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Despite a large volume of theoretical and empirical research, defining the ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ within the cultural and creative sector, a sector with high heterogeneity in organisational and other aspects across its various segments remains challenging. In this regard, there should be a wide variety of differences in the characteristics and challenges of cultural entrepreneurs across industries, countries and regions. Nonetheless, the key role of the arts and cultural sector has increasingly piqued the interest of policymakers and the private sector, and it has been recognised for its importance within the South African economic landscape; as a result, the government has prioritised arts and culture as a pillar in their development strategies. Furthermore, while there has been some consensus over the past decade on what constitutes a creative industry, many questions about defining arts and cultural entrepreneurship still need to be answered, necessitating further definitional and policy coherence. As a result, some efforts at definitions are required to advance the sector and develop useful knowledge in policy formulation.

This chapter proposes an understanding of arts and cultural entrepreneurship as an exploration of a person, a community or a network's artistic resources (arts, creative and cultural) in value creation. It utilises meta-analysis, a non-empirical method, to review and analyse the existing literature. Further research is needed to investigate and evaluate the efficacy of established arts incubators, and the extent to which perceived entrepreneurial competencies affect organisational performance. Moreover, additional research is required to examine the entrepreneurial factors inhibiting or stimulating the influence on start-up financing (capital acquisition) in the South African arts and cultural industry.

This paper is one of the first studies to examine specificities, including limits of mindfulness at work in an African organisational context, whilst dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It specifically addresses the role of organisational and managerial support systems in restoring employee wellbeing, social connectedness and attachment to their organisations, in order to overcome the exclusion caused by the ongoing pandemic.

The study uses a qualitative research methodology that includes interviews as the main data source. The sample comprises of 20 entrepreneurs (organisational leaders) from Ghana and Nigeria.

The authors found that COVID-19-induced worries restricted the practice of mindfulness, and this was prevalent at the peak of the pandemic, particularly due to very tough economic conditions caused by reduction in salaries, and intensified by pre-existing general economic and social insecurities, and institutional voids in Africa. This aspect further resulted in lack of engagement and lack of commitment, which affected overall team performance and restricted employees’ mindfulness at work. Hence, quietness by employees even though can be linked to mindfulness was linked to larger psychological stress that they were facing. The authors also found leaders/manager’s emotional intelligence, social skills and organisational support systems to be helpful in such circumstances. However, their effectiveness varied among the cases.

This paper is one of the first studies to establish a link between the COVID-19 pandemic and mindfulness limitations. Moreover, it is a pioneering study specifically highlighting the damaging impact of COVID-19-induced concerns on leader–member exchange (LMX) and team–member exchange (TMX) relationships, particularly in the African context. It further brings in a unique discussion on the mitigating mechanisms of such COVID-19-induced concerns in organisations and highlights the roles of manager’s/leader’s emotional intelligence, social skills and supportive intervention patterns. Finally, the authors offer an in-depth assessment of the effectiveness of organisational interventions and supportive relational systems in restoring social connectedness following a social exclusion caused by COVID-19-induced worries.

This study aims to examine and compare the influence of the disposition to engage in engagement behaviors on physical and virtual engagement platforms, as well as the influence of these engagement behaviors on brand loyalty, value-in-use and word-of-mouth.

Data were collected using a survey distributed to a random sample of 10,000 fans of five teams in the Swedish top-division of elite football. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to derive a distinction between prevalent platforms, scales were validated through a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling was used to test the research model.

Customer disposition to engage with the sports team had a significant influence on customer engagement behaviors on both physical and virtual engagement platforms. However, engagement behaviors on virtual platforms were found to be more important than engagement behaviors on physical platforms for fostering brand loyalty and value-in-use.

The results highlight the importance of engagement behaviors with a brand on virtual engagement platforms. Thus, brand managers should prioritize their presence on social media to generate the positive outcomes of customer engagement behaviors.

By examining the effects of customer engagement behaviors on both physical and virtual engagement platforms, this study provides new insights to the emerging customer engagement literature.

In mobile banking (m-banking), understanding the factors contributing to customer satisfaction is crucial for bank managers to design effective strategies for enhancing the uptake of mobile banking services. This study assesses the relationships between quality, technology acceptance and credibility factors and behavioural outcomes (actual use, continuance intention and loyalty) and satisfaction with m-banking. It further investigates the moderating influence of economy type, innovation level, connectivity level and sample size on all these relationships.

The study employs a meta-analysis technique and reviews 54 published studies to investigate the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction with m-banking.

The study finds a significant relationship between satisfaction with m-banking and quality, technology acceptance and credibility factors and behavioural outcomes. It concludes that the moderating effect of economy type, innovation level, connectivity level and sample size partially moderate the majority of the hypothesized relationships.

Drawing on a comprehensive literature review, this study presents a novel framework elucidating the antecedents and behavioural outcomes of satisfaction with mobile banking. It contributes to the literature by exploring the moderating effects of sample size and country context on the relationships between these factors, presenting important implications for future mobile banking research.

This study has practical implications for m-banking service providers, offering insights into the factors that drive user satisfaction with mobile banking and highlighting the need for tailored strategies in different country contexts.

This study examines the effects of factors leading to satisfaction and the subsequent outcomes within the context of m-banking. The findings offer fresh perspectives that can be valuable for managers and policymakers, enabling them to enhance customer satisfaction in the realm of m-banking.

Improving service quality, student satisfaction and student loyalty is important to higher education institutions’ sustainable growth. The objectives of this study are a twofold: first, the study seeks to determine the dimensions of higher education service quality with a specific focus on Vietnam. Second, it examines how the service quality dimensions impact student satisfaction and student loyalty, with the moderating role of the university image.

This study followed a rigorous procedure, including interviews, a survey, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis to identify higher education service quality dimensions and their measures. After that, using the data obtained from 1,550 university students in Vietnam, confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the identified dimensions and structural equation modeling was used to test a proposed model explaining the outcomes of higher education service quality.

The findings reveal five dimensions of higher education service quality: academic aspect, nonacademic aspect, programming issues, facilities and industry interaction. Most of these factors have a positive influence on student satisfaction. In addition, the university image moderates the positive relationship between student satisfaction and student loyalty.

This study’s findings highlight the complexity of service quality in the higher education context and encourage higher education institutions to improve their service quality in image to enhance student satisfaction and loyalty.

This study suggests a unique measure of higher education service quality dimensions and provides fresh insights into how they impact student satisfaction and loyalty in Vietnam.

The purpose of this study is to understand the profit implications of analytics-driven centralized discriminatory pricing at the headquarter level compared with sales force price delegation in the purchase of an aftermarket good through an indirect retail channel with symmetric information.

Using individual-level loan application and approval data from a North American financial institution and segment-level customer risk as the price discrimination criterion for the firm, the authors develop a three-stage model that accounts for the salesperson’s price decision within the limits of the latitude provided by the firm; the firm’s decision to approve or not approve a sales application; and the customer’s decision to accept or reject a sales offer conditional on the firm’s approval. Next, the authors compare the profitability of this sales force price delegation model to that of a segment-level centralized pricing model where agent incentives and consumer prices are simultaneously optimized using a quasi-Newton nonlinear optimization algorithm (i.e. Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno algorithm).

The results suggest that implementation of analytics-driven centralized discriminatory pricing and optimal sales force incentives leads to double-digit lifts in firm profits. Moreover, the authors find that the high-risk customer segment is less price-sensitive and firms, upon leveraging this segment’s willingness to pay, not only improve their bottom-line but also allow these marginalized customers with traditionally low approval rates access to loans. This points out the important customer welfare implications of the findings.

Substantively, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically investigate the profitability of analytics-driven segment-level (i.e. discriminatory) centralized pricing compared with sales force price delegation in indirect retail channels (i.e. where agents are external to the firm and have access to competitor products), taking into account the decisions of the three key stakeholders of the process, namely, the consumer, the salesperson and the firm and simultaneously optimizing sales commission and centralized consumer price.

This study aims to underline the importance of addressing gender issues in family firms. It reinvigorates research in this field by revealing its current state, identifying research gaps and suggesting future agendas.

A bibliometric approach using a co-word analysis of 376 papers from the Web of Science database and their 885 keywords was performed to reveal the thematic structure of gender and family firm research, research topics, associations among them and their evolution over the last 30 years (1991–2021).

This review provides an extensive literature base and suggests research topics that facilitate the adoption of a gendered lens in family firm literature and business practice.

This review demonstrates how gender issues are intertwined with management, leadership and family firm approaches. Our observations inform scholars, policymakers and practitioners on the need to integrate gender issues into organizational culture and to connect empowerment strategies with the sociocultural environment.

This study shows the need to address women’s empowerment in business, considering different sociocultural contexts in addition to a Western focus. It also calls for embracing gender and feminist perspectives in research.

Non-profit organizations (NPO) contribute significantly to the welfare of citizens and communities. Engagement in volunteering is crucial for sustaining volunteer motivation and for the effective and efficient functioning of NPO, with significant implications for society at large. Yet, literature on volunteer engagement (VE) is limited to date. Grounded on service-dominant logic, self-congruity theory and self-determination theory, this study aims to understand what motivates VE and how it may evolve into a co-creation process valuable to NPO and its stakeholders.

Based on survey data collected from 450 volunteers, working with a diverse set of NPO, a comprehensive model of drivers and outcomes of VE was empirically tested using PLS-SEM, considering the mediating role of volunteers' congruence with the core values of the NPO.

The impact of volunteers' perceived autonomy, competence and relatedness on VE and its subsequent role in volunteers' loyalty and extra-role engagement behaviors (i.e. co-development, influencing and mobilizing behaviors) were validated. Moreover, the study validates value congruence as an internalizing mediating mechanism in the engagement process, a role that has been implied but not empirically tested.

The study contributes to the engagement and volunteering literature, which despite an unprecedented parallel have developed almost independently, with limited reference to one another. As the nomological network of VE is still underexplored, the study extends the engagement literature to the volunteering sector, validating the key (but underexplored) role of self-determination needs and value congruence in driving VE and value co-creation behaviors. The study further adds to engagement research while addressing other actors' engagement beyond the customer–brand dyad. While adopting a seldom explored marketing perspective of VE, this study provides NPO valuable insights on how to manage and engage volunteers.