Search results

This paper specifies how to construct and validate an instrument based on multi‐item scales for the cataloguing and measurement of managerial and organizational capabilities on the basis of management perceptions. The construction and reduction of the scales have been reinforced by the Delphi and retesting techniques. The use of this methodology was illustrated in a sample of Spanish industrial firms. The paper enhances the value of the instruments for a resource‐based view with regard to the faithful and rigorous measurement of its key concept, distinctive competences. The scales created provide consistent empirical evidence to remove doubts surrounding managerial self‐evaluation, including those arising from problems of self‐esteem and reinforcement effects. In addition, the paper provides empirical evidence to support the predictive ability of distinctive competences on current and long‐term performance variability.

This study aims to form a valid measure and hierarchical framework to achieve corporate sustainability transitions (CSTs).

The fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) is applied to validate and eliminate challenges in sustainability transition regarding qualitative information. Fuzzy interpretive structural modeling (FISM) is used to build a hierarchical framework under uncertainties.

This study finds that technology investment, data management, eco-management and sociospatial embedding challenges are the highest hierarchical framework levels and affect CST.

A lack of awareness and knowledge, a lack of commitment, a lack of strategy, tolerance of unsustainable practices, a lack of stakeholder participation and a fragmented market are perceived as the challenges that show the highest driving and dependence power. These challenges serve as a reference for government and construction firms in the transition to sustainable corporate practices.

Unsustainable corporate practices have caused large amounts of energy consumption, resource depletion and environmental impacts. There are challenges in transitioning to corporate sustainability that must be addressed. The most significant challenges that need to be solved to facilitate the transition to corporate sustainability are identified and arranged in a hierarchical model. By identifying the hierarchical relationships among the challenges, a theoretical framework that extends the existing models is developed to assist decision-makers.

Using state-level data on productive and unproductive entrepreneurship, shadow economy size, and public official corruption, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether formal sector productive (unproductive) entrepreneurial activity is associated with lower (higher) levels of informal economic activity.

Additionally, the author aims to connect US state-level entrepreneurship, shadow economy size, and corruption by asking whether corruption affects entrepreneurial outcomes primarily through its effects on the shadow economy. The author contends that if this is the case, then estimates of corruption should serve as a good instrument for shadow economy size in regressions on formal sector entrepreneurial outcomes.

Results from OLS regressions suggest that shadow economy size shares a strong, negative (positive), and statistically significant relationship with productive (unproductive) entrepreneurship. These results are fairly robust to GMM estimation. Additionally, the author finds that corruption is a strong instrument for shadow economy size; one for which validity cannot be rejected in regressions on productive, and net entrepreneurship scores.

However, the author cannot safely assert that the author finds evidence of the shadow economy serving as a primary channel through which corruption affects observed entrepreneurial outcomes. Failure to reject validity of the corruption instrument is, at best, suggestive of the primacy of the entrepreneurial choice between formal and informal sector participation.

This study, to the author’s knowledge, is the first to attempt “connecting the dots” between entrepreneurship, corruption, and shadow economy size.