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Austrian economics figures centrally in organizational entrepreneurship research. However, researchers have focussed almost entirely on the Austrian school's “gales of creative destruction” and “entrepreneurial discovery” metaphors, which are rooted in equilibrium assumptions and thus downplay the more subjective and dynamic aspects of entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to question such assumptions, proposing instead a “kaleidic” metaphor drawn from the radical subjectivist strand of Austrian economics. The paper develops, grounds, and enriches the theoretical concepts this metaphor embodies in order to advance the general understanding of entrepreneurship as a radically subjective, disequilibrium phenomenon, as well as the specific knowledge of entrepreneurs’ career and venture experiences. In doing so, the paper highlights creative imagination as a wellspring of entrepreneurship.

The paper employs a case study design to inductively develop the theoretical concepts embodied in the kaleidic metaphor and deductively ground them in the accounts 12 entrepreneurs provided about their career and venture experiences. The paper employs symbolist methods to develop thicker descriptions, generate alternative understandings, and facilitate richer interpretations. Moreover, the paper adopts a reflexive approach in considering the study's implications.

The results suggest the kaleidic metaphor comprises five overarching ideas that resonate, often very strongly, with entrepreneurs.

The study is the first to theoretically develop and empirically ground the ideas the kaleidic metaphor embodies. The paper contributes to a growing body of conceptual work and joins a handful of empirical studies by organizational entrepreneurship scholars using the radical Austrian perspective.

This paper investigates how language homophily between service providers and migrant consumers affects migrant consumers’ intentions to engage with financial and medical service providers.

Three empirical studies were conducted with migrant consumers living in Chile, England and the USA. Participants were presented information on service providers, and language homophily was manipulated between subjects. In the high (low) language homophily condition, service providers were described as having (not having) the ability to speak the native language of the migrant consumer.

Language homophily was found to increase migrant consumers’ expectation of control over a service encounter and, in turn, increase their intention to use a provider’s services. Collectivism was identified as a boundary condition. Among high collectivist consumers, language homophily did not affect service usage intentions; however, language homophily did positively affect service usage intentions among low collectivist consumers.

This work extends prior research on service provider language by finding a positive effect of language homophily on service usage intentions and by identifying mediating (i.e. expected control over the outcome of the service encounter) and moderating (i.e. collectivism) mechanisms for this effect.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

This chapter attempts to analyze mainly the interactions between the implementation of inflation targeting (IT) policy and performance in the conduct of economic policies (fiscal and exchange rate) in emerging countries. More precisely, empirical studies conducted in this chapter aim to apprehend the feedback effect of this strategy of monetary policy on the budget deficit and volatility of exchange rate performance. This said, we consider the institutional framework as endogenous to IT and analyze the response of authorities to the adoption of this monetary regime. To do this, the retained methodological path in this chapter is an empirical way, based on the econometrics of panel data. First, our contribution to the existing literature is to evaluate the time-varying treatment effect of IT’s adoption on the budget deficit of emerging inflation targeters, using the propensity score matching approach. Our empirical analysis, conducted on a sample of 34 economies (13 IT and 21 non-IT economies) for the period from 1990 to 2010, show a significant impact of IT on the reduction of budget deficit in emerging countries having adopted this monetary policy framework. Therefore, we can say that the emerging government can benefit ex post and gradually from a decline in their public deficits. Retaining the same econometric approach and sample, we tried secondly to empirically examine whether the adoption of IT in emerging inflation targeters has been effectively translated by an increase in the nominal effective exchange rate volatility compared to non-IT countries. Our results show that this effect is decreasing and that this volatility is becoming less important after the shift to this monetary regime. We might suggest that this indirect and occasional intervention in the foreign exchange market can be made by fear of inflation rather than by fear of floating hence in most emerging countries that have adopted the IT strategy. Finally, we can say that our conclusions corroborate the literature of disciplining effects of IT regime on fiscal policy performance as well as the two controversial effects of IT on the nominal effective exchange rate volatility.

This chapter reviews the empirical research on the supply of teachers in Latin America. The first part stresses the importance of teacher labor market perspectives for understanding the supply of high-quality teachers, one challenge that most countries in the region face. The second part introduces the teacher labor market framework that guides the search, while the third section describes the goal of the review and the methodology. It follows a mapping, description, and classification of the empirical research on the teacher supply and a discussion of the main findings. The chapter ends with a summary and a brief discussion of the implications for teacher policies.

This research investigates the effect of imposing a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on the likelihood of purchasing SSBs. We design and test an experimental framework that examines this and the effects of providing an explanation about the presence of an SSB tax and information about the negative health effects of consuming SSBs. Consistent with Elbel, Taksler, Mijanovich, Abrams, and Dixon (2013) and Taylor, Kaplan, Villas-Boas, and Jung (2019), we find that imposing a tax, in addition to increasing the conspicuousness of the tax by explaining the presence of a tax (and in some cases, the negative health effects) reduces the likelihood of purchasing an SSB anywhere from 8.39% to 18.15%. We contribute to the public health and tax policy literature by testing consumer choice in a controlled experimental setting and considering the effect of individual differences on the choice to purchase SSBs. Imposing a tax on SSBs may be an effective tool for decreasing SSB consumption that is made more effective when the tax is conspicuous.

This study carries out an ex - post evaluation of the Research and Development (R&D) Tax Incentive Law in Chile.

A subset of data from the 9th Innovation Survey is chosen, specifically those that were available for the years 2013 and 2014. Then, differences in differences (DID) and matching with differences in differences (MDID) techniques are used to identify the impact of this policy.

The results obtained allow us to affirm that the use of the R&D Tax Incentive Law had some positive but very low effects on some components of expenditure for innovation. Also, the positive effect of the tax credits on the total expenditure for innovation identified with MDID disappears when only firms that know the R&D Tax Incentive Law are used as a control group.

This work provides new evidence to evaluate innovation policies in Latin America, focusing on tax credits that have been much less studied than subsidy programs. Specifically, it is concluded that there is still a wide margin to improve and reformulate the R&D Tax Incentive Law in Chile.

Este estudio realiza una evaluación ex - post de la Ley de Incentivo Tributario para la Investigación y Desarrollo (I+D) en Chile.

Se escogió un subconjunto de datos de la 9a Encuesta de Innovación, específicamente aquellos que estaban disponibles para los años 2013 y 2014. Luego, se aplicaron las metodologías de diferencias en diferencias (DID) y matching con diferencias en diferencias (MDID) para identificar el impacto de esta política.

Los resultados obtenidos permiten afirmar que el uso de la Ley de Incentivo Tributario para la I+D tuvo algunos efectos positivos, pero bastante bajos en algunos componentes del gasto en innovación. Además, el efecto positivo del incentivo tributario sobre el gasto total en innovación identificado con MDID desaparece cuando se utiliza como grupo de control solamente a las firmas que conocen la ley.

Este trabajo aporta evidencia nueva para evaluar las políticas de innovación en Latinoamérica, enfocándose en los créditos tributarios que han sido mucho menos estudiados que los programas de subsidio. Específicamente, se concluye que existe todavía un amplio margen para mejorar y reformular la Ley de Incentivo Tributario para la I+D en Chile.

Given the widespread popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, understanding consumer-brand engagement behavior within social media is fundamental for retail firms. Yet, little is known about how consumers engage with retail brands through social media. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap and extend previous research by examining factors that influence consumers’ attitudes and intentions to engage with retail brands through Facebook, and ultimately purchase products and services.

This study draws on the theory of reasoned action and the technology acceptance model to develop a model of consumer-brand social media engagement and purchase intentions. Specifically, the model tests the influence of five antecedents of attitude on consumer intentions to engage with retail brands through the brands’ Facebook pages as well as intentions to make purchases through this social media. The hypotheses of the model are tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings provide an understanding of the main drivers of consumer-brand engagement that can lead to purchase intentions. Results show that consumers’ attitudes toward engaging with retail brands through Facebook are influenced by peer communication, compatibility and credibility, and that attitude has a strong influence on intentions toward this behavior. Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between intentions to engage and the likelihood of purchasing through a retail brand’s Facebook page.

This study is cross-sectional and was conducted at a particular point in time. Thus, results are not purported to make any inferences to causal relationships. Further, the measures of intentions to engage are attitudinal and not objective measures. Future longitudinal studies may help avoid this limitation by testing causal relationships.

The study contributes to the important area of consumer engagement with retail brands through social media in ways that may lead to making purchases. Findings can provide retailers with reference points through which to engage their brands with consumers through their Facebook pages in ways that may lead to more direct returns on their investment in social media sites.

Retailers are noticing the power of social media sites as a platform for engaging with consumers and extending this relationship to purchases. However, scant research has addressed this topic. The proposed model and findings of this study can extend prior research.

A quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) was developed to estimate the probability of getting listeriosis as a consequence of chicken and beef consumption in Chile. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

As a first step a deterministic retail-to-home model was constructed for the Chilean susceptible population, including storage, cross-contamination and cooking. Next, two probabilistic models were developed, including variability and/or the uncertainty of some of the parameters. The probabilistic models were analyzed by Monte Carlo simulations with 100,000 iterations.

Of the total susceptible population used in the model (2.81 million people), the deterministic model estimated 11 and two listeriosis cases because of beef and poultry consumption, respectively and the variability model estimated a mean of 322 and 7,546 cases for beef and poultry consumption, respectively. The uncertainty analysis showed large ranges, with realistic estimates made with an initial concentration of Listeria monocytogenes of 0.04-1 CFU/g and a dose-response parameter r ranging from 10-14 to 10-10.

The lack of information was the major limitation of the model, so the generation of it has to be a priority in Chile for developing less uncertain risk assessments in the future.

Raw animal products can be the cause of listeriosis cases if they are not stored, cooked and/or handled properly. Consumer education seems to be an essential factor for disease prevention.

This is the first QMRA made in Chile, and also the first study of listeriosis in non-processed meat.

This study examines how cultural factors associated with women in plural families in the Southern parts of Nigeria affect the women’s entrepreneurial behaviours in their family businesses – higher education institutions (HEIs). There have been studies on women entrepreneurship, and the associated barriers, in family firms. However, the non-existence of studies on how cultural factors may affect women’s entrepreneurial behaviours in polygamous family firms poses a research gap. We seek to address this in this study, by using the term polygamous family firms in order to make a clear distinction from the traditional family firms that saturate several European countries and eslewhere. This study aims to understand how culture affects women’s entrepreneurial behaviours in polygamous family firms. Specifically, it shows how family belief systems and shared cultural norms influence women’s entrepreneurial behaviours in these firms. In this vein, we employed the case study strategy and used interviews and observations in our data collection process. Although polygamy is considered repressive in some cultures, this study’s findings reveal that it is a natural practice in Nigeria and not a dying tradition. We contribute to the literature on family firms and female entrepreneurship by showing the cultural hindrances to women empowerment within the polygamous family firm context. We provide theoretical and practical implications as well as future research agenda to encourage more studies on women’s entrepreneurial behaviours in polygamous family firms.