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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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm performance in six Latin American economies. Firm performance includes five distinct dimensions, namely, firm turnover, labour productivity, innovativeness, product differentiation and technological transfer. The countries under scrutiny are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico.

Propensity score matching techniques are used to identify the causal effect of CSR on firm performance. To this end, World Bank Enterprise Survey (2006 wave) is used. This data set collects relevant firm-level data.

CSR has a positive impact on the outcome variables analysed, suggesting that corporate goals are compatible with conscious business operations. The results also vary across countries.

The pattern that emerges from the analysis seems to suggest that the positive effects of CSR depend on countries’ stage of industrialisation. In particular, the least developed the economy, the wider the scope of CSR. Nonetheless, the relationship between conscious business operations, firm performance and countries’ level of development is not directly tested in the present work.

The main practical implication of the study is that Latin American firms should adopt CSR. This is because corporate responsible practices either improve firm performance or they are not shown to have a detrimental effect.

The major policy implication is that emerging countries’ governments as well as international organisation should provide meaningful incentives towards CSR adoption.

The paper provides three major original contributions. First, it brings new descriptive evidence on CSR practices in Latin America. Second, it uses a broader and novel definition of firm performance, which is aimed at capturing developing countries’ business dynamics as well as at overcoming data limitations. Finally, it reassesses and extends the empirical evidence on the impact of CSR on firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the healthcare organization’s intention to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for improving efficiency. This paper also intends to identify various factors that influence the adoption of RFID in the healthcare organization. This paper develops and tests seven different hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling. Our results provide support for a number of relationships in the hypothesized model. These include direct relationships among the factors risk, resistance to change, supplier support and the factor perceived usefulness. However, the study did not find support for the relationship between the factors perceived ease of use and intention to use. The results provide support for several indirect relationships as well. These include indirect relationships between the factors perceived resistance to change, risk, suppliers’ support and perceived ease of use with the factor intention to adopt RFID technology in the healthcare organization. This research is grounded in the theory of reasoned action and applies the technology acceptance model (TAM) to the healthcare organization’s intention to use RFID technology.

The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the efficiency of secondary education schools in Chile. Since the early 1980s, several educational reforms have been passed with the main objective of improving the quality, equity and efficiency of the Chilean education system. This has initiated a debate about the efficient use of public educational resources. In response, this study provides insights into identifying the most efficient types of schools based on a set of different inputs and outputs.

This quantitative research study used data envelopment analysis (DEA), which estimates a single index of efficiency to identify schools performing at superior levels compared to other schools with similar characteristics. Two sets of models are created for evaluating efficiency. The first set of analyses provides a longitudinal efficiency comparison based on student performance on two national standardized tests as outputs, and the second model incorporates socioeconomic characteristics of students attending different schools as inputs in the efficiency estimation.

Based on the longitudinal models, it was found that private schools are more efficient and more consistent in maintaining their efficiency over time than other types of schools. In addition, when accounting for socioeconomic factors, publicly subsidized schools were more efficient than public schools.

The Chilean parliament is currently discussing new educational reforms that focus on more efficient use of educational resources to improve educational quality and equity. The results provided in this study generate useful evidence for policymakers and other stakeholders regarding school efficiency and the appropriate allocation of public resources to support diverse students served by different types of secondary educational institutions.

Education is a key factor affecting social mobility and socioeconomic improvement of societies. Schools are called upon to improve their performance to promote these social goals. Accordingly, more novel forms of research on efficiency are necessary to assess how well schools are transforming their inputs into performance outputs.

This study provides a longitudinal analysis of educational efficiency using DEA with a national data set of Chilean schools to evaluate how consistent the schools are in maintaining their levels of efficiency over time. In addition, one DEA model accounts for a social “vulnerability” index at the student level to better understand how efficiently secondary schools use their resources. The insights gained provide data-driven answers to support more informed educational decision-making and policy processes in Chile.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse key drivers of consumer acceptance of short messaging services (SMS) to participate in TV programmes.

The technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) have been integrated for the determinants of the acceptance of mobile data services incorporating variables regarding consumer‐media interaction (perceived value and affinity). The model has been tested using structural equation modelling.

Perceived value, attitude and affinity towards television (TV) programmes determine SMS acceptance to participate in TV programmes in Spain. In contrast, subjective norm, perceived value and attitude are the key drivers of SMS acceptance in Colombia.

This paper enables mobile companies and TV channels to know what aspects to improve in order to promote SMS‐based TV programmes. Marketers should highlight in their communication strategies user friendliness, usefulness and perceived value of mobile data services. In Colombia, programme stars and presenters should encourage the use of mobile services to interact with TV. Spanish companies should offer reliable and entertaining programme contents to improve consumers' affinity.

Although TAM and TPB have successfully explained behavioural intentions, previous research posits that they should be extended to properly explain mobile services acceptance. This paper combines the influence of perceived value, affinity and the TAM and TPB models to develop an improved model for SMS acceptance. The study also integrates variables for two communication media (TV and mobile) and compares SMS acceptance to participate in TV programmes in two markets with different culture and mobile services penetration rates.