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The purpose of this study comes from the need of defining improved durability values and the realization of a good traceability management for selected vegan cheeses has suggested the comparison between a processed cheese and its analogous version without animal-origin raw materials. The durability should be studied at a well-defined temperature, probably agreed among the food producer and the food processor. In addition, the traceability system should consider many components and related suppliers.

A supply chain risk assessment analysis has been carried out with relation to two different products: an analogue cheese and a vegan cheese-like preparation. Raw materials and ingredients have been evaluated (production method and origin; geographical identification), with the aim of identifying simplified food.

An assessment of food supply networks has been carried out. In the first situation (analogue cheeses), the ingredient “cheeses” shows an important complexity: five suppliers with a related six-interconnection hub. On the other side, vegan cheeses are obtained from 11 ingredients (a challenging hub); four of them may be produced from 2–5 components of different origin (five total hubs). Tested processed cheeses are represented by means of a linear food supply network with two hubs (cheeses and “arrival” show degrees 6 and 9, respectively). Networks concerning vegan cheeses include five different hubs: four complex raw materials (degree: 2, 3, 4 and 5) and the “arrival” step (degree: 12).

The information load of vegan cheeses (two hubs, degrees >> average degree) appears high if compared with processed cheeses (two hubs), although the complexity of networks appears similar. Vegan cheeses may seem technologically simpler than processed cheeses and be sometimes questioned because of important traceability issues. Adequate traceability countermeasures in terms of preventive monitoring actions should be recommended when speaking of vegan cheeses. Anyway, a centralized manager would be always required.

This paper aims to identify the specific contextual constraints that women might face in becoming entrepreneurs; to correlate these constraints with the motivations that have determined this choice; and to ascertain how strongly constraints and motivations are correlated with individual rewards in terms of personal satisfaction and economic payoffs.

The empirical base is a survey that the authors conducted among female entrepreneurs in a Southern province of Italy in 2012. Data are analyzed through a correspondence and cluster analysis. The socio-economic context of the province within which these female-led firms operate is taken into account by means of a correspondence canonical analysis.

In terms of results: first, two-thirds of female entrepreneurs in the province are positively motivated, and this is a determining factor in their choice to become entrepreneurs. This translates into they also being satisfied with the choice they made. Second, contrary to the expectations, being positively motivated and satisfied holds both for firms operating in more dynamic and demanding sectors and for small firms using little financial or human capital.

The chosen research approach has allowed to identify the most important decisional variables that affect female entrepreneurial choice. However, as most of the variables are categorical, the research’s results remain descriptive.

Positive motivations and personal rewards are clearly relevant for women making an entrepreneurial choice. However, they are not enough to stimulate fully the potential for growth of their enterprises: education and a social environment conducive to female creative expression are also necessary. To this end, the authors suggest that an important function of change could be played in particular by universities by fostering a culture of creativity and entrepreneurship.

By stressing the connections between positive motivations and wellbeing, the authors suggest that the promotion of women’s entrepreneurial choices through networks and education generates more than purely economic benefits. It also has positive effects on their quality of life and on social welfare as well.

This paper responds to a need – not yet fulfilled in the literature – to better understand the relations between women’s motivation, satisfaction and the type of business selected.

Escalation of commitment is one of the most influential decision-making biases in entrepreneurs which may incur substantial losses and result in failure by making entrepreneurs allocate an increasing amount of resources to failing plans. Not only is escalation one of the less-researched biases in entrepreneurship but also most of the existing studies have been either limited to specific contexts or exclusively limited to men entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of escalation of commitment among a sample of Iranian women and men entrepreneurs to address these gaps.

By conducting a narrative inquiry, data were collected through semi-structured and in-depth interviews with nine women and 10 men Iranian entrepreneurs who were founder/owners of a small business and had introduced at least one product to the market.

According to the findings of this study, the fear of losing autonomy and fear of being blamed by one’s family were the main drivers of escalation of commitment among the women entrepreneurs, while overconfidence, sense of responsibility and hoping to gain more profits were the main antecedents of escalation among men entrepreneurs.

This study is a pioneer in studying the antecedents of the escalation of commitment among women and men entrepreneurs comparatively in the context of a developing country.

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.

Despite the increase in female entrepreneurship literature, very few studies exist that systematize the extant literature, especially in emerging and developing countries. This article fills part of this gap; it maps, categorizes and groups the objectives, theoretical approaches and research methods on female entrepreneurship conducted in one or more of the 155 emerging and developing countries.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted, using Scopus and Web of Science, over a 10-year timeframe (2010–2020). Out of 465 papers, 77 were selected for content analysis.

Most articles focus on understanding women entrepreneurs' challenges, the factors affecting their entrepreneurial performance and encouraging entrepreneurship. Qualitative research was found to be the predominant approach, while mixed studies appeared less frequently.

This paper sheds light on female entrepreneurship characteristics, including business competence, performance and entrepreneurial orientation. Further, it can help female entrepreneurs to recognize the most relevant aspects regarding performance, the essential driving factors and entrepreneurial motivations, among others.

First, this paper groups the objectives and the theoretical and methodological approaches that guide female entrepreneurship research. Second, it identifies distinct gaps, grouped and explored using unpublished thematic categories. Finally, the authors propose an extensive future research agenda regarding female entrepreneurship in emerging and developing countries.

This bibliometric review aims to display visually the intellectual communities (i.e. the cooperation networks among various countries, institutions, journals and individuals), the intellectual structure (i.e. the status quo and development trajectory of the intellectual base) and emerging hot topics of the female entrepreneurship research in 1975-2018. Based on the comprehensive review of the state-of-the-science, this paper aims to identify significant research gaps in extant studies and develop potential future research agendas that may catalyse new streams of female entrepreneurship research.

Bibliometric analysis via science mapping provides in-depth analyzes, highlights the intellectual structure and identifies hot topics. Using CiteSpace, co-citation networks of contributing countries, institutions, cited journals and authors are mapped first. Second, co-citation network analysis helps to identify the key “nodes” in the intellectual structure. The landscape view identifies main clusters from an overall perspective, while a timeline view delineates the characteristics and evolution of focal clusters. Major clusters are interpreted in detail with the help of foam tree graph processed by Carrot. Finally, the co-occurrence network analysis is conducted by using VOSviewer to examine hot topics and research frontiers

The findings show that the publications of female entrepreneurship increase exponentially. The major driving force of female entrepreneurship research is from the USA and England. In terms of intellectual structure, key concepts behind different clusters represent the major milestones in relation to individual determinants of female entrepreneurship, the impact of cultural and contextual factors on female entrepreneurship and female entrepreneurship in non-OECD countries, as well as the impact of family, social and institutional factors on the survival and exit of male and female enterprises. Hot topics include financing sources, the embeddedness nature, the impact and environmental factors of female entrepreneurship.

This study presents important practical implications. The findings suggest that intellectual communities of the female entrepreneurship field are relatively loose. Close contact and cooperation among different countries, institutions and researchers are lacking. To promote the evolution of the field, researchers who belong to different institutions in different countries may need to strengthen contact and cooperation. Additionally, papers in journals from the business and management discipline are most cited in this field, preventing new knowledge from other disciplines flowing into the female entrepreneurship field. Accordingly, female entrepreneurship research journals may need to expand their focus and combine knowledge from various domains.

This bibliometric review provides a more comprehensive, systematic and objective review of the female entrepreneurship field. Previous qualitative reviews are typically based on personal judgement, while a few quantitative reviews only describe statistical data. This study is based on thousands of citation data rather than a small number of papers pre-selected by the researcher, thus, is more data-grounded and less biased than prior reviews. It expands previous reviews by transparently visualizing the underlying structure and evolution of the field. Moreover, it highlights significant gaps in extant studies and develops future research agendas to catalyse new streams of research.

The purpose of this paper is to apply a hybrid algorithm based on the combination of two heuristics inspired by artificial life to the solution of optimization problems.

The flock‐of‐starlings optimization (FSO) and the bacterial chemotaxis algorithm (BCA) were adapted to implement a hybrid and parallel algorithm: the FSO has been powerfully employed for exploring the whole space of solutions, whereas the BCA has been used to refine the FSO‐found solutions, thanks to its better performances in local search.

A good solution of the 8‐th parameters version of the TEAM problem 22 is obtained by using a maximum 200 FSO steps combined with 20 BCA steps. Tests on an analytical function are presented in order to compare FSO, PSO and FSO+BCA algorithms.

The development of an efficient method for the solution of optimization problems, exploiting the different characteristic of the two heuristic approaches.

The paper shows the combination and the interaction of stochastic methods having different exploration properties, which allows new algorithms able to produce effective solutions of multimodal optimization problems, with an acceptable computational cost, to be defined.

Heritage or historic building information modelling (BIM), often referred to as HBIM, is becoming an established feature in both research and practice. The advancement of data capture technologies such as laser scanning and improved photogrammetry, along with the continued power of BIM authoring tools, has provided the ability to generate more accurate digital representations of heritage buildings which can then be used during renovation and refurbishment projects. Very often these representations of HBIM are developed to support the design process. What appears to be often overlooked is the issue of conservation and how this can be linked to the BIM process to support the conservation management plan for the building once it is given a new lease of life following the refurbishment process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper presents a review of the context of conservation and HBIM, and then subsequently presents two case studies of how HBIM was applied to high-profile renovation and conservation projects in the UK. In presenting the case studies, a range of issues is identified which support findings from the literature noting that HBIM is predominantly a tool for the geometric modelling of historic fabric with less regard for the actual process of renovation and conservation in historic buildings.

Lessons learnt from the case studies and from existing literature are distilled to develop a framework for the implementation of HBIM on heritage renovation projects to support the ongoing conservation of the building as an integral part of a BIM-based asset management strategy. Five key areas are identified in the framework including value, significance, recording, data management and asset management. Building on this framework, a conceptual overlay is proposed to the current Level 2 BIM process to support conservation heritage projects.

This paper addresses the issue of HBIM application to conservation heritage projects. Whilst previous work in the field has identified conservation as a key area, there is very little work focusing on the process of conservation in the HBIM context. This work provides a framework and overlay which could be used by practitioners and researchers to ensure that HBIM is fully exploited and a more standardised method is employed which could be used on conservation heritage renovation projects.

This study aims to investigate unripe carob pod as a source of antioxidant molecules useful in the eco-friendly synthesis of a gelatin conjugate. This one was involved in the preparation of gummies able to produce remarkable human health benefits.

Eco-friendly strategies (ultrasound-assisted extraction, low temperatures and eco-friendly solvents) were employed in the extraction of active molecules. Antioxidant molecules were involved in the grafting reaction with gelatin chains (ascorbic acid/hydrogen peroxide couple as initiator system). Gelatin conjugate represents a useful material able to prepare gummies with remarkable rheological and antioxidant performances over time.

Experimental results confirmed that the green approach allowed the achievement of extracts with remarkable antioxidant properties due to the presence of phenolic moieties. Gelatin conjugate synthesis preserved these functionalities, usefully exploited in the preparation of gummies with significant structural and biological features.

Compared to the literature data the preparation of the gummies with outstanding biological properties was performed by employing functional gelatin synthesized by an eco-friendly approach.