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This study addresses current research gaps by integrating resilience literature with crisis management theories, focussing on SMEs. Specifically, the authors examine how the entrepreneurial decision-making process, via the interplay of causation and effectuation logic, impacts a firm's ability to respond to unpredictable events. This paper aims to present an investigation that seeks to unearth the potentially complex interplay between causation and effectuation logic in fostering organisational resilience, particularly in the face of unprecedented disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study includes the responses of 80 Italian entrepreneurs operating in the hospitality sector. The paper deployed a joint analysis through a partial least squares structural equation modelling technique (PLS-SEM) and a necessary condition analysis (NCA) to assess how the decision-making logics impact the entrepreneurs' decision when reacting to the pandemic.

The findings show that how entrepreneurs make decisions influence how they react to the crisis. Causation was found as a direct cause of resilience and preparedness, and effectuation was a direct cause of resilience and agility. Moreover, causation indirectly caused resilience through preparedness, and effectuation indirectly caused resilience through agility. Finally, both preparedness and agility are direct causes of resilience.

This research generated insights into why and how some SMEs respond more effectively to uncertainty than others. It provides actionable strategies that business owners and managers can employ to enhance their ability to withstand and recover from crises.

This study's originality and novelty lie in its empirical investigation of the roles of causation and effectuation logic in entrepreneurial decision-making and, consequently, their influence on SME resilience. Focused on the Italian hospitality sector, it provides unique insights into resilience strategies under severe, real-world conditions, contributing to theoretical development and practical applications in crisis management.

Doctoral students are promising entrepreneurial actors in university-based ventures, which positively impact the external environment and create value for their universities. In this article, the authors extend current research on academic entrepreneurship by shedding light on the role of university support in the early stage of Ph.D. entrepreneurship. Based on social information processing theory, the authors posit that academic entrepreneurship results from the interplay between doctoral students' human capital and university-level support. A multilevel model is proposed and empirically tested to shed light on the cradle of doctoral students' entrepreneurship by explaining the variance of their entrepreneurial alertness and intentions.

A model is proposed that explains the combined effect of specific human capital and different forms of university support on doctoral students' cognitive transition from entrepreneurial alertness to intentions. The model was then tested through structural equation modeling (SEM) and multigroup analysis (MGA) on a sample of 187 doctoral students enrolled in Italian universities.

The SEM results reveal that doctoral students' entrepreneurial alertness is influenced by perceived educational support and human capital. The MGA demonstrates that those who perceive a higher level of support for concept and business development from universities are more likely to convert their alertness into intentions than those who perceive lower support.

The present paper brings to the stage doctoral students as an extremely promising entrepreneurial target. In doing so, it extends academic entrepreneurship studies by detailing how and when the different forms of university support influence their entrepreneurial decisions, along with individual dimensions.

The chapter presents the process of decision-making and the practice of international expansion of a family business in the nineteenth century. The Swiss family business Legler moved to the area near Bergamo, Italy, in 1875, and expanded its operation over multiple generations. This chapter explores the cognitive dimension of the internationalisation process, how culture and family ties are used to understand risk and opportunities, and how a family business interprets push and pull factors under the lens of cultural self-representation and meaning creation. The historical analysis shows the importance of economic, cultural, and family-driven factors in the process of decision-making and in the practice of going abroad and making internationalisation successful and long-lasting.

The aim of this study is to systematise the entrepreneurial coaching (EC) literature by understanding how the phenomenon has been investigated along four dimensions inspired by Gartner’s (1985) conceptualisation of entrepreneurship: entrepreneurial process, context, target and outcomes. In so doing, this study will provide a frame of its multifunctional role and identify relevant gaps and suggestions for future research.

We conducted a systematic literature review to collect existing works on EC. We analysed 85 selected papers with a qualitative content analysis that allowed us to highlight relevant research themes for the entrepreneurial process, context, outcomes and target.

Our results demonstrate that EC has a multifunctional role in entrepreneurship that can be summarised in five different typologies, depending on the stage of the entrepreneurial process in which it is applied, the context, the target and the outcomes.

As one of the first attempts to systematise studies on EC, this work extends previous conceptualisation of EC by detailing different typologies of this intervention, thereby contributing to reduced fragmentation and conceptual ambiguity.

Studies of unicorns and gazelles can offer detailed information about the process of enterprise development but are unrepresentative as examples of entrepreneurial success. In presenting a novel method for outlier analysis, this article combines insights from case studies of unusual organizations with explanatory frameworks that management scholars have applied to broader samples of firms, irrespective of their survival.

The authors illustrate the approach to outlier analysis using a prominent case from economic history: the House of Rothschild, founded during the 18th century, which became the most famous investment bank in Europe. Following the iterative refinement of mechanisms using comparison data on Jewish enclave firms, this analysis sheds light on the sources of dissimilarity in outcomes between Rothschild and the comparison group.

The study results suggest that the House of Rothschild's longevity can be explained via the mechanisms of risk sequencing, intergenerational transfers and spatial brokerage. The authors show that these mechanisms are not idiosyncratic to one enterprise but instead generalize to other family firms.

Outlier analysis encourages a rapprochement between case study and large-N research. The high failure rate of new organizations means that those yielding a large amount of information to researchers tend to be exceptional. By obtaining data on a comparison group of startups founded by similar entrepreneurs, analysts can probe the mechanisms of success identified for unicorns or gazelles.

This paper examines the current state of blockchain governance research. The study’s findings also propose a conceptual framework for the use of blockchain in governance and global governance and provide a global look at how public and private sectors alike are implementing new technologies.

The study is qualitative as well as quantitative in nature. The authors used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) to gather data for the study. Furthermore, a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer visualization tool and R Studio was carried out to attain the research objectives.

Many scholars and practitioners from around the world are interested in the topic, according to the analysis. This is a multidisciplinary study, so researchers have looked at how the blockchain can be used to govern countries, public utilities and global facilities, including corporations. There are numerous examples of how technology has been used in global governance, and the authors found that governments, as well as corporations around the world, have implemented technology in a variety of areas that affect the public and other stakeholders.

This study makes numerous contributions. In the first place, it presents the complex concept of blockchain in an easier to understand way. The numerous governmental and commercial initiatives that have made use of blockchain are also highlighted. As a result, the use of technology in corporate and social governance will continue to grow. Finally, the research will inform the academic community on the current state of the topic and potential future directions.

As a result of this research, academics and scholars can better understand the potential of blockchain in various governance models, ranging from developed to developing economies. The general public, as well as organizations, will benefit from the decentralized nature of the blockchain in a variety of ways related to their day-to-day governance. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is a first kind of research on blockchain in governance using PRISMA and bibliometrics tools.