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Article
Publication date: 31 July 2023

Sarah Page and Sean Griffin

This paper aims to explore the tripart relationship between British police officers, Local Authority representatives and community members based on a Midlands neighbourhood case…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the tripart relationship between British police officers, Local Authority representatives and community members based on a Midlands neighbourhood case study. It focuses on experiences of the strengths and challenges with working towards a common purpose of community safety and resilience building.

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected in 2019 prior to enforced COVID lockdown restrictions following Staffordshire University ethical approval. An inductive qualitative methods approach of semi-structured individual and group interviews was used with community members (N = 30) and professionals (N = 15), using a purposive and snowball sample. A steering group with academic, police and Local Authority representation co-designed the study and identified the first tier of participants.

Findings

Community members and professionals valued tripart working and perceived communication, visibility, longevity and trust as key to addressing localised community safety issues. Challenges were raised around communication modes and frequency, cultural barriers to accessing information and inadequate resources and responses to issues. Environmental crime was a high priority for community members, along with tackling drug-related crime and diverting youth disorder, which concurred with police concern. However, the anti-terrorism agenda was a pre-occupation for the Local Authority, and school concerns included modern slavery crime.

Originality/value

When state involvement and investment in neighbourhoods decline, community member activism enthusiasm for neighbourhood improvement reduces, contrasting with government expectations. Community members are committed partnership workers who require the state to visibly and demonstrably engage. Faith in state actors can be restored when professionals are consistently present, communicate and follow up on actions.

Details

Safer Communities, vol. 22 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-8043

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 September 2022

Zhengqi Guo, Matthew Hall and Leona Wiegmann

This study aims to examine whether and how voluntary accounting disclosures can repair individual donors’ trust in a charity after negative events.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine whether and how voluntary accounting disclosures can repair individual donors’ trust in a charity after negative events.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors adopt a qualitative research approach and conduct 32 semi-structured interviews with active Australian individual donors, with a hypothetical vignette design. Hypothetical negative events and corresponding accounting disclosures are presented to participants during interviews.

Findings

Three types of individual donors are identified based on their decision-making patterns after negative events and primary trust relations with a charity-reasoned donor (giving-decision based on their analysis of the situation, competence-based trust), generalist donors (giving-decision based on trust in the charitable sector, institution-based trust) and emotional donors (giving-decision based on feelings and emotions about the charity, integrity-based trust). The research suggests that accounting disclosures can repair trust damage for reasoned donors and support institution-based trust for generalist donors, but do not seem able to repair trust damage for emotional donors and can potentially damage trust further.

Practical implications

Overall, the findings suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to communicating with individual donors after negative events is not likely to be very effective in repairing trust. Instead, charities may need to adapt disclosures to their different types of individual donors.

Originality/value

While prior accounting studies have largely focussed on how charity managers themselves grapple with accountability or how negative events impact charitable donations, the authors demonstrate how accounting disclosures can play different roles in the trust-repairing process for different types of individual donors.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 36 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 May 2023

Okey Nwuke and Ogechi Adeola

This study explores the different survival strategies employed by family-owned small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria. The study delves into the dynamics of ensuring…

Abstract

Purpose

This study explores the different survival strategies employed by family-owned small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria. The study delves into the dynamics of ensuring business continuity from founders to successors and identifies the success factors that can facilitate seamless leadership transition outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

This study utilised a qualitative multiple-case study approach, with the population consisting of founders from three medium-sized family businesses in Nigeria. Semi-structured interviews were the primary data collection tool used in the study. Furthermore, company documents were analysed to gain further insights into the leadership transition strategies employed in the selected businesses.

Findings

Successful transition and survival of family businesses are dependent on the founder's desire and support for transition, successor preparation, building trust and credibility in successors, and instilling a clear vision for the business.

Research limitations/implications

The study's findings will provide valuable insights to leaders of family-owned SMEs, specifically in the development of effective leadership transition action plans. It should be noted that the study is limited to three family-owned businesses in two locations in Nigeria, which may restrict the generalisability of the findings. Despite this, the study offers novel contributions to the current literature by presenting practical strategies for achieving the survival of family businesses in an emerging economy.

Originality/value

This study proposed strategies for business survival, continuity, sustainability and seamless leadership transition for small and medium-sized family-owned businesses. Importantly, the study recommends action plans for present and prospective family business leaders to deepen succession pathways.

Details

Journal of Family Business Management, vol. 13 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2043-6238

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 October 2023

Mani Pillai

As every day work is central to people's lives and events serve as significant contextual factors, examining what impact the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic…

Abstract

Purpose

As every day work is central to people's lives and events serve as significant contextual factors, examining what impact the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic restrictions had on knowledge workers warrants further investigation. The author's research question investigated how employees in the London Insurance Market had made sense of their work identities during a period of mandated remote work and isolation from co-workers, leaders and others, amidst a turbulent environment. To address this enquiry, this research drew on Goffman's institutional, dramaturgical and stigma theories.

Design/methodology/approach

Data used in this research are from an ongoing PhD study of how individuals conceive, construct and conduct their careers in this field. As individuals and their social worlds are interwoven, a qualitative methodological approach was employed in this research.

Findings

Participants were thrusted into a position where they had no prior knowledge what identity they should adopt in a situation which had totalising characteristics. The loss of clear boundaries between work and home setting caused a deterioration of participants' work identities whilst physical separation from their institutions and co-workers posed a risk of disconnecting their past work identities from the present. Moreover, participants' experiences of deterioration and disconnection were intertwined with their demographic and occupational identities.

Originality/value

This study aligns with existing research on identity work, emphasising the crucial role of social interaction in the formation of work identities. However, it also highlights that the establishment and sustenance of work identities is also reliant on individuals having separate frontstage and backstage settings to understand and interpret their conduct and those of their significant others.

Details

Employee Relations: The International Journal, vol. 45 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0142-5455

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 November 2022

Barbara Tomasella, Anne Wylie and Devi Gill

The purpose of this paper is to understand how higher education institutions (HEIs) educate future leaders with social impact contributing to the sustainable development goals…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how higher education institutions (HEIs) educate future leaders with social impact contributing to the sustainable development goals (SDGs). HEIs have an interest in developing leaders with social impact, but there is a lack of knowledge on the best teaching and learning strategies to engage students with social action aimed at the SDGs. This paper fills this gap by addressing the question of how HEIs can shape the sustainability mindsets of future leaders with social impact contributing to the SDGs.

Design/methodology/approach

This research used a mixed method research design, including a quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews of UK students involved in HEIs experiential learning programmes, focused on social impact and entrepreneurial action, developed in partnership with the organisation Enactus.

Findings

This research highlighted the importance of experiential learning, as it develops the knowledge, values and competency underpinning the sustainability mindset of future leaders contributing to the SDGs, in particular their emotional intelligence.

Originality/value

This research shows that HEIs can educate future leaders with social impact contributing to the SDGs, through real-world experiential learning that develops their sustainability mindset; in terms of aligning the curriculum to the SDGs, more focus on the systems perspective of the sustainability mindset framework is needed.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 24 July 2023

Irene Bernhard and Anna Karin Olsson

The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits and barriers for learning in industrial PhD education through the perspectives of industrial PhD students. A work-integrated…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits and barriers for learning in industrial PhD education through the perspectives of industrial PhD students. A work-integrated learning (WIL) approach is applied to highlight key issues that university and industry need to consider promoting mutual learning.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical context is a Swedish university profiling WIL offering PhD programs in three disciplines for industrial PhD students from both the private and public sectors. Data was gathered using qualitative methods; 19 semistructured interviews with industrial PhD students.

Findings

Findings show that industrial PhD students are developing practical and transferable skills, hence, contributing to research of interest for academia and work–life. Identified benefits for learning include proximity and access to data, project and networks and contextual understanding and tacit knowledge. Barriers for learning are the perceived limited understanding of employers, the dilemma of balancing and switching between different roles, lack of belonging and identity, deficient collaboration agreements and ethical dilemmas.

Research limitations/implications

Contributes insights into an industrial PhD education transforming along with societal needs promoting a future workforce of researchers with skills, new work practices and learning capabilities applicable in the work–life of contemporary society.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the emerging field of studies of alternative doctoral educations by identifying benefits and barriers for learning and providing recommendations for how university and industry may promote learning in a resilient industrial PhD education collaboration.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 35 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 July 2022

Yanru Chang and Qiang Cheng

Based on Chinese incubators as the research sample, this paper aims to examine whether and how incubators' entrepreneurial mentoring and financial support affect incubator patent…

Abstract

Purpose

Based on Chinese incubators as the research sample, this paper aims to examine whether and how incubators' entrepreneurial mentoring and financial support affect incubator patent licensing. Entrepreneurial mentoring functions through the buffering mechanism and financial support functions through the bridging and curating mechanisms.

Design/methodology/approach

A negative binomial model is used to empirically explain the relation between entrepreneurial mentoring or financial support and incubator patent licensing. In addition, a cross-sectional test is performed to explore whether province-level incubator support policies strengthen the effect of entrepreneurial mentoring and financial support on incubator patent licensing.

Findings

The results reveal that incubators' entrepreneurial mentoring positively affects patent licensing. In contrast, incubators' financial support has an inverted U-shaped relationship with patent licensing. In addition, the two relations are stronger when an incubator locates in a province with more incubator support policies.

Originality/value

The authors contribute to the literature on incubator performance by identifying an important but less discussed factor: entrepreneurial mentoring. Through the connection with mentors, tenants efficiently commercialize the value of their patents, facilitate patent licensing and expand the product market. Furthermore, the inverted U-shaped association between financial support and patent licensing shows that incubation support does not always have a linear effect on incubator patent licensing. Overall, this study provides evidence on the effect of incubator support on incubator patent licensing.

Details

European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 27 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-1060

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 February 2022

Suparak Suriyankietkaew

Today’s small enterprises are forced to rethink their business-as-usual management and shift toward corporate sustainability. The empirical paper responds to a crucial quest for…

1363

Abstract

Purpose

Today’s small enterprises are forced to rethink their business-as-usual management and shift toward corporate sustainability. The empirical paper responds to a crucial quest for many modern leaders and entrepreneurs, specifically small business owners in emerging economies. This paper aims to answer what they can do to increase long-term financial performance and enhance stakeholder satisfaction, thereby contributing to long-term business sustainability.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a convenience sampling, data were collected from a sample of 280 business leaders and entrepreneurs of small enterprises across industries in an emerging economy of Thailand. This study used a sustainable leadership research framework. Factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were used for data analysis.

Findings

Seven valid and reliable leadership factors were uncovered as new underlying leadership constructs to examine business sustainability in small entrepreneurial enterprises in Thailand. Results from multiple regressions revealed two significantly positive factors or drivers (i.e. trusting, innovative team orientation and strong, shared vision) for enhanced two sustainability performance outcomes (i.e. financial performance and stakeholder satisfaction). The findings thus contribute to advance our limited knowledge about the contextualised constructs and possible theoretical development of the developing research realm.

Research limitations/implications

Successful small entrepreneurial organisations in Thailand and other emerging economies that wish to improve their business sustainability are suggested to adopt the essential leadership and management practices (i.e. trusting, innovative team and strong, shared vision). Future studies may examine data from a larger sample size and other countries to expand our limited understanding in different contexts.

Practical implications

The resulting practical insights can be used to guide business leaders, entrepreneurs, practitioners and policymakers towards making strategic priorities and investments for improved business competitiveness, resilience and sustainability in small entrepreneurial enterprises. Overall, this study may be a starting point for further investigation on developing entrepreneurial growth and business sustainability in small sustainable enterprises across emerging economies.

Originality/value

The paper responds to calls for more contextualised research studies in the evolving multidisciplinary field of entrepreneurial leadership and business sustainability, particularly in an emerging economy of Thailand. It also unveils the essential strategic leadership factors that positively drive business sustainability in small entrepreneurial firms. And, it empirically examines the effects of diverse strategic leadership factors and multiple sustainability performance outcomes in a single study. It further proposes an emergent leadership-performance model for entrepreneurial business sustainability in the context-specific study. Above all, it advances the currently limited empirical knowledge in the emerging research front towards more sustainable futures.

Details

Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies, vol. 15 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-4604

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 October 2023

Michel Tavares Quinteiro Milcent Assis, Maria Raquel David Pereira Ventura Lucas and Maria Matos Rainho

The purpose of this work is to study the relationships of trust in a local agri-food supply chain in Southern Brazil. In an unsustainable context, where the number of…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this work is to study the relationships of trust in a local agri-food supply chain in Southern Brazil. In an unsustainable context, where the number of mariculturists is decreasing, the authors seek to identify what the factors are and how they contribute to this problem, as well as find solutions aimed at the sustainability of that chain.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors carried out qualitative research with 15 semi-structured interviews that took place in the year 2021. The thematic analysis of the results applied the IRAMUTEQ software and the assessment of the narratives was guided by prior thematic analysis.

Findings

The supply chain under investigation requires better organisation. Communication and interpersonal trust proved important in the relationship between producers and control bodies. The university, as a seed supplier, needs predictability and efficiency to convey inter-organisational trust. Informal relationships are interpersonal and extremely trust-based and inter-organisational trust increases the performance of establishments and promotes the development of innovative structures. Furthermore, in crisis periods interpersonal trust increases.

Practical implications

The results allow policymakers to plan better their actions and build more effective tactics in order to reach sustainable development. This work is also important for stakeholders and managers, as it guides improvements in management, governance and sustainability of agri-food supply chains.

Originality/value

An unprecedented research was done on the studied supply chain, knowing the relationships of trust among them, identifying peculiar partnerships and recognising some constructs and outcomes of trust.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 125 no. 12
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 November 2022

Christiana Adeola Olawunmi and Andrew Paul Clarke

This study aims to explore marketing strategies that UK fish farming businesses can use to gain a competitive advantage. The marketing strategies examined include product branding…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore marketing strategies that UK fish farming businesses can use to gain a competitive advantage. The marketing strategies examined include product branding and core competencies, sales promotion, market positioning and segmentation.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey through an online questionnaire was mailed to five randomly selected trade associations of UK fish farming businesses and distributed to their registered members, of which 200 responded. Both male and female genders with different age groups and levels of experience in the UK fish farming business participated. In addition, ten articles were sampled for a systematic review.

Findings

Results show that UK fish farming businesses could increase sales by using ecolabels in product branding to attract premium prices, build consumer confidence and using high-quality packages for fish products will keep fish fresh for a longer period.

Research limitations/implications

The scope of this research is limited to the UK. The findings cannot be generalised and used for other jurisdictions because of variable economic and market conditions.

Originality/value

A significant recommendation from this case study is that fish farming businesses need to be creative and innovative in ways such as leveraging branding, sales promotions and core competencies to win the trust and confidence of consumers. Most importantly, each fish farming business should know the specific marketing strategy that works for them; this case study shows that not all branding and sales promotion techniques enhance competitiveness. The scope of this research is limited to the UK. The findings cannot be generalised and used for other jurisdictions because of variable economic and market conditions.

Details

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, vol. 17 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-6204

Keywords

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