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This paper investigates the integration of leadership training into IT curricula to develop current and future skills needed by the IT job market. The technical and non-technical skills required for IT professionals are presented and a conceptual model for including leadership training in technical courses is outlined. To implement this model, we adopted the Problem-Based Learning approach to teach an IT course. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered, through a survey, from 52 undergraduate students in the College of Information Technology at Zayed University. Our results show that our adopted approach was successful in teaching IT skills as well as developing leadership skills. Given these findings, we highlight the importance and feasibility of integrating leadership development on a daily basis within technical courses to develop both the technical and non technical skills required by the job market.

This study focuses on leadership in organizations where big data analytics (BDA) is an essential component of corporate strategy. While leadership researchers have conducted promising studies in the field of digital transformation, the impact of BDA on leadership is still unexplored.

This study is based on semi-structured interviews with 33 organizational leaders and subject-matter experts from various industries. Using a grounded theory approach, a framework is provided for the emergent field of BDA in leadership research.

The authors present a conceptual model comprising foundational competencies and higher order roles that are data analytical skills, data self-efficacy, problem spotter, influencer, knowledge facilitator, visionary and team leader.

This study focuses on BDA competency research emerging as an intersection between leadership research and information systems research. The authors encourage a longitudinal study to validate the findings.

The authors provide a competency framework for organizational leaders. It serves as a guideline for leaders to best support the BDA initiatives of the organization. The competency framework can support recruiting, selection and leader promotion.

This study provides a novel BDA leadership competency framework with a unique combination of competencies and higher order roles.

This study addresses current research gaps by integrating resilience literature with crisis management theories, focussing on SMEs. Specifically, the authors examine how the entrepreneurial decision-making process, via the interplay of causation and effectuation logic, impacts a firm's ability to respond to unpredictable events. This paper aims to present an investigation that seeks to unearth the potentially complex interplay between causation and effectuation logic in fostering organisational resilience, particularly in the face of unprecedented disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study includes the responses of 80 Italian entrepreneurs operating in the hospitality sector. The paper deployed a joint analysis through a partial least squares structural equation modelling technique (PLS-SEM) and a necessary condition analysis (NCA) to assess how the decision-making logics impact the entrepreneurs' decision when reacting to the pandemic.

The findings show that how entrepreneurs make decisions influence how they react to the crisis. Causation was found as a direct cause of resilience and preparedness, and effectuation was a direct cause of resilience and agility. Moreover, causation indirectly caused resilience through preparedness, and effectuation indirectly caused resilience through agility. Finally, both preparedness and agility are direct causes of resilience.

This research generated insights into why and how some SMEs respond more effectively to uncertainty than others. It provides actionable strategies that business owners and managers can employ to enhance their ability to withstand and recover from crises.

This study's originality and novelty lie in its empirical investigation of the roles of causation and effectuation logic in entrepreneurial decision-making and, consequently, their influence on SME resilience. Focused on the Italian hospitality sector, it provides unique insights into resilience strategies under severe, real-world conditions, contributing to theoretical development and practical applications in crisis management.

This paper aims to investigate the entrepreneurial behaviours exhibited by commercial smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, focusing on their socio-economic characteristics, and considers their implication for outcomes of livelihood resilience in a resource-constrained and turbulent rural context.

The study used survey data collected from 430 smallholder farmers in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. Using a two-step cluster analysis, the study constructed a typology of farmers based on their entrepreneurial behaviour and socio-economic characteristics.

The results revealed that commercial smallholder farmers are heterogeneous in terms of their entrepreneurial behaviours. Four clusters were identified: non-entrepreneurial, goal-driven, means-driven and ambidextrous. Beyond their entrepreneurial behaviours, these clusters significantly differ in the socio-economic characterises (gender, age, education levels, farm size, proximity to the market and social connection) and farm performance (seasonal sales per hectare and farm income per hectare).

The typology framework relating farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours to their socio-economic characteristics and business performance is important to tailor and therefore improve the effectiveness of farmer entrepreneurship programmes and policies. In particular, tailoring farmer entrepreneurship education is crucial to distribute land, finance and market resources in purposive ways to promote a combination of smallholder farmers’ effectual and causal behaviours at an early stage of their farm ventures.

Researchers still know little about which farmers’ behaviours are entrepreneurial and how these behaviours manifest in action during their commercial farm activities. This research leverages effectuation and causation theory to unveil previously overlooked distinctions on farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours, thereby enhancing a more grounded understanding of farmer entrepreneurship in a resource-constrained context.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between the congruence of mental models held by the members of entrepreneurial teams operating in an emerging economy (Poland) and entrepreneurial outcomes (performance and satisfaction).

The data obtained from 18 nascent and 20 established entrepreneurial teams was analysed to answer hypotheses. The research was quantitative and was conducted using an online questionnaire. Data was collected from each of the teams at two stages. Members of entrepreneurial teams were surveyed independently, which allowed measuring the congruence of their mental models pertaining to running a venture.

Findings reveal that team members’ mental model congruence is significantly related to financial performance and members’ satisfaction in the case of established entrepreneurial teams. However, in the case of nascent teams, there is no relationship between analysed variables.

Implications for theory and practice are offered with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship education. The concept of team mental model congruence is proposed to be included in training of nascent entrepreneurial teams, experienced companies and students.

The concept of team mental models investigated by the authors has been underexplored in entrepreneurship research. Results indicate that at least in some entrepreneurial teams, team mental models’ congruence is related to obtained outcomes. The paper proposes that principles of effectuation and causation can serve as the lens through which the mental model pertaining to running a venture can be analysed. It allows expanding studies on the congruence of team mental models in entrepreneurial teams beyond the strategic consensus.

This study aims to explore how entrepreneurial firms' networking logics may change under different types of perceived uncertainty. The arrival of new knowledge from the entrepreneurial firm's network may alter the perceived technology and market uncertainty that in turn determines how the firm adopts or combines the two opposing logics of causation and effectuation. Focusing on the roles of external advisors recruited by the firms, the study probes the details of the cyclical process and the mechanism through which networking logics are altered.

In this study the authors conducted a 3-year longitudinal multiple case study of 12 United Kingdom (UK) high-tech start-ups from prefounding to A-round funding with 54 semistructured interviews and meeting observations.

The knowledge of external advisors with distinct experience often reshapes the entrepreneurial firm's perceptions of uncertainty, leading to logics change in network development. The authors identify two types of knowledge brought by external advisors and discover how these can influence three networking logic pathways under different levels of technology and market uncertainty.

The study is one of the first to map the paths of changing logics along with different types of uncertainty in the context of entrepreneurial network development. The study unpacks one of the key mechanisms of networking logic changes: the knowledge and expertise of those advisors recruited by the entrepreneurial firms. The process model of changing logics contributes to the effectuation literature and entrepreneurial network research.

By using the lens of effectuation and causation, this paper aims at exploring how the team is formed in high-tech academic spinoffs, by looking specifically at decisional heuristics in an academic context. Indeed, the team composition is a critical issue for the subsequent growth of the academic new venture: on the one hand, the scientific-centred knowledge of the academic entrepreneurs is one of the main elements that lay the foundation for the new venture; on the other hand, it has been widely recognized that the lack of market-related knowledge and experience often has detrimental effects on performance. Decisive is then to explore how team decisions pertaining to the team formation process are taken.

A qualitative methodology based on multiple case studies is adopted under an abductive approach.

Results shed light on how decisions pertaining to team formation are taken by academic entrepreneurs and with what effects on team composition, a fundamental element to foster the growth of academic new ventures. Specifically, this study derives some propositions about the adoption of effectuation and causation in the team formation process, their occurrence and sequence in the light of the scientific context in which academic new ventures spin out and the effects on the team composition.

This study contributes to the debate on academic entrepreneurs’ decisional heuristic and the use of effectuation or causation in the early stages of an academic new venture, by focusing on the team formation process. This study specifically considers three temporal micro-phases – the selection of founders before inception, the appointment of top management teams, and the integration of early employees after the inception – and whether the academic context influences the decisional heuristics. Managerial implications are also derived.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the theoretical discussion of effectuation since the seminal paper in 2001 and to propose an agenda for future studies.

Systematic literature review and content analysis of 71 papers.

Most papers performed a replication of the concepts empirically, and few studies proposed to understand theoretical aspects of effectuation, among them, some authors presented theoretical advances to improve the approach and others participated in an ongoing debate that shows there is no consensus on whether the approach is theory or if considered, appears to be under construction at a rudimentary level or being questioned.

The method requires authors to make choices, so the database used and the criteria defined for searching papers that were analyzed are the main limitations of this research.

The authors suggest that researchers, teachers and practitioners use effectuation analytically and reflectively.

The authors present and analyze the current theoretical debate on effectuation. Results suggest the need for new discussions about the concepts, as well as new theoretical efforts of the researchers to analyze the potentialities and limitations of this approach.

Among empirical and applied research, with replications of the concepts of effectuation, this research contributes to a theoretical discussion based on a systematic literature review, seeking to bring new reflections about this approach. Additionally, the authors present an agenda of theoretical gaps for the development of future research.

The paper introduces a new conceptualisation of entrepreneurship that promotes a broader perspective of the phenomenon. The purpose of the paper is to re-conceptualise the act of entrepreneurship so as to reduce it to the fundamental behaviours and processes.

The paper sets out the motivations for and challenges in establishing a broader definition of entrepreneurship. Following this, current approaches to defining entrepreneurship are reviewed. In light of these, a definition of entrepreneurship is offered that captures a new perspective in understanding entrepreneurship. A critique of the offered definition is offered with regards to promoting theory development, empirical research, quality predictions and a distinctive research domain.

The authors argue that a definition of entrepreneurship that is focussed on the development and validation of ideas provides a thought-provoking re-conceptualisation of entrepreneurship. Extant perspectives on entrepreneurship as business/organisation creation, uncertainty, innovation, value creation and opportunity recognition/creation are drawn on to demonstrate the applicability of the definition.

The pursuit for an encompassing definition of entrepreneurship has been both extensive and earnest, which has inadvertently resulted in a sizable pool of definitions. The authors offer a re-conceptualisation of entrepreneurship with the intent to provide a broad yet coherent definition that encompasses all acts of entrepreneurship. A benefit of this conceptualisation is the establishment of the endpoint of the entrepreneurship process that delineates it from the domain of management.

This study explores how and when intuitive forms of planning can be used in a family firm's succession process.

The study uses an extended focus group meeting, consisting of individual, group and subgroup discussions with seven highly experienced external family business advisors in the Netherlands to gain a holistic understanding of the succession process and its underlying logic. The study also employs pre- and post-group questionnaires.

This study reveals that advisors perceive intuitive forms of planning as an integral part of the succession process, with the latter containing both intuitive and formal logic and activities. Both logics are used situationally and flexibly to deal with the uniqueness and unpredictability of the succession process and to build strong relations and manage relational dynamics in business families to address tasks, dilemmas and contingencies.

The succession process is an important part of business families' achievement of transgenerational intent. Creating commitment among potential successors begins when they are children, and understanding the role of the more intuitive forms of planning during the succession process will provide us with a more holistic perspective on its dynamics.