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Decision-making competence (DMC) of entrepreneurs and managers is a longstanding topic in this increasingly globalized world. These figures operate in conditions not within their own control, and good levels of DMC are often considered to be desirable for the flourishing of business and society. This paper reports an empirical investigation on the DMC of entrepreneurs and managers, in an attempt to inform about their tendencies to incur in risky and costly choices.

Three cognitive biases associated with operational strategies and individual characteristics of entrepreneurs and managers, namely under/overconfidence (UOC, i.e. self-confidence in taking decisions), resistance to sunk costs (RSC, i.e. propensity to take cost investments) and consistency in risk perception (CRP, i.e. how well individuals understand probability rules) were considered . Cognitive biases measures were used in a cross-sectional study on a sample of n = 639 entrepreneurs and n = 512 managers. Data collected via online survey were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics to determine differences among entrepreneurs and managers DMC.

Analyses reveal that entrepreneurs exhibit higher levels of UOC compared to managers with a marked presence of UOC among entrepreneurs at younger ages. Conversely, performance regarding RSC improves with higher education levels while age and RSC are positively correlated only for managers, regardless of education. Lastly, entrepreneurs and managers resulted as not being affected by CRP. This study discusses these results to provide initial insights for further avenues of research and practice.

The study offers an innovative, evidence-based viewpoint on how entrepreneurs and managers deal with risky and costly decisions. It offers an initial understanding of the role of UOC, RSC and CRP, that is specific cognitive biases associated with operational strategies and individual characteristics, in the DMC of these working figures. The study forwards avenues of scrutiny of quick-witted entrepreneurs and systematic managers.

This investigation aims to determine the effect of trade uncertainty on domestic investment (DI) and foreign direct investment (FDI) for the Turkish economy from the first quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2020.

The authors adopt the vector autoregression (VAR) model augmented with Fourier terms. Using this methodology, the authors obtain the empirical results of the impulse-response functions and the variance decomposition analysis.

The empirical results demonstrate that a shock to trade uncertainty has a slight negative impact on DI for up to approximately 1.5 years, whereas its impact on FDI is negative but long-lasting. Moreover, the contribution of trade uncertainty to FDI is relatively higher than to DI in the error variance decomposition for the investigated period. These empirical results can be beneficial for shaping the Turkish authorities' trade policies in the following periods.

These findings have implications within the macroeconomic setting. Government authorities can provide tax exemptions for specified sectors and debureaucratize investment processes for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurs. Additionally, institutional quality and property rights should be protected strictly and developed gradually.

This study is the first to examine the impact of world trade uncertainty on Türkiye’s DI and FDI. Because trade uncertainty might act as fixed costs, this creates the option value of waiting and seeing the market, and firms hesitate to incur investment.

This study aims to investigate the impact of supply chain concentration (SCC) on corporate research and development (R&D) investment and determine the moderating roles of industry concentration and financing constraints on the relationship between SCC and R&D investment.

The study collected data from Chinese listed companies, used the fixed effects model to test the research hypotheses and further used the two-stage Heckman test and propensity score matching (PSM) to address potential endogeneity issues.

The result reveals a negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment. In addition, industry concentration mitigates the negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment, but financing constraints strengthen the negative impact.

This study introduces the concept of SCC and empirically tests its effect on R&D investment, further explaining the lack of corporate innovation. This study inspires companies to strengthen SC management and weigh the level of SCC with environmental factors.

This paper analyses the factors that make fashion-product crowdfunding campaigns successful. The authors argue that crowdfunding is an innovative and functional way of bringing new fashion items to the market. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question whether product innovation, lifecycle and sustainability have a positive effect on the success of fashion crowdfunding campaigns. The findings highlight that the success of the fashion crowdfunding campaigns depends on creators' adherence to the values of the platform which they use to raise capital.

A total of 300 fashion crowdfunding projects running between the 17th of October and the 15th of December 2017 were collected from Kickstarter – the world's largest crowdfunding platform based on reward-based all-or-nothing model. Two-step binomial logistic regression was used to analyse the data.

The model predicted a significant increase in the odds of success for the fashion items crowdfunded during the first-time production, and innovative and environmentally sustainable products with a higher price range of rewards. In line with previous literature, regression analyses predicted a significant effect of the control variables of goal amount (negative) and the number of rewards (positive). Contrary to previous studies, neither the presence of a video nor the campaign length predicted success.

The novel findings of this study contribute to the literature by providing an analysis of success factors of fashion items on crowdfunding platforms. The results show that innovative, environmentally sustainable and higher-priced products produced by early-stage ventures are better welcomed by the audiences.

This article summarizes the international scientific research output of global forest product models, infers future research trends and provides reference for quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling of Chinese forest product problems, with the aim of contributing to promoting domestic production of Chinese forest products and strengthening international trade competitiveness of forest products.

In 1999, Joseph Buongiorno, a scholar at the University of Wisconsin in the United States of America, proposed the global forest products model (GFPM), which was first applied to research in the global forestry sector. GFPM is a recursive dynamic model based on five assumptions: macroeconomics, local equilibrium, dynamic equilibrium, forest product conversion flow and trade inertia. Using a certain year from 1992 to present as the base period, it simulates and predicts changes in prices, production and import and export trade indicators of 14 forest products in 180 countries (regions) through computer programs. Its advantages lie in covering a wide range of countries and a wide variety of forest products. The data mainly include forest resource data, forest product trade data, and other economic data required by the model, sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Bank, respectively.

Compared to international quantitative and modeling research in the field of forest product production and trade, China's related research is not comprehensive and in-depth, and there is not much quantitative and mathematical modeling research, resulting in a significant gap. This article summarizes the international scientific research output of global forest product models, infers future research trends, and provides reference for quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling of Chinese forest product problems, with the aim of contributing to promoting domestic production of Chinese forest products and strengthening international trade competitiveness of forest products.

On the basis of summarizing and analyzing the international scientific research output of GFPM, sorting out the current research status and progress at home and abroad, this article discusses potential research expansion directions in 10 aspects, including the types, yield and quality of domestic forest product production, international trade of forest products, and external impacts on the forestry system, in order to provide new ideas for global forest product model research in China.

This study aims to examine the multidimensional nature of institutional distance as a driver of acquisition decisions in emerging markets. Then, this study aims to offer a nuanced perspective on the role of its various formal and informal dimensions by taking into account the potential contingency role played by a firm’s context experience.

Building on institutional economics and organizational institutionalism, this study explores the heterogeneity of institutional distance and its effects on the decision to enter emerging versus advanced markets through cross-border acquisitions. Thus, institutional distance is disentangled into its formal and informal dimensions, the former being captured by regulatory efficiency, country governance and financial development. Furthermore, our framework examines the moderating effect of an acquiring firm’s experience in institutionally similar environments, defined as context experience. The hypotheses are analyzed on a sample of 496 cross-border acquisitions by Italian companies in 41 countries from 2008 to 2018.

Findings indicate that at an increasing distance in terms of regulatory efficiency and financial development, acquiring firms are less likely to enter emerging markets, while informal institutional distance is positively associated with such acquisitions. Context experience mitigates the negative effect of formal distance and enhances the positive effect of informal distance.

This study contributes to institutional distance literature in multiple ways. First, by bridging institutional economics and organizational institutionalism and second, by examining the heterogeneity of formal and informal dimensions of distance, this study offers a finer-grained perspective on how institutional distance affects acquisition decisions. Finally, it offers a contingency perspective on the role of context experience.

Previous literature on sustainable supply chain management has largely adopted an instrumental view of stakeholder management and has focused on understanding the effect of powerful stakeholders who have a more decisive influence on an organization's supply chain decisions. Social enterprises have emerged as organizations that often aim to create impact by integrating marginalized stakeholders into their operations and supply chains. This study examines the trade-offs that social enterprises experience due to their moral stance toward stakeholder engagement, evidenced in their commitment to serving marginalized stakeholders, as well as the responses adopted to these trade-offs.

The study follows a theory elaboration approach through a multiple case study design. The authors draw on insights from stakeholder theory and use the empirical insights to expand current constructs and relationships in a novel empirical context. Based on an in-depth analysis of primary and secondary qualitative data on ten social enterprises, the authors examine how these organizations integrate marginalized stakeholders into various roles in their operations.

When integrating marginalized customers, suppliers and employees, social enterprises face affordability, reliability and efficiency trade-offs. Each trade-off represents conflicts between the organization's needs and the needs of marginalized stakeholders. In response to these trade-offs, social enterprises choose to internalize the costs through slack creation or vertical integration or externalize the costs to stakeholders. The ability to externalize is contingent on the growth orientation of the organization and the presence of like-minded B2B (Business-to-Business) customers. These responses reflect whether organizations accept the trade-offs at the expense of one or more stakeholders or if they avoid the trade-offs and find mutually beneficial solutions.

Building on the empirical insights, the authors elaborate on stakeholder theory with a focus on the integration of marginalized stakeholders by emphasizing a moral justification for stakeholder engagement, identifying the nature of the underlying trade-offs which can arise when various stakeholder needs are in conflict and examining the contingencies affecting organizational responses to these trade-offs.

There is a strong consensus among scholars that the international competitiveness of companies strongly depends on the support of institutions, which reduces uncertainty in transactions by giving form to economic interactions, while less attention was paid to the role of international standards within this context. This study intends to propose its contribution by deepening the role of process certifications in the competitiveness and internationalization strategies of companies, with specific reference to the wood-furniture sector.

Data were collected using a questionnaire survey distributed via computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) methodology and sent to a sample of 2,845 Italian companies which operate in the wood-furniture industry, using simple random sampling. Thanks to the survey administration, 228 companies participated to the survey.

The study shows that it is companies operating in international markets that define this tool as relevant; this underlines how certification is seen as a kind of business card for entering international markets. In this context, the role of business leadership emerges as fundamental in the practical definition of the objectives to be set by adopting a quality management systems and in the subsequent commitment to obtain them.

Up to now, the literature has taken these elements into analysis mainly considering the consumers' perspective. In sectors with a higher content of innovation, technology and design, such as the wood-furniture sector, the literature appears to be poor in terms of contributions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether mandatory disclosure of information accompanying the sale of real estate achieves its aim of informed purchasers.

Using a case study approach focused on mandatory disclosure in South Australia data was collected from interviews and focus groups with key personnel in the property industry involved in the production of information required to fulfil vendors’ disclosure obligations.

The authors found that purchasers are ill-served by a long and complex form of mandatory disclosure with a short time frame that prevents the use of the information provided. Without good form design and increased digital affordances provided by the cadastral and conveyancing systems, mandatory disclosure is insufficient to ensure minimisation of information asymmetry between vendor and purchaser.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first Australian qualitative study that examines the utility of mandatory vendor disclosure in real estate sales and the first to consider the impact of the digitalisation of cadastral and conveyancing systems upon the efficacy of mandatory disclosure regimes.

The purpose of this paper is to directly link information technology (IT) education with real-world phenomena.

The selected objectives are achieved by modeling line of sight (LOS) and nonline of sight (NLOS) mobile channels using corresponding distributions. Within the described experiments, students verify whether modeled generators generate random variables accordingly to the selected distribution. The results of observations are directly compared with theoretical expectations. The methodology was evaluated by students via questionnaires.

The results show that the proposed methodology can help graduate or undergraduate students better comprehend lectured material from mobile communications or mathematical statistics.

The hands on experience using the EMONA system make the approach original.