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Entrepreneurial activity is a critical issue in the transition of economies attempting to reduce, or abolish state-owned monopoly enterprises. In many Central and Eastern European countries, privatization, restructuring, and failure of state-owned enterprises as consequences of the reforms typically led to a reduction of the size of the workplace. For example, in Poland, about 3.5 million employees lost their jobs in the period 1991–1996 (PEAD, 2003). After the collapse of communism in Europe, post-communist countries have undertaken reforms to liberalize their economies. These reforms stimulated the development in the private sector of small and medium-sized enterprises. New ventures provide a counterbalance to the loss of jobs at state-owned companies. In the period 1991–1996, new enterprises in the private sector in Poland created more than 1.8 million jobs. By the end of 2002, they provided work for 68% of the total employed persons (PEAD, 2003). Further, new ventures can play a critical role in stimulating economic growth. As a result of market reforms, the contribution of the private sector to Gross Domestic Product, e.g., in Hungary, went from 7% in 1988 to 85% in 1999 (World Bank, 2000). However, many new ventures do not survive the first year of operation. For example, in Poland, about 40–45% enterprises established in the period 1995–2000 failed after the first year of their existence (PEAD, 2003).

Purpose – This study addresses the great apes' fatal situation in the wild by integrating perspectives from conservation biology, conflict research, and bioethics.

Design/methodology/approach – We introduce the great apes' red list status and describe habitat destruction and bushmeat commerce as main threats to their survival. We analyze the complex context in which great ape extinction takes place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and thereby focus on a threatening factor that is interlinked with habitat destruction and bushmeat commerce: armed conflict.

Findings – The study shows that some characteristics of so-called “New Wars” are apparent in the DRC and that they directly or indirectly impact the great apes' situation. Because the human role in the animals' extinction is so severe and so obvious, ethical consequences become apparent. Animal ethics (the welfare as well as the rights approach) has to acknowledge the severity of the situation of the great apes in the wild. Implications for the human–animal relationship and the human identity come into play. After all, we have to ask ourselves what it means for us and for coming generations if our nearest relatives are going to be extinct one day.

Practical implications – It is argued that conservation policy has to include insights from conflict research. Likewise, peacemaking has to address ecological consequences of warfare.

Originality/value – Our findings promote an interdisciplinary approach. Armed conflict as a threatening factor to great ape survival has so far largely been neglected within the literature on conservation biology as well as in conflict research.

This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the Great Depression exerted an enormous influence on economic thought, but the exact nature of its impact should be examined more carefully. In this chapter, I examine the transformation from a perspective which emphasizes the interaction between economic ideas and economic events, and the interaction between theory and policy rather than the development of economic theory. More specifically, I examine the evolution of what became known as macroeconomics after the Depression in terms of an ongoing debate among the “stabilizers” and their critics. I further suggest using four perspectives, or schools of thought, as measures to locate the evolution and transformation; the gold standard mentality, liquidationism, the Treasury view, and the real-bills doctrine. By highlighting these four economic ideas, I argue that what happened during the Great Depression was the retreat of the gold standard mentality, the complete demise of liquidationism and the Treasury view, and the strange survival of the real-bills doctrine. Each of those transformations happened not in response to internal debates in the discipline, but in response to government policies and real-world events.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a fast-moving pandemic that has brought about calamities and challenges to the human world. In the field of international higher education (IHE), it problematizes and challenges the operation of neo-liberal mentalities and rationales, while generating disruptions and impediments to the flows of globalization. Drawing upon extant research on IHE across spatial and cultural contexts, this essay aims to: (1) unravel the deficiencies of neo-liberal mentalities and rationales in coping with the challenges of COVID-19 to IHE; (2) assess the impacts of COVID-19 on the developments of globalization and internationalization of higher education with particular focus on the complications therein; and (3) explore the possible spill-over effects on and implications for the re-positioning of IHE in the post-COVID-19 era. Albeit the negative impacts of COVID-19 may not last, its spill-over effects are bound to cast a long shadow over IHE’s future development. This essay explores how IHE can persist in spite of deficiencies in neo-liberalism and fluidity in globalization.

The quality of students' relationships with their teachers plays a significant role in their success in school. Social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculums show great promise for supporting student development. However, quality implementation requires that teachers recognize and understand how their behavior and interactions with students impact the development of these skills. The Prosocial Classroom Model proposes that teacher social and emotional competencies (SECs) play a critical role in creating and maintaining a classroom where everyone feels safe, connected, and engaged in learning. In this chapter, we extend the understanding of SEC to include leadership styles as defined by evolutionary motivational systems theory. We argue that a critical dimension of effective SEL instruction and teacher SEC is effective leadership that skillfully applies an understanding of the social and emotional dimensions of classroom interactions that promote motivation, engagement, and learning. Implications for educational theory, policy and practice, and research are discussed.

The Pacific Island countries are culturally diverse, politically challenging, extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural disaster impacts, and financially heavily dependent on aid flows. This chapter examines barriers and opportunities for Green growth (GG) to flourish in a country with a practically non-existent real economy and which is currently under the threat of disappearance under water. It draws on a visiting experience and lessons from the literature and tries to investigate the role of innovation and entrepreneurship as poles of re-birth and local creativity. More particularly, I here discuss why a least developed country such as Kiribati might be the perfect location for dynamics of GG to get born and how, Kiribati, a country under threat and fear, can be transformed into a lighthouse of entrepreneurship which can give boost to the implementation of one of the most advanced energy technologies in the world. I also discuss how, ultimately, a “least developed economy” can secure scientific lessons, which are highly significant for the international knowledge society.

The main purpose of this chapter is to shed more light into the challenging small business (SME) task of securing adequate and appropriate funding for continued viability. Access to finance is of fundamental importance to SME survival, invariably it involves working capital needs or long-term capital projects. This chapter will mainly focus on the Greek environment and the individual characteristics of the domestic market, in particular. As in most countries, SMEs form the backbone of Greece’s economic activity, accounting for almost 95% of the total. They are the very backbone of the country’s daily business and labour force. Crucially, the Greek banking system upon which many small enterprises rely has collapsed during the years of global financial crisis, with the domestic banks literally ending up completely drained of all available liquidity.

In a country that has gone through enormous financial turmoil, and with a damaged banking system that has undergone three recapitalisation processes, domestic companies had little, if any, support from the traditional banking sources. In the summer of 2015, things became critical, when the country almost left the European Union’s (EU) common currency zone and entered a capital control regime. As a result, enterprises sought other channels of financing to overcome the obstacle. Focus in this chapter will be on the role of the stock market, the national investment funds and the EU funding.

This chapter, in the main, builds insight from a research-informed case study: that of Greek SMEs and their access to finance (excluding the banking sector). The time span of the analysis covers the years of the domestic financial crisis, lasting considerably more than within the other European countries. Though varying in magnitude, the crisis in Greece started sometime in 2010 and concluded in 2018, leaving deep scars on the country’s productive body. During that period, the domestic banking system underwent catalytic changes, embracing three major recapitalisation schemes and an enormous merger phase that ended up with only four remaining systemic banks. Prior to that, the 2012 Private Sector Involvement (bailout program) led the country’s rating to a default status and made financing options extremely difficult.

This chapter will also offer comparisons to other European states, to enable drawing of conclusions about the different operating parameters of doing business in the greater region; and to facilitate search for common patterns between the countries that were hit by the credit crunch and also saw their banking systems weaken. The data will be drawn exclusively from secondary sources, including national and European public and private organisations dealing with financial and investment analyses. Once gathered, data is categorised and critically evaluated to look deeper into the nature of the behaviour of SMEs and the financing channels they have found during the study sample period.

Key findings will include the reporting and the evaluation of Greek firms’ access to finance with regard to non-banking sources, such as the stock market, EU funding, investment laws and venture funds. Comparison with prior years and with other European markets will show the main challenges and obstacles firms faced, and the solutions they found during the crisis.

Limitations can be split into two categories: first, the data reported at public and private sites include by default the official sector of the economy, thus, omitting the reporting of parallel or unofficial market activity. In an economy that includes approximately 20% of unofficial GDP, such sources most probably proved catalytic in the companies’ liquidity, without being officially reported. Second, the time span of the sample is quite large, making it difficult to analyse the specific characteristics of various companies at various time points in full detail. However, the chapter’s main purpose is to offer an all-inclusive picture of how things evolved during the years of the crisis and not to focus on specific points. Describing the big picture is the priority of this chapter, with a focus on capturing the financing trends during this period of abnormality. Perhaps a further study in the future could be inspired by this current one, to break-up the period into smaller pieces and dedicate detailed analysis to each chunk. Useful conclusions will be drawn in this chapter for policy-makers, including both fiscal and monetary directors, who will get a clearer picture of how the credit crunch influenced the market, and how SMEs worked their way through these challenging times to find ways to finance their operations, development and growth. The major contribution of this chapter is it being the first to cover SMEs exclusively during all years of the financial crisis in a country like Greece that has seen its banking sector collapse. Firms were left without their traditional source of funding, the next-door bank, and managed to find alternative routes to finance to survive and keep on going.

This essay introduces the first translation of Schumpeter’s article Entrepreneur, originally published in 1928. We describe the background of Entrepreneur and use new archival sources to situate the article in time. Entrepreneur marks a transition of Schumpeter’s conception of entrepreneurship that took place between 1911 and 1926. Entrepreneur also contains Schumpeter’s most profound vision on economic selection, a vision that Schumpeter never elaborated further. We consider the most important implications of the new material in Entrepreneur and the reasons for the apparent shift in Schumpeter’s thought.

The collective² economic process is always a coherent phenomenon whose lines can be comprehended by the interlocking of its distinguishable elements. Not always, however, does the social whole – be it a modern nation or a “culturally poor” horde – run directly according to a comprehensive, conscious plan, carried out, for the whole, by the whole: Where this is the case – in a completely pure form, it would be in a socialist community – distinguishable tasks, facilities, etc. exist, even if the expression of economic life has not achieved any particular form.³ If, on the contrary, the social whole is leaving the responsibility for economic activity to subgroups or individuals, then the collective production process is separated into units that, seen from the outside, appear independent, autonomous, in principle left to themselves, and forthwith only oriented towards their own concern for survival – enterprises.