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During the 1920s, military interests in Latin America and international and diplomatic relations gave the impetus to the creation national airlines. In countries like Colombia and Brazil, the technological and commercial approaches of Germany and other Europeans nations influenced the forms airlines took. In the following decade the United States began to exert its influence which was consolidated after the Second World War. The pattern continued until the 1980s and involved strong international regulation, the predominance of publicly owned national airlines, and American technological leadership. Market liberalization then brought about a new scenario involving privatizations of national airlines across the region, intensified competition, and mergers and acquisitions that led to the formation of large carriers. Today, passenger traffic in the region is dominated by two carriers: LATAM and Avianca. Other local airlines remain, often linked to a global alliance member. Air traffic has been grown, with the prospect of further growth after economic recovery flowing the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, commercial air traffic has adapted to the needs of its vast territory but where institutional changes have played a very important and often decisive role.

Alliances between companies are an example of a collaborative strategy adopted in anticipation of highly uncertain markets. Since 1980, the commercial airline industry has been affected by a progressive liberalization worldwide. In this historical context, most airlines reacted with defensive movements in the face of high competition. In the case of airlines in the Spanish market, one of the largest in the world due to the weight of the tourism sector in its economy, airlines responded in various ways to the intensification of competition. Iberia, the main Spanish airline, established different defensive alliance policies. In the 1980s, alliances were mainly collaborative. Since 1998, airline alliances have become coopetitive in nature, as was the case with the creation of One World group (American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas and Iberia). The partners began to interact in a more horizontal way, maintaining various agreements (code-sharing, handling, schedule coordination, shared sales, fleet maintenance) without renouncing their independence in the face of global competition. Iberia has subsequently modified the composition of its portfolio to move towards a more vertical collaboration with the integration into the IAG Group (Iberia, British Airways, Air Lingus and Vueling). This second phase is a quest to increase market power with deep changes in the nature of its alliances while maintaining coopetitive alliances.

The purpose of this paper is to unveil the main changes in the UAE’s policy towards Iran since its foundation in 1971. The UAE favored strategic hedging, extending its commercial and diplomatic relations with Iran, in addition to developing its military capabilities and maintaining military/security alliances with Saudi Arabia and the USA. However, the UAE started to reorient its policy towards Iran by adopting some sort of balancing strategy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011. This paper examines how and why the UAE had to change course and explores whether it would revert back to strategic hedging with Iran.

The study will be carried out based on a theoretical framework drawn from strategic hedging theory, a new structural theory in international relations, to examine the shifts in UAE policy towards Iran. Previous literature suggests that small states prefer hedging over balancing or bandwagoning. The authors also undertake a descriptive analysis and deploy a longitudinal within-case method to investigate changes in UAE policy towards Iran and identify the causal mechanisms behind these changes. That method allows investigating the impact of a particular event on a case by comparing the same case before and after that event occurred.

The main finding of this study is that the UAE hedging strategy towards Iran allowed maximizing the political and economic returns from the cooperation with Iran and mitigating the long-range national security risks without breaking up the consistent and beneficial ties with other regional and global powers. Hedging achieved the desired outcome, which is preventing direct military confrontation with Iran. Hard balancing, adopted by Abu Dhabi after the 2011 Arab Spring, has proved to have some negative effects, most importantly provoking Tehran. Some recent indicators suggest, though that the UAE may revert back to its long-established hedging policy towards Iran.

Strategic hedging is a new structural theory in international relation, although hedging behavior in states’ foreign policies is far from new. It is new enough, thus, not have been researched sufficiently, strategic hedging still needs theorizing and comparison. This paper highlights the importance of strategic hedging as the most appropriate strategy for small states. It provides an important contribution to the application of the theory to the case of UAE policy towards Iran. The paper also assesses the conventional wisdom that small states prefer hedging over balancing in the light of the changes in the UAE foreign policy since 2011.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the meaning of being a social entrepreneur in a society marked with multiple transitions. It aims to understand how theoretical concepts of social entrepreneurs, including common dichotomies between economic and social, collective and individual, reflect in social entrepreneurs’ rationale, values and identities.

The study used an exploratory and qualitative approach. Empirical data were gathered during 14 semi-structured interviews with Croatian social entrepreneurs. Thematic analysis was used as an analytical framework.

The findings suggest complexity of social entrepreneurs’ rationale and identities as they face challenges in balancing different goals. Democratic and participative governance appeared to be the weakest link of social enterprises. Identity of social entrepreneurs in the society of multiple transitions is fluid and changes through the continuum from pure social to pure commercial, from more related to civil society to more related to the market, from mostly individual to mostly collective.

The main limits of the study are related to sampling strategy and the small sample size. Generalization is limited by the nature of qualitative research and relies on analytical and naturalistic generalization.

The findings of the study may contribute to ecosystem development that would be more suitable for social enterprise realities in a specific context.

This paper focuses on the individual level and provides rare insights into social entrepreneurs’ rationale, values and identities.

E-commerce is gaining popularity across the globe and Mauritian businesses are also increasingly making use of online platforms to engage in cross-border electronic transactions. However, there are several implications arising from online trading which need to be addressed, among which one is the validity of e-contracts. This research will therefore emphasise on two main components of e-contracts: choice of law and the applicable jurisdiction. While Mauritian laws were amended to give effect to digital signatures and e-agreements, there is no extensive or substantive domestic legal provision on choice of law and jurisdiction. Hence, the purpose of this study is to advocate for a greater clarity on the legal framework governing the applicable law and jurisdiction governing a conflict situation in e-contracts, with the view of increasing trust in international e-commerce and to bring in consistency with international commercial relations. This study will be carried out in the Mauritian context by adopting the black letter approach which will analyse the relevant rules and regulations concerning e-contract formation and validity. Additionally, a comparative analysis will be conducted on the legal framework relating to the applicable law and jurisdiction in e-contracts for selected countries: the European Union and the United States. These countries have been chosen for the comparison due to their high involvement in e-commerce and their advanced as well as comprehensive rules on e-commerce.

This paper aims to explore how Maori entrepreneurs in Aotearoa New Zealand negotiate cultural and commercial imperatives in their entrepreneurial practice. Culture is integral to Indigenous entrepreneurship, an example being tikanga Maori (Maori cultural values) and Maori entrepreneurship. This study discusses the tensions and synergies inherent in the negotiation of seemingly conflicting imperatives both theoretically and practically.

This study reports on a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews involving ten Maori enterprises of the Ngati Porou tribe on the east coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.

This study finds that depending on their contextual and cultural orientation, Maori entrepreneurs use tikanga to help negotiate cultural and commercial imperatives. The contingency of entrepreneurial situations and the heterogeneity of Maori perspectives on whether (and in what way) tikanga influences entrepreneurial practice appear influential. The authors propose a typology of Maori entrepreneurs’ approaches to explain the negotiation of cultural and commercial imperatives comprising the “culturally engaged Maori entrepreneur”; the “culturally responsive Maori entrepreneur”; and the “culturally ambivalent Maori entrepreneur.”

This study proposes a typology to analyse entrepreneurial practices of Indigenous entrepreneurs’ negotiation of cultural and commercial imperatives.

There are numerous studies on satisfaction, but not enough on dissatisfaction when its consequences can be harmful. This study aims to examine different unsatisfactory situations during customer–supplier relationships in industrial markets combining the appraisal theory with the critical incident technique to identify potential problems and strategies to minimize their effect.

This research follows an exploratory qualitative approach based on 18 in-depth interviews with managers from business-to-business firms. The information obtained was object of a textual and conceptual analysis using the analytical software ATLAS TI 9.0.

The results show that negative cognitions have greater influence than negative emotions, and those dissatisfied customers may respond by expressing complaints, ending transactional relationships, reporting the other party legally, asking for explanations or continuing commercial relationships, even though they are dissatisfied. This will depend on the severity of the critical incident and the negative cognitions and emotions perceived. Proactivity and understanding of this situation will allow for understanding what specific actions to take to resolve conflicts and mitigate the negative effects among the parties.

This paper focuses on dissatisfaction, instead of satisfaction, in industrial markets through the appraisal theory. Furthermore, it applies the critical incident technique to understand the cognitions and emotions related with dissatisfaction in the commercial relationships. Finally, it provides ideas on what are the main source of dissatisfaction and how to manage them to anticipate and better manage those incidents.

This paper first aims to examine associations between factors involved in business-to-business complaints management and results (satisfaction and loyalty) and analyses three types of distributors based on their cultural profile (domestic, low context and high context). Second, the paper investigates whether the identified associations remain stable over time.

Data from a sample of distributors for a manufacturing company were gathered during two periods of time. A factorial analysis of correspondences and a cluster analysis were carried out to visually represent the associations among clients, complaints and results in the associations among clients, complaints and results. The stability over time of these relationships was also analysed by calculating the correlations between the Euclidean distances on the two maps (one per year) and their mobility ratio.

The authors found significant evidence that clients from different cultures are associated with varying profiles of complaint and different result types and that certain associations remain stable over time.

While many studies have analysed complaint behaviour in business-to-consumer contexts, there is a lack of research from an international business-business relations point of view, leaving questions virtually unexplored. Second, the last phases of supply chain management, specifically complaints management, have been undeveloped, limiting the cultural factor to the general scope of negotiation. In this vein, this paper compares different complaint profiles and results, comparing culturally different customers/distributors. Third, research has mostly referred to a single period, while this paper investigates two different periods of time for the same company (and their distributors) to analyse the relevance of the stability (or not) over time of the associations identified.

Over the last decades, the development of entrepreneurial activity has allowed greater growth and economic development in Spain. However, within the analysis of Spanish entrepreneurial dynamics, insufficient attention has been paid to a key group: senior entrepreneurs. The fact that the first two decades of the 21st century have been accompanied by the two worst economic crises in remembrance since the Great Depression of the 1930s has had a great impact on the professional careers of the group of senior workers, whose careers have been cut short due to the closure of companies. In this way, the present work delves into the reality of senior entrepreneurs in Spain, analyzing the main characteristics of this group, which is becoming increasingly important in society.

Using microdata from the Spanish National Statistics Institute's Labour Force Survey, the study focuses on reference persons who, being 50 years of age or over and actively working, work as an entrepreneur and have started their activity in the last 12 months. The study covers, in turn, the analysis period of the fourth quarters from 2005 to 2020. In relation to the methodology, the work focuses on the use of binary logistic regression techniques, given that the phenomenon to be studied is binary in nature: entrepreneurship or not.

The main conclusions drawn are the importance of sociodemographic factors such as educational level, age, the profession of the couple as well as the fact of having or not having children. The sector of activity and region are also significant. It is also concluded that senior entrepreneurship in Spain is of a necessary nature, considering the evolution of unemployment and decisions based on pension reform.

The main limitations of the study refer to the lack of socioeconomic information. Thus, it would be interesting to know the link among the sociodemographic characteristics and the economic situation of the professionals, as well as the fact of whether they have started from a previous situation of unemployment or employment.

The obtained conclusions allow progress to be made in the generation of economic policies aimed at the professional reorientation of a group of workers who, due to labor market circumstances, are obliged to end long professional careers and to seek alternatives. In fact, entrepreneurship is a viable professional alternative for these professionals.

Despite the importance of senior professionals in the Spanish economy, more research is needed on their characteristics and needs. Despite important studies such as Socci et al. (2020) or Perez-Encinas et al. (2021), there are not many studies for the Spanish reality. This paper seeks to deepen the understanding of the sociodemographic characteristics of Spanish senior entrepreneurs, based on current public information and considering different stages of the economic cycle.