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Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EES) is among the fastest growing entrepreneurship research topics. With even greater vigour, the non-scientific world of economic development agencies, administrations and policymakers has adopted the construct and applies it widely “in the field”, often lacking a solid empirical foundation and pursuing sub-optimal approaches. Improving policy instruments for EES development requires a data driven approach to first understand an EES of a specific region before making any attempts to change it. The paper showcases an empirical approach to create empirically rooted EES policy implications, contributing to closing the gap for insight in regional EES data of sub-national regions.

Exploring a mixed method design, utilising quantitative Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data and combining it with EES stakeholder interviews, focusing on dysfunctions, redundancies, power asymmetries and cut off elements as well as in-layer division and public organisation behaviour.

One finding is, that regional economic development agencies (EDA), as a main public instrument to foster regional entrepreneurial activity, seem to bring the potential of a negative impact on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems bottom-up development and the ability to become self-sustained if they assume the role of competitors towards private organisations and businesses.

As other work on EES, the approach used in this paper only sub-optimally covers temporal system dynamics.

This paper contributes to future EES support policies being rooted in an empirical foundation.

This paper not only progresses the empirical basis for research on regional EES but also lays the foundation for specific policy implications for a sub-national level entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This paper aims to examine the European Union (EU) 95/2014 Directive’s impact on large public companies. It chose Italy as a pivotal country that made non-financial information assurance mandatory, going beyond the EU Directive’s original requirements. Specifically, it investigates how the UE Directive fosters institutionalisation of the non-financial reporting (NFR) process in organisations.

Two large public companies in Italy are used as case studies. Data are gathered from annual and integrated reports, institutional websites and semi-structured interviews with the managers and employees involved in different organisational positions. The authors adopted the neo-institutional theory as a theoretical lens to identify the organisations’ response to the (external) institutional pressures influencing corporate reporting practices.

The findings demonstrate how the EU Directive fostered changes to large public companies’ reporting practices and external pressures contributed to influencing changes to internal organisational practices in terms of new internal processes, procedures and structures. These changes are motivated by the companies’ need to guarantee reliable information to be produced in their non-financial reports.

This paper helps academics and policymakers to advance NFR practices by understanding regulatory factors that can foster changes in the internal reporting process and responsibility within organisations.

The findings provide some empirical insights to foster reflections on the EU Directive’s effectiveness in changing reporting practices. This paper contributes to enriching the literature on institutional theory in shaping mandatory non-financial disclosure by identifying the institutional pressures influencing the effectiveness of regulations to change NFR practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine security incident response practices of information technology (IT) security practitioners as a diagnostic work process, including the preparation phase, detection, and analysis of anomalies.

The data set consisted of 16 semi‐structured interviews with IT security practitioners from seven organizational types (e.g. academic, government, and private). The interviews were analyzed using qualitative description with constant comparison and inductive analysis of the data to analyze diagnostic work during security incident response.

The analysis shows that security incident response is a highly collaborative activity, which may involve practitioners developing their own tools to perform specific tasks. The results also show that diagnosis during incident response is complicated by practitioners' need to rely on tacit knowledge, as well as usability issues with security tools.

Owing to the nature of semi‐structured interviews, not all participants discussed security incident response at the same level of detail. More data are required to generalize and refine the findings.

The contribution of the work is twofold. First, using empirical data, the paper analyzes and describes the tasks, skills, strategies, and tools that security practitioners use to diagnose security incidents. The findings enhance the research community's understanding of the diagnostic work during security incident response. Second, the paper identifies opportunities for future research directions related to improving security tools.

This case study presents a critical analysis of why and how corporate managers in China are reluctant to adopt sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) provided by externally independent third-party assurers, despite the fact that it is acknowledged as a value-adding activity globally.

A longitudinal fieldwork case study was conducted from 2014 to 2019 in a Chinese central state-owned enterprise (CSOE), a pioneer in sustainability reporting practice since the mid-2000s, to collect first-hand empirical data on managerial perceptions of the adoption of external SRA. Semi-structured interviews with 25 managers involved in sustainability (reporting) practice were conducted. The interview data were triangulated with an analysis of archival documents and board meeting minutes pertaining to the undertakings of sustainability practices in the case study organization.

Our empirical analysis suggests that while managers recognize the benefits of adopting external SRA in enhancing the legitimacy of sustainability accountability, they oppose SRA because of their deep-rooted allegiance to the dominant logic of sociopolitical stability in China. SRA is envisaged to risk the stability of the socialist ideology with which CSOEs are imbued. Therefore, any transformational approach to accepting a novel (foreign) practice must be molded to gain control and autonomy, thereby maintain the hegemony of stability logic. Instead of disregarding external verification, managers of our case SOE appear to harness sustainability reporting as a navigational space to engage in internally crafted alternative manners in order to resist the rationality of SRA.

The empirical analysis presents a nuanced explanation as to why internal managers have hitherto been reluctant to embrace the embedding of independent assurance into the sustainability reporting process. Our prolonged fieldwork provides ample context-specific, intra-organizational evidence regarding the absence of SRA in Chinese CSOEs, which warrants more attention given their considerable presence in the global economy. In addition, the empirical analysis contributes to our understanding of the managerial capture of sustainability issues in a specific context of state capitalism and how organizations and individuals in an authoritarian regime interpret and respond to novel discourses derived from distinct institutional settings.

This study seeks to illuminate the managerial tensions inherent in implementing scaled agile (on the organizational, top management, middle management and team levels) and to frame these challenges within the broader context of project management.

The study adopts a grounded theory approach and delves into a qualitative dataset sourced from 34 interviews with subject matter experts actively engaged in scaling agile initiatives within large organizations spanning various industries. Additionally, the data have been enriched through a comprehensive literature review of the existing body of knowledge on scaling agile.

As a result of our investigation, we propose a framework of managerial tensions in scaling agile in large corporate settings and a series of research propositions and questions that may contribute significantly to the body of knowledge surrounding the phenomenon of “deprojectification” and propose agenda for the future studies in the field of project management.

The study also carries significant managerial implications. Firstly, based on the insights from the practice of scaling agile in large corporate setting, management can build awareness of the challenges inherent of transitioning to agile practices. This may help to anticipate the possible problems and proactively develop strategies how to address them. Secondly, management can be instructed about contingencies inherent in scaling agile, along with the potential disfunctions and side effects (unintended outcomes) that may emerge during the transition process. Thirdly, project management practitioners can gain insights on how scaling agile may cause shifts in the approach to managing projects, project team management and competencies that need to be developed to cope with environments where various approaches to managing projects coexist.

These insights can aid in the agile transition process, beginning with directing managerial attention toward contextual factors and progressing through potential challenges at the organizational, top management, middle management and team levels. Furthermore, the study highlights possible dysfunctionalities and side effects of scaling agile, shedding light on the “dark side” of agile.

The study contributes to the expansion of the empirical database on the implementation of agile practices in large organizational settings. It plays a role in defining and delineating the phenomenon of scaling agile within the context of project management and outlines a research agenda for future project management studies. Additionally, our study adds to the ongoing discourse surrounding the “deprojectification” effect that can occur during the scaling of agile. Lastly, it establishes connections between project management and software development literature regarding the implementation of agile at scale.

The authors aim to analyze the inequality in accessing distance learning during COVID-19 school closures.

The authors use the Household Pulse Survey, which is an effort by the United States (US) government to measure the well-being of American families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors employ a regression analysis to estimate the inequality in accessing distance learning by race and household income.

Disadvantaged children from nonwhite and low-income families have much less access to distance learning, including less access to online classes, digital devices and the Internet. Schools are critical providers of the Internet and digital devices to children from disadvantaged households. Schools and parents devote more attention to these nonwhite children by spending extra time on their learning activities.

This paper estimates the inequality in accessing distance learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Also, the authors analyze the responses of schools and parents toward this inequality.

The purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, the study has investigated the changing scenario of gender bias in households' education expenditure and the socioeconomic factors responsible for it. Secondly, the study has estimated the inequality in education expenditure for the male and female students and determined the significance of socioeconomic variables in gender discrimination.

To address the above-mentioned issues, this paper has used the unit-level data of NSSO 52nd, 64th, 71st and 75th rounds from 1995–1996 to 2017–2018. The log linear regression model is applied to estimate factor impending average education expenditure dynamics. The Oaxaca–Blinder Decomposition method has been employed to measure gender discrimination, and the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient are used to assess inequality among girls experiencing prejudice.

The study has discovered an gender bias in education expenditure against females during the study period in India. Further, it has been found that gender discrimination against girl students is decreasing. Moreover, the factors such as age, religion, castes, MPCE (income quantile), type of institution, present enrolment and type of education are responsible for this gender differences.

This paper uses 20 years of household-level data for study and suggests that discriminatory behaviour of households and credit constraints of the underdeveloped countries prevent investment in girl's education. Therefore, the state must pay for education of girls by offering scholarships and free or heavily subsidized education. In addition to this, awareness programs for gender equality should also be implemented by the government, especially in rural areas.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0537.

This study explores the role of rising US student loan debt in explaining income inequality.

The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling approach to explore the short- and long-run impact of college debt on income inequality in the US through quarterly data over the period 2000–2019.

The results demonstrate the detrimental impact of student debt on national and regional income inequality. Moreover, the regional analysis highlights a more pronounced impact of student debt on income distribution in South and West regions. The findings document that these regions, with the lower student debt proportions, have the lowest average cost of attending college. Finally, the analysis explores two potential channels – i.e. race and homeownership – that could explain the link between college student debt and income inequality.

The results can be helpful for policymakers and researchers to formulate practical approaches for assessing and addressing the rising national student debt and income inequality.

This is the first, to the best of the author's knowledge, study that explores the impact of US college debt on income inequality.

Although innovative HRM practices have been found to improve performance, the management literature has overlooked their effect on individual level outcomes, such as employee health and well‐being. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the implementation of these innovative practices has an impact on the three dimensions of well‐being (physical, psychological and social) and whether well‐being should be considered as a mediator of the innovative HRM‐performance relationship.

The paper uses qualitative data collected from an in‐depth case study via document analysis and semi‐structured interviews with HR practitioners and employees. The data were coded using N‐Vivo software.

The paper shows that innovative HRM practices can lead to both positive and negative well‐being outcomes. Furthermore, they create trade‐offs between the three dimensions of well‐being. While they increase employee well‐being on one dimension, they are detrimental to another.

Due to the scope of the research, the paper bounded itself to analyzing three innovative HRM practices. Different trade‐offs may exist for other practices.

Many organizations are introducing innovative HRM practices assuming that they will improve performance. However, the existence of well‐being trade‐offs needs to be acknowledged and managed.

This paper shows that for a comprehensive understanding of the effects of innovative HRM practices further studies need to contemplate the different dimensions of well‐being separately, as trade‐offs may occur between them. It further suggests that well‐being may be an unexplored mediator of the innovative HRM‐performance relationship.

To meet the rising global needs, the humanitarian community has signed off on making a strategic change toward more localisation, which commonly refers to the empowerment of national and local actors in humanitarian assistance. However, to this date, actual initiatives for localisation are rare. To enhance understanding of the phenomenon, the authors explore localisation of logistics preparedness capacities and obstacles to its implementation. The authors particularly take the perspective of the international humanitarian organisation (IHO) community as they are expected to implement the localisation strategy.

A phenomenon-driven, exploratory and qualitative study was conducted. Data collection included in-depth interviews with 28 experienced humanitarian professionals.

The findings showed the ambiguity inherent in the localisation strategy with largely different views on four important dimensions. Particularly, the interviewees differ about strengthening external actors or internal national/local offices. The resulting framework visualises the gap between strategy formulation and implementation, which forms major obstacles to the localisation aims.

Further research is required to support the advancement of localisation of logistics preparedness capacities. Important aspects for future research include triangulation of results, other stakeholder perspectives and the influence of context.

The authors add to the important debate surrounding localisation by offering remedies to overcoming obstacles to strategy implementation. Further, the authors’ proposed framework offers a language to precisely describe the ways in which IHOs (should) view localisation of logistics preparedness capacities and its operationalisation.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first academic article on localisation within the humanitarian logistics context.