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The objective of this longitudinal ethnography of a rural small town in Northern Sweden, following the presence and identifying the processes associated with an incoming entrepreneur, was to better understand entrepreneurship in a rural context. The significant shaping of entrepreneurship by context is increasingly recognised, with entrepreneurship in depleted communities being an important part of this research movement. This chapter is positioned at the conjunction of these literatures. The authors have studied this community for 10 years; regularly interviewing the entrepreneur and residents; attending meetings and making observations. The authors found that the entrepreneurial creation of garden provoked a raft of change, such that entrepreneurship reverberated throughout the town. To explain these effects, the authors developed the concept of entrepreneurial energy. Entrepreneurial energy is a vitality produced in and by entrepreneurship. It works, in part, as a role model, holding up examples of what can be done. But much more, the presence of entrepreneurial energy serves to invigorate others. It becomes amplified in new ways of doing, new ways of being, yet calcified in the entrepreneurial actions of others. The authors saw how it unleashed the latent, promoted the possible, to entrepreneurially revive the town.

The importance of family firms for the development of capitalism, both past and present, has in recent years become widely recognized. Today there is a fast increasing body of literature about forms of family business and variations in family capitalism. Despite this new interest, few of these studies have made the family itself the focus of enquiry – and how different types of family structures and cultural traditions may influence the strategies and development of the family firm. Such connections are explored by comparing and discussing two cases of family firms and their history, set in Norway and Italy, respectively. It is argued that these two cases may be seen as examples of quite different ‘modes of familism’, with different implications for the running of an economic enterprise. These differences concern, first and foremost, cultural conceptions of gender, forms of inheritance, and the role of marriage in constituting the family firm.

Although the literature addressing entrepreneurial networking is reaching a fairly high degree of sophistication and scope, there are certain critical areas where important questions remain unanswered. Specifically, research into the processes of entrepreneurial networking has been hindered by a paucity of longitudinal studies. Thus, the consideration of change over time is de facto limited. Moreover, accounts of how individuals actually use networks to learn about entrepreneurship, its practices and processes remain sparse. Yet, we know that learning is a social process, so the research gap lies in relating networks, as social contexts to the entrepreneurial learning process. Furthermore, since social relations are fundamental to everyone's life, and emerge, develop and change throughout their life course, people are embedded in social situations that put them in touch with others (Kim & Aldrich, 2005). Consequently, learning is often “located in the relations among actors” (Uzzi & Lancaster, 2003, p. 398). As well as direct learning through network contacts, network transitivity also facilitates learning by one embedded network member, through the knowledge held by a second member, about a third, as shown in Uzzi and Gillespie's (2002) study. Accordingly, in many ways how entrepreneurs go about using their networks and with whom they network may be critical for entrepreneurship and thus warrants investigation. It is to this end that we now consider the shape, content and process of entrepreneurial networking.

This chapter offers an empirical examination of the impact of World Governance indicators (WGIs) on stock market development. The understanding is based on the premise of institutional economics that strong institutional governance, in terms of laws and regulations, results in positive developments in financial institutions.

The data which covers the years 1996–2016, include all world countries where a stock market operates. The authors use standard statistical tools that include Johansen co-integration test, linearity, normality tests, and regression analysis, together with discriminant analysis as a robustness check.

The empirical findings show that (a) a negative association exists between Voice and Accountability and stock market development, (b) a positive association exists between each of Political Stability, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption, and stock market development for most World’s regions stock markets, (c) both Voice and Accountability and Political Stability indicators are the major influential indicators for the stock market development across world stock markets.

This chapter offers quantitative evidence about the benefits of strong institutional governance to stock market development. In addition, the chapter offers significant guidelines to policymakers regarding the institutional factors that can be enhanced to promote stock market development.

The purpose of the study was to explore in literature what different leadership styles and behaviors of head nurses have a positive influence on the outcomes of patient safety or quality of care.

We reviewed the literature from January 2000 until September 2011. We searched Pubmed, Embase, Cinahl, Psychlit, and Econlit.

We found 10 studies addressing the relationship between head nurse leadership and safety and quality. A wide array of styles and practices were associated with different patient outcomes. Transformational leadership was the most used concept in the studies. A trend can be observed over these studies suggesting that a trustful relationship between the head nurse and subordinates is an important driving force for the achievement of positive patient outcomes. Furthermore, the effects of these trustful relationships seem to be amplified by supporting mechanisms, often objective conditions like clinical pathways and, especially, staffing level.

This study offers an up-to-date review of the limited number of studies on the relationship between nurse leadership and patient outcomes. Although mostly transformational leadership was found to be responsible for positive associations with outcomes, also contingent reward had positive influence on outcomes. We formulated some comments on the predominance of the transformational leadership concept and suggested the application of complexity theory and political leadership for the current context of care. We formulated some implications for practice and further research, mainly the need for more systematic empirical and cross cultural studies and the urgent need for the development of a validated set of nurse-sensitive patient outcome indicators.

The hallmark of the “European Approach to Entrepreneurship,” if there is such a thing, has been its diversity. European entrepreneurship research has been like Europe itself, a panoply of diverse ways of thinking, expressed in theories, methods, or research questions. Only when comparing European research to North American do observers find a semblance of commonality. For example, it appears that European researchers as a whole tend to use more fieldwork and qualitative analysis approaches than do their North American counterparts (e.g., Aldrich, 2000). However, this perhaps reflects a stronger academia-based and quantitative dominant research paradigm among North American researchers than among the diverse research traditions currently active in Europe.

The expansion of new technologies has induced the digital revolution and paved the way for an innovation-based economy. Digitalization, while blurring real and virtual environments, acts as an incentive for innovation and has been regarded as a tool to tackle the crisis. Its particular acceleration was caused by the lockdown regulations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social entrepreneurship searches for innovative methods, tools and models to solve pressing social problems. The concept suggests applying business models for implementing social missions. Revenue generated from commercial activities is spent to solve social challenges caused by market imperfection, government inefficiency, disasters, pandemics, wars and economic crises. Advancing technologies, on the one hand, present opportunities for social enterprises and, on the other hand, involve risks to employment, data protection, transformed business model and strategies and changes in society's lifestyle and impose costly digital technologies to be adopted. Social entrepreneurs can create social value by using digital technologies that allow them to reach remote customers, investors or beneficiaries overcoming geographical boundaries or time differences. Yet digitalization can pose a threat to existing jobs as they become redundant; it transforms them or gives rise to new jobs while demanding technological skills and digital literacy. Moreover, enhanced digitalization and effective governmental actions set the stage for the decline of social business. The chapter explores the influence of digitalization on social entrepreneurship and discusses the potential of digital transformation for social enterprises. It examines the risks and opportunities that bring accelerated digitalization to social entrepreneurship.

This chapter explores how the concept of ‘peace’ has evolved and broadened over time within the Peace Studies Field to include at least seven aspects (Part I), and how a somewhat parallel evolution has occurred within the field of Business Ethics, so that each of these seven aspects of peace has implications for business ethics (Part II). In Part I, peace is defined as different, evolving visions and goals necessary for creating a more peaceful society and world. These seven aspects of peace also build on each other, collectively creating a more holistic, integrative view of peace for the 21st century, along with the need for various forms of nonviolence for bringing about these needed visions and goals. Each of these seven aspects of peace can also be seen as being based on certain underlining principles. What is most interesting to see is that these underlying principles seem to also be at work in the evolution of business ethics, implying that humanity is indeed moving towards addressing evolving aspects of what must be addressed for creating a world that increasingly works for everyone. This is perhaps a surprising but quite significant discovery.