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1 – 10 of over 1000Menatallah Darrag, Raghda El Ebrashi, Amira Aldibiki and Salma Tosson
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) (2017, pp. 14–15) identified that “industrialization is the seedbed for entrepreneurship, business investment…
Abstract
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) (2017, pp. 14–15) identified that “industrialization is the seedbed for entrepreneurship, business investment, technological progress, the upgrading of skills, and the creation of decent jobs.” This placed studying different industrial sectors and their respective clusters, which are key drivers for economy, innovation, and knowledge creation (Slaper, Harmon, & Rubin, 2018), at the forefront of research. This chapter tackles the automobile industrial cluster in Egypt that possesses promising potential yet faces some challenges. It aims to provide an overview of the cluster, alongside underpinning its strengths and obstacles facing it. Moreover, the chapter displays the importance of the labor dimension in increasing the labor competitiveness of the cluster and showcases this through two cases of German automobile manufacturers that pioneered in venturing into the market through employing technical and vocational education and training. In conclusion, recommendations are provided to help in steering the cluster toward success.
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The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the marketing history of medical marijuana cigarettes in the past three decades of Austria-Hungary.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the marketing history of medical marijuana cigarettes in the past three decades of Austria-Hungary.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper constructs an analytical narrative based on information scattered in historical periodicals.
Findings
Towards the end of Habsburg rule, two Ljubljana-based pharmacists, the Trnkóczy brothers, managed to establish themselves as monopolistic suppliers of pre-rolled medical marijuana cigarettes for the entire Austrian part of the dual monarchy. Garnering the support of the regional Carniolan Government, Julius von Trnkóczy successfully argued his wares were not affected by the prohibition passed against imported French medicinal cigarettes. This happened despite medical opposition, suggesting that Trnkóczys could only operate this business because of their elevated social status. In the past decade of the 19th century, Ubald von Trnkóczy took advantage of newly loosened regulation to obtain an official permit by the royal-imperial government in Vienna. This was followed, in late 1909, by an advertising campaign covering mass media throughout the empire. This was enabled, amongst others, by a cutting down on medicinal claims. Their declining price is further indication that the cigarettes were mass marketed, especially as their core ingredient, cannabis, underwent price inflation.
Research limitations/implications
Because of its later illegality, the research subject was for a long time considered embarrassing, leading to an absence of retrievable documents. Missing archival sources are thus a major limitation, but one which can be overcome by the concurrent reading of historical periodicals – ranging from mass-market newspapers to specialist journals and legal texts. This paper has implications for 21st-century challenges in the marketing of newly legalized medical marijuana.
Originality/value
This paper discusses the marketing history of cannabis, a drug rarely discussed in historical literature outside its medical and regulatory context, and reconstructs previously forgotten case histories.
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The self-initiated nature of migration by self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) may make them more susceptible to the impact of the national context within which their adjustment…
Abstract
Purpose
The self-initiated nature of migration by self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) may make them more susceptible to the impact of the national context within which their adjustment takes place. Consequently, the failure or success of the expatriation depends on an SIE's ability to adapt to this national context. The paper aims to contribute to the adjustment theory literature by using the contextual angle and examining the impact of historical, legal, employment and hiring contexts on adjustment.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses data from a qualitative study of 42 in-depth interviews with German SIEs. The study used semi-structured in-depth interviews in order to collect a wide range of information on adjustment experiences, circumstances and expectations, enabling comparative analysis. All participants have self-initiated their move to Britain and relocated without organisational support, held university diplomas, worked according to their qualifications and relocated following a job offer.
Findings
Among the study's main findings is impact of national context on adjustment experience, especially the historical relations between the countries involved. German SIEs have enjoyed easy adaptation in their new workplaces due to structurally favourable positions within the local hierarchies of prejudice, which can be attributed to the complex historical relations between Germany and Britain. Furthermore, this study draws the attention to the particularities of the nationally constructed hiring practices. In particular, the speedy recruitment in Britain presented additional challenges in adjustment for some participants, while facilitating it for others.
Research limitations/implications
This study focuses on a specific population, and further research is needed to determine whether the findings can be generalised to other groups of SIEs in Britain and elsewhere. Another limitation of the study is the homogeneous nature of the sample in terms of education level and participant employment status (educated at a university level and found employment before relocation). Future research avenues include applying a comparative approach and focusing on the intersection between national context, employment circumstances, educational level and SIE adjustment.
Practical implications
The study documents the complex effects of the hiring context on SIE adjustment and suggests that communicating the nationally constructed recruitment practices will align the expectations of both parties. This may increase the effectiveness of hiring and placing within the company and have a positive impact on the adjustment and work performance of the SIE. Furthermore, understating the particularities of each national context can enable international human resources management (IHRM) professionals to assess the specificity of each potential employee and can provide well-considered suggestions concerning the effect of country-specific legal and historical context on their adjustment and hence provide SIEs with tailored support.
Originality/value
Although the adjustment of SIEs has attracted considerable research interest in recent years, it is often limited compared to the attention focused on assigned expatriates. This paper adds several original contributions to the IHRM literature. First, it expands knowledge on SIEs adjustment from a single country of origin living in a specific host country. Second, it enables a deep examination of the impact of the specific national context on SIEs adjustment as informed by certain historical and legal relations, as well as locally constructed hiring and employment practices.
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Andreas Kuckertz and Alexander Brem
All over the world, countries are searching for ways to foster innovation and growth through startups. This viewpoint paper presents the aims, development procedure and contents…
Abstract
Purpose
All over the world, countries are searching for ways to foster innovation and growth through startups. This viewpoint paper presents the aims, development procedure and contents of Germany's “Startup Strategy,” published for the first time in 2022, along with a fundamental assessment of its potential usefulness.
Design/methodology/approach
In this opinionated viewpoint paper, the authors provide an overview of the strategy's contents and discuss it against established policy frameworks focusing on the determinants of innovative entrepreneurial activity and the potential consequences of the strategy on the micro-, meso- and macro levels of the German economy. Additionally, the authors evaluate and analyze the strategy's proposed fields of action to illustrate its potential impact on innovative entrepreneurial activity.
Findings
The strategy's development avoids considering an evidence-based, fundamental framework to structure its fields of action and instead relies on diverse input from various entrepreneurial agents. As a result, it emphasizes access to finance for startups and building entrepreneurial capabilities as its main fields of action. On the one hand, the authors show how the contents of the German “Startup Strategy” can be matched with the OECD (2017) framework. On the other hand, the authors offer detailed insights into how the “Startup Strategy's” fields of action might influence the German economy's micro, meso and macro levels.
Research limitations/implications
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this article is the first one commenting on the German government's first-ever published startup strategy. Hence, this might offer several starting points for other researchers to analyze future startup strategies. Also, comparing such strategic approaches in other European countries and beyond might be a starting point for developing public policies in this field. Also, researchers on entrepreneurial ecosystems and innovation ecosystems will find concrete anchor points for these subject areas.
Practical implications
Policymakers can use this viewpoint paper to devise future actions. The paper provides concrete fields of action on the individual and company levels, as well as on a national economic and regional ecosystem level, to derive such recommendations.
Originality/value
Germany is one of the strongest economic nations in the world and by far in Europe. Hence, this startup strategy comes with the potential for substantial impact. This viewpoint paper may inspire the development of other national strategies to create a positive economic and societal environment supporting the emergence of more innovative startups. In particular, the strategy's focus on diversity and social entrepreneurship seems promising.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of digital surveillance by Arab authorities, which face risks and threats of surveillance, and how journalists seek to press…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of digital surveillance by Arab authorities, which face risks and threats of surveillance, and how journalists seek to press freedom by using tools and techniques to communicate securely.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used focus group discussions with 14 journalists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen, Oman, Jordan and Egypt. While in Egypt, questionnaires were distributed to 199 journalists from both independent and semi-governmental outlets to investigate how Egyptian journalists interpret the new data protection law and its implications for press freedom.
Findings
The study indicated that journalists from these countries revealed severe censorship by their respective governments, an element inconsistent with the Arab Constitution. The recommendation of the study encourages media organisations to play a more active role in setting policies that make it easier for journalists to adopt and use digital security tools, while Egyptian journalists see the law as a barrier to media independence because it allows the government to exercise greater information control through digital policy and imposes regulatory rules on journalists.
Practical implications
The study identifies practical and theoretical issues in Arab legislation and may reveal practices of interest to scientists researching the balance between data protection, the right of access to information and media research as an example of contemporary government indirect or “soft” censorship methods.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first research contributions to analyse the relationships between Arab authoritarians who used surveillance to restrict freedom of the press after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 to keep themselves in power as long as they could. In addition, Egypt's use of surveillance under new laws allowed the regimes to install software on the journalists’ phones that enabled them to read the files and emails and track their locations; accordingly, journalists can be targeted by the cyberattack and can be arrested.
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This essay charts an intellectual journey. Geoffrey M. Hodgson became an institutional economist in the 1980s. He explains how he discovered institutional economics and what…
Abstract
This essay charts an intellectual journey. Geoffrey M. Hodgson became an institutional economist in the 1980s. He explains how he discovered institutional economics and what strains of institutional thought were attractive for him. Another issue raised in this essay is how institutional researchers organize and move forward. Hodgson argues for an interdisciplinary approach, but this is not without its problems.
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Abdullah Atmacasoy, Hanife Akar and Ingrid Gogolin
Refugee students’1 education is disrupted by multiple spatial and temporal transitions – no matter where they come from, where they go, and what cause their forced migration. The…
Abstract
Refugee students’1 education is disrupted by multiple spatial and temporal transitions – no matter where they come from, where they go, and what cause their forced migration. The first major disruption occurs with their flight from origin countries due to security or other reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic led to another dramatic disruption with a heightened risk of weakening hard-earned progress. This chapter examines an example of post-migration education opportunities for urban refugee students across two monolingual contexts at two critical junctures from their arrival in the destination countries to the COVID-19 outbreak. It discusses the readiness and responsiveness of Turkish and German education systems by examining the instances and consequences of disruption in refugee students’ education in İstanbul and Hamburg. A multiple case study design with critical policy analysis (CPA) was used. In addition to the available national statistics, empirical data drew on semi-structured in-depth interviews with refugee students and teachers. The background section maps out the trajectory of refugee education with a synthesis of the formal educational policies in Turkey and Germany toward the inclusion of refugee students into public schools. The findings first elaborate on the readiness of the Turkish and German contexts and a scoping review of the literature on the major issues in both settings. The second part explores the responsiveness of both education systems to refugee children’s education during the COVID-19 pandemic in both cases, namely, in İstanbul and Hamburg.
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Ana Jovanović, Ana Kojadinović and Alexandra Portmann
In this chapter, we share narratives from our personal experiences with a shared focus on the relationships between personal identities and family language. The acquisition of a…
Abstract
In this chapter, we share narratives from our personal experiences with a shared focus on the relationships between personal identities and family language. The acquisition of a family language is said to be accompanied by a specific ‘intercultural burden’ (Kagan 2012), which is manifested at the intersection of different influences and psychological tensions. This psychosocial and cultural reality has the potential for the development of a true intercultural identity that brings together contradictions and conflicts of inherited cultural differences. Here, through a prism of three personal narratives, we create a series of questions and reflections in relation to the family language. The three voices are articulated through three auto-ethnographic accounts of individuals – two linguists and a theatre scholar who are both personally and professionally invested in the topic of post-migration. The common thread of the three narratives is the experience of Serbian as the first language. As an aspect of personal identity, the idealised concept of family language affects one's identity and makes a decisive impact on investment and potentially life-defining decisions.
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Lukas Löhlein and Christian Huber
A total of 25 years of research on the audit society has provided rich and engaging accounts of the ways in which rituals of verification have conditioned organizations and…
Abstract
Purpose
A total of 25 years of research on the audit society has provided rich and engaging accounts of the ways in which rituals of verification have conditioned organizations and individuals to think and act. In contrast, this paper aims to explore the possibility of conditions through which things and spaces are enacted to be non-auditable.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the concept of proliferation and rarefaction (Callon and Law, 2005), the paper adopts a case-comparison design to explore two empirical sites. The first investigates a vast excess of audit structures against the case of the biggest corporate fraud in German accounting history, the Wirecard scandal. The second discusses the configuration of Tinder, the most popular provider of mobile dating and the absence of visible verification mechanisms.
Findings
The paper argues that things can become non-auditable through two mechanisms. Based on the two empirical sites, non-auditability can happen through an overload of auditable resources or, through the withdrawal of required resources. The paper discusses the consequences of this finding and suggests avenues for future research on non-auditability.
Originality/value
While accounting scholars have extensively addressed the audit explosion and traced how audit practices have journeyed into ever more novel terrains, this paper discusses forms of escape from the value-subverting and reductive accounts incorporated in the audit society. It thereby points to conditions under which accounting ends.
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