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This paper aims to analyse the role of a network in the development of female business experiences through the study of the Industrie Femminili Italiane (I.F.I.) (Italian Women’s Cooperative Enterprise), founded in 1903 in Rome to promote women’s work and their economic conditions.

This study applies the embeddedness theory for women’s empowerment that provides a valuable lens to explore the interactions between female entrepreneurs and their social, cultural and economic contexts.

With this study, the authors found that the network structure was used at the beginning of the past century in Italy as a useful instrument for female emancipation and empowerment, extending to common/not exceptional women entrepreneurial opportunities otherwise reserved for rich and noble women. In the interplay among the different “contexts” (political, social, cultural and cognitive), it seems to emerge the incidence of female social relationships in facing an unfavourable political and cultural context, breaking out the norms and allowing the business to exist and influencing, with the activity of the high social standing women, the cognitive structure of the other female workers, make them active participants in this entrepreneurial activity.

This is a single case study that has shed light on a specific female network, and the authors’ findings and considerations are influenced by the shortage of data and sources available. Demonstrating that I.F.I. is the result of the collaboration of women from different social classes involved at different organisational levels, this work shows, from a historical perspective, the importance of female mutual support for their emancipation and the role played by the network structure as an amplifier of possibilities otherwise limited to rich women, the emancipation of women and minorities in countries characterised by important barriers to entrepreneurship.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper analysing a female entrepreneurial network from a historical point of view and its role in overcoming gender barriers within the analysis of the interplaying contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the perceptions of food business operators (FBOs) in Kirklees Council in relation to the importance of official food inspection of food premises, performed by the local authority.

A semi-structured questionnaire was developed to survey the opinions of FBOs in Kirklees Council in relation to the significance and consistency of official food control. The business types included were retailers, commercial restaurants, schools, care homes, pub, bars and cafes.

Based on the total of 236 respondents, the results show that 45.8% of the respondents opined that official food control has considerably improved their food hygiene practices and that official inspection is their only source of information about the latest food safety legislation. Moreover, another 168(71.2%) believed that the instructions given by the inspectors are clear and easily understandable. However, some respondents, especially the small and medium-sized businesses believed that remedying noncompliance caused them financial burden. In addition, significant positive correlations exist between the bigger FBOs and high frequencies of negotiating noncompliance with the inspectors due to the high cost of capital that will be needed to remedy the spotted noncompliance by an officer during control (Kruskal–Wallis r = 0.034, p < 0.003).

As with most studies, it is important to borne in mind that the design of the current study is subject to limitations and these limitations could be addressed in future research. The self-reported data collection employed in this study is limited by the fact that it rarely can be independently verified. In other words, the self-reported data used in this study might be subject to (1) selective memory: respondents might remember or not able to remember all the details of the inspections that occurred at some point in the past, however, inspections are often documented, and businesses usually have a copy of every inspection reports. (2) exaggeration: respondents might over or underrepresent outcomes of inspections and (3) attribution: respondents might attribute positive events and outcomes to their own agency but attribute negative events and outcomes to external forces. Nonetheless, the strength of this study lies in its large sample size and high response rate which makes it easier to assess the representativeness of the sample and to generalise the results.

The behaviour of the FBOs towards food control and the opinion of the FBOs about food safety may have an important effect on the organisation of official food control in Kirklees Council, but there is no scientific data to back it up. Furthermore, the perceptions of FBOs and the role of food control in food safety in Kirklees Council have not been investigated, which makes this research a novelty.

This study aims to clarify identity building and authenticity management in human brand research, focusing on inside operators managing corporate accounts on social media. Conventional human brand research analyzes online influencers, and there is a research gap in whether these previous findings apply to corporate accounts.

Using netnography and interview data, this study analyzes Japanese corporate accounts on Twitter.

A corporate account’s identity is constructed under the influence of not only the brand but also the actual inside operator, called naka-no-hito, and other accounts that interact on social media. Corporate accounts are able to exhibit humanistic passion through the inside operator’s personality and maintain a distance from commerciality – to manage their authenticity. These activities attract general and other corporate and media accounts, and interactions with them re-create promotion effects.

This study observed that corporate accounts’ authenticity is not a trade-off between passion and commercial transparency but a compatibility achieved by coordinating interests among actors, together with the presence of inside operators.

The present study aims to explore the concepts involved in the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer and employee satisfaction in service industries.

The research literature over the recent decade has been analyzed using a systematic review. Through thematic analysis and coding the findings of the final selected articles, the authors presented an integrative framework of the relationship between CSR and the satisfaction of critical stakeholders of service companies, namely, customers and employees.

The research framework encompasses six main categories called CSR, satisfaction, moderators, conditional variables, contextual variables and satisfaction outcomes. All categories but CSR are divided into customer and employee sections to make the research framework further comprehensible.

The results show that in service industries, employees need as much attention as customers, and CSR efforts to satisfy customers and employees can lead to several positive outputs for companies.

Failure of service companies to commit to their social responsibility may harm the environment, society’s ethics and laws and long-term corporate profitability. On the other hand, adherence to CSR can lead to social development and economic growth.

This study is one of the most comprehensive studies in the field of CSR and satisfaction, which simultaneously considers the two key stakeholders of a service company. In addition, it provides valuable avenues for further studies.

This chapter discusses the extension of legal equality between male and female citizens in four states in North Africa – Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria – through one specific lens: A married woman's legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce without the husband's consent. Building on the works of Stein Rokkan and Reinhard Bendix on the expansion of citizenship to the ‘lower classes’, it is argued that amendments in divorce law by introducing in-court divorce for women, in addition to out-of-court divorce, is a significant institutional change that extends legal equality between men and women. The introduction of in-court divorce expands female citizenship by bolstering woman's juridical autonomy and capacity in state law. Changes in divorce laws are thus part of state centralization by means of standardizing rules that regulate family law through public administrative institutions rather than religious organizations. Two questions are addressed: First, how did amendments in divorce laws occur after independence? Second, in which ways did women's bolstered legal capacity in divorce have a spill over effect on reforms in other patriarchal state laws? Based on observations on sequences of change in four states in North Africa, it is argued that amendments that equalize between men and women in divorce should be seen as a key driver for reforms in other state laws, that reduce legal inequality between male and female citizens. In all four states, women's citizenship was extended in nationality law and criminal law after amendments in divorce law gave women unilateral legal power to exit a marital relationship.

This study aims to use emotions-as-social information theory to investigate how physical (customer perceived store atmosphere) and social servicescapes (customer information searching) influence the effects of employees’ positive affective displays on customer outcomes via customer positive moods and positive expectation disconfirmation.

This research included two studies, each using a distinct research design, to empirically test the proposed model. Study 1 involved 200 observational data points on objective purchase amounts from designer watch shops. In Study 2, data were collected from 230 customers in designer jewelry stores.

The results of path analyses revealed that: employee positive affective displays are positively associated with customer purchase outcomes; employee positive affective displays had positive indirect effects on customer purchase outcomes by enhancing customer positive moods and positive expectation disconfirmation; these positive indirect effects were strengthened when customers engaged in information search behaviors; and these positive indirect effects were attenuated when customers perceive store atmosphere as favorable, indicating a substitution effect of customer perceived store atmosphere.

Previous research has not thoroughly examined the role of the servicescape in moderating the effects of employees’ positive affective displays on customer purchase outcomes. This present study not only clarified the affective and cognitive mechanisms that link employees’ positive affective displays on purchase outcomes but also identified servicescape as a critical boundary condition of these effects.

This chapter shows that students' counter-storytelling revealed feeling tolerated, invisible, isolated, and judged as well as needing to prove oneself, overcome stereotypes, and act as the spokesperson for one's race based on the dissertation conducted by April M. Clay, one of the authors. Through critical race theory (CRT), it can be gathered from the responses that race and racism affect the African American students' quality of life in school. Whether they said race played a significant role explicitly or implicitly, the participants' counter-stories revealed a shared experience of feeling outcasted.

This paper seeks to add a historical perspective to the contemporary debate concerning women’s entrepreneurship in India. This study aims to explore the quantitative and qualitative research map of the research field of women’s entrepreneurship. Through this exploration, the authors aim to portray the historical and contemporary factors related to women’s entrepreneurship development in India, the problems and the opportunities. Future research opportunities are also identified based on the keyword analysis.

The study uses a systematic literature review to analyze the historical and theoretical perspectives of women’s entrepreneurship in India. The bibliometric analysis portrays the publication landscape, including the most popular journals, authors and countries, citation analysis and keyword analysis. The content analysis reveals the thematic clusters of the research field.

The content analysis of the management literature on women’s entrepreneurship reveals four primary clusters from the research: contextual embeddedness in women’s entrepreneurship, reasons for starting a business, microfinance interventions and empowerment of women entrepreneurs and marginalization dynamics for women entrepreneurs in India’s informal sector. The study also presents implications for policymakers and a women entrepreneurs’ development framework.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to comprehensively analyze the management literature on women’s entrepreneurship in India from a historical perspective. The study combines bibliometric mapping and content analysis for a holistic presentation of the research field of women’s entrepreneurship in India and future research opportunities.