Search results

Radical feminist theory and practice has actively questioned power relationships between men, women and people of color as a cornerstone of capitalist development since the 1970s while demonstrating the differential impact of such inequality generating structures and relationships on lives and bodies. Their argument about the process of social reproduction and, especially, the reproduction of labor-power both achieved through the dispossession of the female and (colonial) body and the expropriation of their work (Federici, 2004) is acutely relevant to the analysis of the consequences of the unfolding Global Financial Crisis. Yet, the crisis can be a motivating force for changing the established power relations. Using three different case studies of female initiatives aiming to counteract the imposition of neoliberal attack on their livelihoods in crisis-stricken Greece, the chapter examines how the existing experience of feminist thinking and activism from within and outside of academia, can contribute to the cultivation of affective embodied relations, and building upon the idea of “feminist solidarity” (Mohanty, 2003), in addressing the challenges of the crisis and post-crisis policies.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the interactive processes linking lived embodied experiences, language and cognition (body-talk-mind) and their implications for organizational change.

The authors use an “embodied realism” approach to examine how people feel/perceive/act (embodied experiences), how they make sense of their experiences (cognition) and how they use language and communication to “talk sense” into their social reality. To exemplify the framework, the authors use a cooking metaphor. In this metaphor, language is the “sauce”, the catalyst, which blends raw, embodied, “lived” experience with consequent rationalizations (“cooking up”) of experience. To demonstrate the approach, the authors employ the study of a Chinese multinational subsidiary in Bangkok, Thailand, where participants were encouraged to build embodied models and tell their stories through them.

The authors found that participants used embodied metaphors in a number of ways (positive and negative connotations) in different contexts (single or multicultural groups) for different purposes. Participants could be said to be “cooking up” realities according to the situated context. The methodology stimulated an uncovering of ineffable, tacit or sensitive issues that were problematic or potentially problematic within the organization.

The authors bring back the importance of lived embodied experiences, language and cognition into IB research. The authors suggest that embodied metaphors capture descriptions of reality that stimulate reflexivity, uncover suppressed organizational problems and promote the contestation of received wisdoms when organizational change is pressing and urgent. The authors see the approach as offering the potential to give voice to embodied cultures throughout the world and thereby make IB research more practically relevant.

This paper aims to analyse the Portuguese companies’ determinants of capital structure. To reach this objective, the authors used data from 37 non-financial Portuguese large enterprises and from 4,233 non-financial small and medium enterprises for the period 2010-2016. Additionally, the authors selected a sub-period from 2010 to 2014 for a deeper understanding of the impact of the sovereign debt crisis and the Economic Adjustment Programme of Troika on the capital structure of those companies.

Three dependent variables were tested according to debt maturity, and a dynamic panel data model, namely, the generalised method of moments system estimator, was used to test the formulated research hypotheses following Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) to capture the dynamic nature of the firm’s capital structure decisions.

In general, the results point out that the capital structure decisions depend on a set of firm-specific factors, and that the effects of the determinants of the debt maturity ratios differ according to the type of firm, i.e. large/small firms, and the economic cycle.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has been carried out in Portugal by using two samples of large and small companies for analysing the effects of the Economic Adjustment Programme of Troika on the capital structure of companies. The authors seek to understand which type of companies suffered more because of the effects of the Economic Adjustment Programme of Troika during this period, and which are the capital structure determinants that present greater change. Contrary to what might be expected, large companies are the firms that suffer most from the Economic Adjustment Programme. Probably, because these companies are the most immediate, most scrutinised and those that must show abroad that the bank did not fund them in the long term, because of the imposition and limits to grant credit faced by the banks themselves.

The inability to secure funding is a common problem for entrepreneurs. Crowdlending can help overcome this problem. But what motivates crowdlenders? The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of two forms of investor motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) in crowdlending in Spain by exploring the elements that affect the low percentage of equity invested.

The study is based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 206 investors in projects posted on the crowdlending platform Colectual. FsQCA enables the identification of causal configurations that lead to a low percentage of equity invested in crowdlending. The extrinsic motivation conditions are economic return and perceived risk. For intrinsic motivation, the conditions are the corporate social responsibility (CSR) characteristics of the project and CSR reporting by the platform. The age of the investor is also considered to study whether behaviour differs across age groups.

When investors attach high importance to economic returns (extrinsic motivation), the percentage of wealth allocated to their investment is low. In relation to intrinsic motivation, investors who attach little importance to CSR invest a low percentage of their wealth. The same is true of those who feel that Colectual's risk management is weak and those aged approximately 26 years old.

Understanding the motivations of investors can give platforms insight into the expectations of one of its main stakeholders: the backers themselves. The study also sheds light on business models where CSR is the core element. This paper thus describes a new paradigm to which other platforms can relate. It can prove useful as an incentive to integrate stakeholder concerns in other business models to create not only economic but also social value.

Investors' motivation is shown to be both intrinsic and extrinsic. Until now, there has been little evidence of the motivation of crowdlending investors. Methodologically, this study is also valuable. The use of fsQCA reveals the combinations of conditions that lead to the outcome (i.e. the reasons for low investment in crowdlending). Moreover, the analysis provides insight into the situation in Spain and the reasons why crowdfunding is less developed in Spain than in other European countries.

The main objective of this work is to show that the traditional specific characteristics of companies as well as cultural and religious dimensions can influence the leverage of companies in different macro-environmental systems.

To achieve this aim, the authors have used data from 1.568 firms from 7 European countries between 2010 and 2016, and the models were estimated by using panel data methodology, specifically the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998).

Overall, the empirical results point out that the cultural moderating factors are essential in determining companies' capital structure, regardless of the country's legal origin. The study results also show that traditional variables, intrinsic to management, macroeconomic environment and religion, have a central role in capital structure, namely for the civilian countries.

As far as the authors know, this is the first work that uses, in addition to the traditional specific characteristics of companies, cultural dimensions and religion, as determinants of debt levels, in different legal systems for Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative industries develop an entrepreneurial identity. It also aims to expand research on cultural and creative entrepreneurship.

The study is based on longitudinal qualitative cases and analyses the potential entrepreneurial identity development of eight cultural and creative entrepreneurs from Germany. The researchers create a framework to ascertain whether and, if so, how cultural and creative entrepreneurs develop an entrepreneurial identity.

The findings suggest that cultural and creative entrepreneurs do develop an entrepreneurial identity and incorporate their cultural and creative identity into that entrepreneurial identity whereas self-reflection is a key driver in the development.

Cultural and creative entrepreneurs are a key driver of economic development. Hence, it is important to generate a more detailed understanding of their entrepreneurial mind-set and their behaviour.

The study suggests that cultural and creative entrepreneurs actively develop an entrepreneurial identity and that self-reflection, communication with other entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial experience are the main drivers of their identity development. Nevertheless, their cultural and creative identity does have an influence on their entrepreneurial identity. In addition, the study demonstrates how such entrepreneurs develop their identity.