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Consistent with international trends, various policy initiatives have been proposed in South Africa to reform education practices and equip learners with the ability to become critical-thinking citizens. One such reform was the inclusion of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) as a subject in the curriculum in the late 1990s. EMS, a uniquely South African creation, was introduced to address a particular agenda, enabling learners to understand the wealth creation process and develop entrepreneurial dispositions. Accordingly, the programmed curriculum evident in the EMS textbooks was designed to meet these official curriculum objectives that would create an entrepreneurial culture, which, in turn, would stimulate economic growth. Considering that textbooks are carriers of more than content information and reflect specific values and ideologies, it is of particular importance to examine these textbooks and the messaging communicated to young people about entrepreneurs, as these adolescents themselves start forming their own identities.

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate debate and critical thinking about the relevance and effectiveness – especially for ‘non-core’ areas – of prevailing methodological approaches to entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) research and policy development and to argue for the exploration of critical realism (CR) as a potential framework for researchers, practitioners and policymakers. I argue that prevailing theoretical and methodological frameworks are insufficient to enable researchers to adequately understand the dynamics of diverse EE or for policymakers to act appropriately on research findings. I posit CR as an alternative framework, providing a ‘lens’ through which researchers, policymakers and other ecosystem stakeholders can collaboratively explore the role of context and its interplay with agency. CR addresses the disadvantages associated with deterministic models of entrepreneurship and ‘Valley envy’ policy prescriptions, thus generating more meaningful insights for policy and practice, especially in relation to ‘non-core’ areas.

In March 2020, the Australian Government restricted the entry of travelers into Australia by closing its international borders in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). While Australian citizens who were resident overseas could return to Australia under certain conditions, the border closures significantly affected their ability to return to Australia and as a consequence had a dramatic impact on their lives and the lives of their families. This chapter explores the effects of the Australian government’s decision to close the national border by presenting the lived experiences of Australian citizens adversely affected by the government’s decision. The research is based on an online survey conducted in late 2021 and early 2022. Based on the findings, this chapter explores notions of Australian citizenship rights and privileges in the context of the pandemic, and the profound impacts the national lockout had on Australians as individuals, family members and on their sense of national identity. A central finding of this research reveals how citizens’ separation from family during the lockout placed considerable stress on the family as a social institution and caused significant impacts on Australians’ physical and mental health.

Introduction: When people need to take decisions, being economic decisions or otherwise, their decisions tend to rely on information the brain has already processed, and this includes the resources that the person has already invested. This is called sunk cost bias in the behavioural economics literature. On the other hand, mental practices could lead to the mental accounting bias, where people allocate a different value to a fixed amount of money, depending on circumstances.

Purpose: In this chapter, both biases mental accounting and sunk cost are investigated for the tourism industry in Turkey.

Methodology: The topic is researched through scenario-based questions and the Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) method is applied.

Findings: As a result, it could be reported that people, regardless of gender, fall into sunk cost and mental accounting biases in decisions relating to their vacations. Mental accounting biases can be primarily explained using the scenario questions posed rather than gender, education, and income while sunk cost bias is explained by status, ‘being s university student’ and ‘income level’.

Practical implications: Rapid price changes in the tourism industry can disturb consumers who are mental accounting and sunk cost biased. So, they can change their holiday preferences or be dissatisfied with it and give negative feedback.