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SHERRIE S. BERGMAN is College Librarian of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She served previously as director of the Roger Williams College Library and on the library reference staff at the New School for Social Research.

Following successful discussion of this case, students should be able to:▪ understand and apply the principles of effectuation;▪ understand the difficulty of obtaining traditional financing in Latin America;▪ determine the importance of matching new hire and company values, particularly in a small business; and▪ analyze some of the unique problems facing a business at the point of scaling up and provide suggestions for how the protagonist could address those problems.

This case provides an introduction to the Fintech industry in South and Central America, fruitfully combining tenets of the lean startup methodology, effectual principles of entrepreneurship and a novel method of managing personal finances via decentralized vehicles provided through fintech. In addition, Kuiki Credit and its use of fintech represent a compelling example of industry disruption by an entrepreneurial firm. Owing to its unique location, this case provides students with a lens into a part of the world rife with bureaucracy and, in some cases, corruption. The disruption is thus unique in that not only does one view traditional disruption of industry dynamics, but also government policy and cultural mores. This is evinced within the body of the case through direct quotes from founder Ernesto Leal and Eduardo Morán, one of the company’s first employees. This information highlights the market Kuiki Credit pursued, one underserved by traditional financing and thus lacking access to credit.Consistent with effectual entrepreneurship principles, Ernesto Leal, the main protagonist and a Nicaraguan entrepreneur, drew upon his significant corporate experience in financial institutions and as a franchise owner to create a new venture. Kuiki Credit is designed to increase access to capital and disseminate fintech throughout Central and South America, and in particular first in Costa Rica and later in Nicaragua. The case is set in 2018, when Leal faces a scaling issue. Specifically, he wonders how to maintain an entrepreneurial company with high levels of innovation and a culture of continuous improvement despite the need to grow. Near the end of the case, some specific issues relative to culture are briefly reviewed in relation to the sales department and Leal feeling the need to restructure the company, while being encouraged by the board to hit breakeven targets for three consecutive months prior to expanding to new markets.

This case most appropriately lends itself to discussions in entrepreneurship at the junior or senior undergraduate level. To engage in this case most productively, students should have a basic understanding of entrepreneurship, the equivalent of two to three weeks into the semester.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS:3: Entrepreneurship.

Reports a survey which was carried out in 1990 to ascertain the level of training and research needs in the European business community. The results show that, although TQM initiatives are under way in many organizations, more collaborative research and development into TQM need to be undertaken.

Existing regulatory frameworks for identifying and treating historic buildings and places reflect deference to expert rule, which privilege the values of a small number of heritage experts over the values of the majority of people who visit, work, and reside in historic environments. To address this problem, the purpose of this paper is to explore a fundamental shift in how US federal and local preservation laws address built heritage by suggesting a dynamic, adaptive regulatory framework that incorporates heterodox approaches to heritage and therefore is capable of accommodating contemporary sociocultural values.

The overall approach the authors use is a comparative literature review from the fields of heterodox/orthodox heritage, heterodox/orthodox law, adaptive management, and participatory methods to inform the creation of a dynamic, adaptive regulatory framework.

Heterodox heritage emphasizes the need for a bottom-up, stakeholder-driven process, where everyday people’s values have the opportunity to be considered as being as valid as those of conventional experts. Orthodox law cannot accommodate this pluralistic approach, so heterodox law is required because, like heterodox heritage, it deconstructs power, values participation, and community involvement.

Orthodox heritage conservation practice disempowers most stakeholders and empowers conventional experts; this power differential is maintained by orthodox law.

To date, there have been few, if any, attempts to address critical heritage studies theory in the context of the regulatory environment. This paper appears to be the first such investigation in the literature.

More and more organisations are seeking both quality awards and accreditation to enhance their competitive edge. In this article, the authors unwrap the ‘shiny paper’ that surrounds these quality awards.

This research examines the differences in presentation of boards of directors in annual reports. Our sample consists of 472 corporations from the Fortune 500; 130 (342) of these corporations included (did not include) pictures of their boards of directors. The proportion of female directors was 11.0 percent for firms that did not include pictures of their boards and 14.5 percent for firms that included pictures of their boards in their annual reports. The difference in the gender mix of these two groups is significant (p = 0.0002). This indicates that firms with a higher percentage of women on their boards signal this fact to stockholders, investors, and other constituents by including pictures of their boards in their annual reports.

The achievement motivation construct has long presented a significant challenge to the study of presidential leadership. The purpose of this paper is to overcome the limitations of prior research by proposing that whether achievement motivation is related to effectiveness in the US presidency may not be a matter of if but how achievement motivation is manifested.

Drawing on the channeling hypothesis, it was proposed that presidents’ trait behaviors should be accounted for as they directly impact the way that presidents express achievement motivation. To test this thesis, this study relied on data generated from diverse sources that provide both direct and indirect information about US presidents’ personalities and effectiveness, including content analyses of inaugural addresses and presidential biographies and surveys completed by presidential biographers and scholars.

Results show that among achievement motivated presidents, display of motive-congruent, conscientious behaviors contributes to their effectiveness, whereas display of motive-incongruent, agreeable behaviors tends to detract from it.

The small sample size of US presidents and the limited amount of archival data available for some of these subjects prevented more fine-grained analyses. Thus, further research among senior leaders is needed to not only confirm the explanatory mechanism offered herein, but also explore the possibility that there are optimal levels beyond which the personality traits under study may cease to be a help or hindrance to achievement motivated chief executives.

This study represents the first effort to formally integrate motives and traits in the study of chief executives. The findings of this research also substantiate the need for researchers to consider the complex nature of motives in predicting important outcomes across different contexts.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this paper seeks to formalize a definition of activist entrepreneurship and differentiate it from social entrepreneurship. Second, this paper proposes a model that explains how the storytelling process, in the form of the message and means of communication, influences the activist identity process and consequently the legitimacy of the activist entrepreneur.

This paper explains the historical method and offers an overview of the unique case of Madam C.J. Walker and analyzes how she gained legitimacy as an activist entrepreneur by conveying psychological capital (Psycap) concepts in her message and political skill in the means of her communication. The paper also analyzed books being written on her and also letters that were exchanged between herself and her lawyer F.B. Ransom.

The authors have found out that Madam Walker used Psycap elements such as self-efficacy, hope, resiliency and optimism as message and elements of political skill such as social astuteness, interpersonal skill, networking ability and apparent sincerity as means to communicate the message toward her followers and built a legitimate social identity where she had won the trust of them.

The primary limitation of this paper is that it is theoretical in nature and uses only one case study to support the theoretical model. However, when analyzing complex relationships, historical cases offer a wealth of insight to solve the problem at hand.

By using the elements of the model discussed in the research paper properly, people could create a legitimate identity for themselves where any message they give to their employees, colleagues and sub-ordinates would be viewed as a selfless one and that would increase the chances of their messages or orders being accepted and obeyed by the followers.