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In this paper, my claim is that employee ownership of industrial companies enables economic survival, democracy, and joint responsibility. My main focus is a case study of Ljuders Nickelsilfverfabrik and its change to employee ownership. In 1980, 36 of the 42 employees became owners. My research question is how have the economy and democracy in an employee-owned industrial company changed over the years? My main research method includes a 35-year in-depth longitudinal case study of Ljuders Nickelsilfverfabrik since its employee takeover. The empirical material includes documents, interviews, participant observations, and informal talks over the entire study period. My theory is based on the study by Connell Fanning and McCarthy (1983, 1986), who have compiled the critical literature on employee-owned companies and have asked why so few employee-owned companies exist in Western economies. They formulate six non-viability hypotheses for employee ownership, against which I present my empirical study and conclude that employee ownership is possible. From my case study in combination with the literature about organizational changes, I formulate a recipe for a successful employee takeover and collective entrepreneurship. The experience of Ljuders Nickelsilfverfabrik shows that a more complete business idea can subsequently unfold with the help of different people’s knowledge and experiences. Degeneration from democratic to more traditional ownership and control can be avoided by placing new people in leadership positions. The management must create legitimacy for a different organizational form for internal and external stakeholders.

The world is changing very rapidly with events that alter the landscape for students during a time when entrepreneurs are needed more than ever. This chapter explores trends in entrepreneurship research that are focused in areas of the entrepreneurial mindset, alleviation of poverty through entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, portfolio thinking about entrepreneurial venture types, the crucial nature of racial diversity, and the drive of women entrepreneurs. It also examines COVID-19’s disparate impact on smaller ventures and Black entrepreneurs, while highlighting its impact on spurring entrepreneurial innovations causing an entrepreneurial explosion. Most importantly, this chapter focuses on how the emerging research trends amidst the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted entrepreneurship educators to enact educational innovations. The chapter includes tools and tips to integrate into the changing nature of university programs and entrepreneurship curriculums facing a dynamic future.

This chapter explicates inter-firm governance mechanisms and suggests employing similar approaches for managing corporate governance issues in an Islamic business setting. A number of theoretical approaches outline the motivation of business firms to choose between contractual versus non-contractual governance mechanisms in inter-firm business transactions. In addition, a number of socioeconomic and transactional factors also affect inter-firm governance choices. Obviously, a number of country-specific transactional elements affect corporate governance. Therefore, the chapter suggests that preferences for governance mechanisms may provide guidelines for corporate governance, particularly in an Islamic business context.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

This chapter provides a logical extension to the understanding of firm-specific advantages and disadvantages and the enabling role of existing and emerging country-specific advantages relevant to the process of Chinese firm internationalization. Its longitudinal perspective considers the changing objectives and actions of firms that enable them to compensate for disadvantages and create new or strengthen existing competitive advantages. The case study evaluation reveals that the evolution of strategic resources is the key motivator behind the internationalization of Chinese firms. Decisively encouraged by the Chinese government firms with corporate entrepreneurship aspire to alter themselves from home market leaders and regional players into globally competing multi-nationals. This process is made possible via the development of firm-specific advantages and continuous compensation for firm-specific disadvantages. The aspiration for strategic asset acquisition from developed countries combined with cost leadership and independent customer-centred innovation brought about strong firm-specific advantages stimulating the internationalization process of firms. The chapter focuses on the interdependence of country- and firm-specific advantages and disadvantages, thus recognizing the significance of the home country institutional context in Chinese outward foreign direct investment. It has been identified that corporate entrepreneurship is a significant firm-specific advantage for firm internationalization being a major force in gaining, accumulating, utilizing and leveraging resources for transforming firm-specific disadvantages into advantages. We argue that if the relational framework between governmental institutions and firms is more developed, the impact of country-specific advantages on firm-specific advantages is more favourable. This assumes that the government espouses an ideology that is favourable to corporate entrepreneurship.

This study examines the relations among management control systems (MCS), environmental uncertainty (EU), and organizational slack (OS). Given a firm's EU, managing OS requires the support of an appropriately designed MCS. Thus, for different levels of OS and EU, we examine two forms of MCS: budgetary control and performance measurement system encompassing both financial and nonfinancial measures. EU and OS were determined using archival data, and MCS data was obtained via a survey questionnaire to chief executive officers (CEOs). As hypothesized, the results show that, given firms’ EU, the two forms of control play distinct but different roles in managing OS.

Transaction cost economics (TCE) has received extensive attention from a variety of disciplines, but it holds a particularly central place in strategic management. The focal issues examined by TCE, vertical integration and interfirm governance (including contract design), are important determinants of firm performance – the central issue in the field of strategy. While several extensive reviews of empirical work in TCE have been undertaken, one key issue has received relatively little attention – construct validity in TCE empirical research. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight some of the challenges of operationalizing key transaction cost predictions and provide some ideas for better measuring core constructs such as asset specificity, uncertainty, and frequency.

The concept of fit is central to theories in both the fields of strategic management and organizational behavior. It is our contention that many key questions in the field of entrepreneurship might also be successfully addressed through a fit approach. For instance, why do entrepreneurs often make poor managers? And why must founders often be replaced by professional managers as their firms grow? The idea of misfit is implicit in both of these questions. A fit perspective may also be beneficial in better understanding specific entrepreneurial behaviors. For example, why does one entrepreneur start and grow multiple businesses over his or her career (serial) while another might be content with starting only one business (novice)? or Why does one entrepreneur continually strive to grow his or her firm while another is content to arrest development (lifestyle) at a certain level? All of these questions, and obviously many more, can be viewed and examined as questions of fit.