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Social Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior.

This case is suitable to be used in advanced undergraduate and MBA/MSc level.

This case teaches about green organization, its opportunity, challenges, and attitude toward sustainable agriculture. The Babylon Vertical Farms (BVF) is an agricultural and technological company that grew high-quality hydroponic vegetables and herbs with minimum use of sunlight, soil, and pesticides. BVF used recycled water through reverse osmosis process with the target to decrease cultivated time to less than six hours, when compared to the typical 18 hours, apart from minimizing water usage up to 90%. Knowing its potential, Stuart Thomas, the founder and his team planned to increase the farm production to 2,000–3,000 kg a month from 1,000 kg a month. The farm required RM150,000 to acquire resources and to extend its farm infrastructure. Stuart and his team had to make feasible and practical decision in gaining their funds to execute the business to be one that is sustainable and green. As a social entrepreneur, Stuart also wanted to address poverty-related hunger. A group of investors was ready to invest and asked for 30% equity. Stuart was tempted to take the offer. If he rejected the offer, the farm could lose the opportunity to scale-up its operation. At the same time, if he accepted the offer, he might lose control over the business one day.

The learning outcomes are as follows:

• to expose students to the various forms of urban farming that a social entrepreneur can venture into;

• to expose students to the benefits of green business;

• to evaluate potential opportunities and threats of a green organization using SWOT analysis; and

• to recommend a possible strategy to build a sustainable agriculture farm that is economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially responsible.

to expose students to the various forms of urban farming that a social entrepreneur can venture into;

to expose students to the benefits of green business;

to evaluate potential opportunities and threats of a green organization using SWOT analysis; and

to recommend a possible strategy to build a sustainable agriculture farm that is economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially responsible.

The current study examines the effect of socialization on the inculcation of professional accounting values. Three sources of socialization are examined: public accounting firms, non-public accounting firms (industry) and accounting professional associations. Specifically, the study compares the professionalism of public and industry accountants. Consistent with expectations, the results suggest that public accountants have stronger beliefs in professional autonomy and self-regulation than industry accountants, and that industry accountants have stronger beliefs in professional affiliation, social obligation and professional dedication than public accountants. It was hypothesized that while professional associations promote all professional values, public accounting firms and industry have different promoting priorities. Public accounting firms foster beliefs in self-regulation and professional autonomy while industry opposes these values, resulting in public accountants having stronger beliefs in these values. Conversely, it was posited that industry encourage beliefs in professional affiliation, social obligation and professional dedication to a greater extent than public accounting firms. The result is that the industry accountants have stronger beliefs in these values than the public accountants. Investigating these issues increase understanding of the importance of the socialization process fostering accounting professional values and identifying areas of potential conflict and reinforcement accountants face when working in public accounting and industry.

Using experimental scenarios, the current study suggest that the management accountants’ professional attributes social obligation, professional autonomy, professional affiliation, and professional dedication are associated with three ethical rationales that have been identified as playing important roles in ethical judgment, the perception of the ethicality of an action; moral equity, contractualism, and relativism. Understanding these issues will assist in determining the management accounting professional attributes that should be fostered in encouraging the ethical judgments of management accountants since research indicates that the moral equity and contractualism rationales are consistent with individuals at the post-conventional stage of ethical development and more ethical judgments while the relativism rationale is consistent with the conventional stage of moral development and less ethical judgments.

The current study examines public accountants' professionalism and professional commitment (PC) and their effect on job performance. Results provide support for four of five dimensions of Hall's (1968) professionalism framework (beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, self-regulation, and social obligation) and Meyer et al.'s (1993) three-dimensional PC framework (affective, continuance, and normative professional commitment) for modeling public accountants. Support was also found for most of the hypothesized relationships between professionalism and PC. Beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, and self-regulation positively influenced affective professional commitment (APC). Belief in professional affiliation was negatively influenced by continuance professional commitment (CPC) but positively influenced by normative professional commitment (NPC). Belief in social obligation was also positively influenced by NPC. As expected, professionalism and PC were associated with job performance. Professionalism had an incremental effect beyond PC on job performance and as well, PC had an incremental effect over professionalism on job performance. Identifying relationships between professionalism and professional commitment with desirable outcomes is important for justifying future investments in the public accounting profession. Understanding these issues will assist in determining the types of professional attributes and commitments that are and should be fostered by the accounting profession.

This chapter begins with a reflection on the call for investigating how entrepreneurial competencies are developed (Bird, 1995) in the context of university-based entrepreneurship centers. Through clarifying the nature of entrepreneurial competencies and applying a social constructivist perspective of learning, it is proposed that effective nurturing of entrepreneurial competencies for university students through entrepreneurship centers shall be based on five key characteristics; namely, active experimentation, authenticity, social interaction, sense of ownership, and scaffolding support. The chapter contributes to the literature through establishing a link between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial competencies in the context of university-based entrepreneurship centers, which have become an increasingly popular way for promoting entrepreneurial development. The practical implications on nurturing entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship centers are discussed, together with the directions for further research. This chapter is designed as a refection upon Bird’s original article articulating the concept of entrepreneurial competencies. In this chapter, the author outlines how entrepreneurial competencies can be developed through education programs, specifically via entrepreneurship centers.

The current study examines the performance effects of financial incentives for a simple, recurrent task designed to simulate an assembly-line setting. The study looks at early performance, improvement and overall performance. For a new task, performance-based incentives appear to improve the initial performance of the task but not subsequent improvement rate (Bailey et al., 1998). The current paper reports on a laboratory experiment whose results confirm the findings of Bailey et al. (1998) but also indicates that for both performance-based and fixed incentives, significant performance improvement takes place well beyond the initial performance of the task, declining gradually over time. This is in contrast with the suggestion of Bailey et al. (1998) that workers with performance-based incentives will choose to improve initial performance rather than subsequent performance. Findings also suggest that improvement peaks earlier for performance-based incentives than for a fixed incentive. Improvement persisted longer and there was better overall performance with the high fixed component quota and piece rate incentives than with the low fixed component quota implying that incentives that impose higher risk (e.g. a low fixed component quota incentive) on workers result in de-motivation and lower performance.