process, new processes and organisational forms must be created, as well as innovative approaches to processes and the importance of knowledge capital.

Practical Implications: New ideas about this process could be helpful for researchers and practitioners to recognise the importance of competitiveness for their work and research.

Despite a large volume of theoretical and empirical research, defining the ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ within the cultural and creative sector, a sector with high heterogeneity in organisational and other aspects across its various segments remains challenging. In this regard, there should be a wide variety of differences in the characteristics and challenges of cultural entrepreneurs across industries, countries and regions. Nonetheless, the key role of the arts and cultural sector has increasingly piqued the interest of policymakers and the private sector, and it has been recognised for its importance within the South African economic landscape; as a result, the government has prioritised arts and culture as a pillar in their development strategies. Furthermore, while there has been some consensus over the past decade on what constitutes a creative industry, many questions about defining arts and cultural entrepreneurship still need to be answered, necessitating further definitional and policy coherence. As a result, some efforts at definitions are required to advance the sector and develop useful knowledge in policy formulation.

This chapter proposes an understanding of arts and cultural entrepreneurship as an exploration of a person, a community or a network's artistic resources (arts, creative and cultural) in value creation. It utilises meta-analysis, a non-empirical method, to review and analyse the existing literature. Further research is needed to investigate and evaluate the efficacy of established arts incubators, and the extent to which perceived entrepreneurial competencies affect organisational performance. Moreover, additional research is required to examine the entrepreneurial factors inhibiting or stimulating the influence on start-up financing (capital acquisition) in the South African arts and cultural industry.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a relevant theoretical contribution to the field of entrepreneurship in cultural and creative industries (CCI) and suggestions for a research agenda. Entrepreneurship research is characterised by an apparent fragmentation, even if scholars advocate the development of a ‘stronger paradigm’ to strengthen the discipline. Rather than making explicit what is specific to entrepreneurship in CCI, or delineating the boundaries of a new community of scholars, in this chapter, the author attempts to identify certain key ingredients of a ‘hodgepodge’. The Schumpeterian entrepreneur, the opportunity seeker, and the everyday entrepreneur are introduced as well as an action model in which the reciprocal agency–structure relationship finds a place. It is highlighted how theories such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour, Social Identity Theory, Institutional Theory, Practice Theory, and Paradox Theory (can) inform research on entrepreneurship in CCI.

Adapting to external and internal transformations is a difficult task that managers and scholars must face while attempting to keep their organisations alive and well-established. This chapter explores the various decision-making tools that can assist practitioners and scholars to improve their understanding of the external scenario to determine the contemporary appropriateness of these approaches for analysing the environment and their implications for various types of organisations. The chapter investigates the barriers and drivers of these methods and proposes existing alternative paradigms created by academics and practitioners to analyse and comprehend the context. It demonstrates how these decision-making tools can be implemented by providing examples and case studies.