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Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area. Entrepreneurship scholars still know little about whether entrepreneurs are eventually embedded in other structures whose relationships go beyond the restricted dimension of the interested actor’s assumption. This study aims to propose investigating the social structures in which a specific type of entrepreneurship, the religious one, is embedded.

The research was qualitative, using interviews as an evidence collection instrument. A total of 17 entrepreneur-pastors responsible for business churches in Brazil and eight parishioners took part in the study.

Religious entrepreneurs are embedded in market structures, corroborating a perspective that associates embeddedness with the utilitarian notion. At the same time, entrepreneurs are embedded in two other social structures: reciprocity and redistribution.

This article emphasizes the relevance of going beyond the predominant perspective associated with the utilitarian and rationalized understanding of embeddedness in relationship networks.

This study makes essential contributions. Initially, it attests to the utilitarian perspective of Granovetter’s embeddedness while suggesting incorporating two other dimensions into the metaphor. By highlighting this, this article stresses the need to reinterpret the metaphor of embeddedness and how entrepreneurship scholars use it. Further, by emphasizing the need to consider embeddedness in networks beyond its still utilitarian perspective, this paper highlights unexplored opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars.

This essay charts an intellectual journey. Geoffrey M. Hodgson became an institutional economist in the 1980s. He explains how he discovered institutional economics and what strains of institutional thought were attractive for him. Another issue raised in this essay is how institutional researchers organize and move forward. Hodgson argues for an interdisciplinary approach, but this is not without its problems.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the dynamics and considerations of professionals regarding the sharing of tacit, personal knowledge in their practice.

Adopting a social-constructivist ontology, the qualitative design deploys semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Data were coded, and analysed through interrelating and reasoning.

Personal knowledge is difficult to share precisely, but can be shared to some extent using reflection and stories. Knowledge also provides a position and professional agency, emphasising boundaries and impacting the decisions on interaction and sharing. As such, professional commitment is vulnerable and contextual and, by extension, material becomes part of this interplay of professional practice and collaborative development.

Findings imply that exchange and use of knowledge and material present in organisations are impacted by individual professionals’ autonomy and decisions, which consequently impact on employees’ practice. This calls for research that focuses on individual factors such as autonomy, professionalism and attitudes in addition to organisational and facilitative matters.

Stimulating professional commitment and interpersonal learning is a matter of valuing personal knowledge and practice to avoid protectionism, boundaries and segregated agency. Management and professionals should consider how and why individuals exchange their personal knowledge, paying attention to social structures and individuals’ voices and objectives in forming communities.

This study combines the concept of tacit knowledge with the younger field of practice theory. By connecting personal knowledge to practice, it extends agency to the material world and offers a more individual perspective to knowledge sharing in and between entities.

This chapter describes public space exploration services’ business goals, purpose, and strategy. It reinforces space exploration organizations’ fundamental bureaucratic administrative culture (Tier 1). The authors describe the influence that political appointees as leaders may play in shaping public sector cultures. Next, the public service culture (Tier 2) is deconstructed, and each of the five layers is described in detail. Additionally, the authors explain why focusing on the beliefs layer is the dominant layer and the essential starting point for analysis in space exploration cultures. Next, the chapter outlines the landscape of external influencing cultures (Tier 3) in the space exploration landscape. Finally, the potential value and challenges of developing internal KLC cultures are explored.

The nonmaterial dimension of reality is contrasted with the material, observable and empirically verifiable dimension that rose to dominance with the Enlightenment. The nonmaterial dimension includes orientation, memes, tacit knowledge and spirituality. The orientation of an individual, group, or institution can be towards violence – getting ahead at the expense of the other – or blessing – working in such a way that there is mutual benefit. Orientations can be expressed through memes, cultural or behavioural patterns that are mimetically transmitted broadly within a society and diachronically through generations. If they catch on within a group, they can determine the institutional or group culture. Spirituality can be a source of change of orientation from violence to blessing and of growth in creativity, resilience and empowerment. David Peat and David Bohm posit an implicate order in the universe, thought as a system (in the context of dialogue), and gentle action. Neil Douglas-Klotz points out that the Aramaic words malkuta d'bwashmaya (kingdom of heaven) used by Jesus constituted a nonmaterial reality containing vision, norms and empowerment that exists within and among us – like the implicate order – and is accessed by those who truly wish to ‘see’ it. The emerging spirituality coming out of this engagement has a capacity to replace memes like those of empire, self-interest and grandiose leaders with memes that channel passions and energy towards bio-interest, transnational interest, transpersonal interest, empathy and widespread empowerment. And this could make all the difference in effecting truly sustainable development.

This article introduces a model of knowledge creation in consciousness, the creation of explicit knowledge in six forms and its register and organisation in documents.

Assuming the premise of three realms of reference to knowledge and two forms of reference to entities, this article, through a phenomenological perspective, deduces a model of the creation of knowledge in consciousness and the creation of explicit knowledge in six forms and its register in documents.

Two basic types of knowledge are introduced: situated knowledge and theoretical/normative knowledge. Considering three realms of reference of knowledge – the space–time realm, subjectivity realm and linguistic realm – six general types of knowledge are deduced. Finally, three layers of knowledge organisation are presented: classification and mapping documents, theoretical/normative documents and documents of situations.

This article can contribute to the development of more efficient forms of creation of explicit knowledge, its register in documents and the development of more efficient knowledge organisation and management systems.

Relying on established perspectives of the realms where subjectivity is immersed, this article discusses how knowledge is created in consciousness and registered in documents. It also presents a novel perspective of types of knowledge through the combination of dimensions, realms of reference and forms of reference to entities.

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.

This paper aims to refer to the knowledge transfer of entrepreneurial skills between digital incubators and nascent entrepreneurs. It questions the role of the context and of the richness of the ecosystems in which these women evolve, as defined by Welter and Baker (2021) on such an attempt.

This research is based on a qualitative study that refers to case studies of women nascent entrepreneurs who evolve into two different contexts – one rich zone and one deprived economic one of the French Parisian Region – and who integrated the same digital incubator.

Context does partly matter: besides the “Where”, the “Who” and, moreover, the level of education and previous entrepreneurial experience really matters, and only educated women, whatever the other components of context, seem to be capable to receive the “best” knowledge transfer from incubators. Second, incubators can be considered as to be a knowledge hub that allow knowledge transfer not only from trainers and coaches to women nascent entrepreneurs but also among women entrepreneurs. This paper concludes with a discussion on the role of digital training and coaching in such knowledge transfers.

Findings are limited to a specific place (the region of Paris). Therefore, women entrepreneurs evolve in more different contexts but the national entrepreneurial and institutional context remains the same. There should be need to explore the role of an incubator that evolves into more contrasted contexts.

If results can be generalized, this means incubators should differentiate their services, teaching and coaching expertize according to the education level of nascent entrepreneurs: This is a plaidoyer against institutionalized incubators that claim to be capable of targeting any nascent (women) entrepreneurs.

This study is also a plaidoyer for more digital incubator to mix persons from different contexts, especially to welcome persons from more deprived economic zones.

The research reveals the role of context – and, some components of the context – intro coaching and training that are provided by online incubators. It contributes to the literature on knowledge transfer that is brought about by incubators. It also contributes to the literature in entrepreneurship by showing that some components among the others that define what we call “the context” matter more than others.