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The novel coronavirus (nCoV) pandemic, and the challenges of social distancing, proffer a unique opportunity to re-explore the role of social network support in entrepreneurship. Applying social support theory and gender schema theory, this study aims to examine the gender-based differences in prospective entrepreneurs' reliance on their social networks in their entrepreneurial journey amid social turmoil.

The authors collected two-stage primary survey data of prospective entrepreneurs within the pandemic's timeframe from Science and Technology Parks in Iran, one of the first countries to deal with the first, second and third waves of the 2019-nCoV virus.

The findings demonstrate that female entrepreneurs rely more strongly on their social network support for guidance and encouragement, which positively affects their opportunity intention. While this effect is also seen in men, the effect size is smaller. Also, prospective female entrepreneurs were generally more dissuaded from opportunity intention by the severe perceived environmental uncertainty of the crisis than were men.

Prior research on the interaction between social network support and opportunity intentions has been examined in the context of socio-economic normalcy. The authors test whether, how and why these interactions hold in times of crisis, with especial attention to the mechanisms of experienced stress, perceived environmental uncertainty and idea innovativeness.

Sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem research is an emerging trend within the entrepreneurship domain. Drawing from resource dependency theory, this study examines the interdependent nature of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem factors and the mediating role of local culture as it relates to entrepreneurial action. The authors collected data from 12 entrepreneurial ecosystems in Australia and developed a model of the interdependencies of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem factors.

The data were collected through an e-survey of Small and Medium Entreprise (SME) owners in New South Wales, Australia. The authors applied partial least squares structural equation methodology to assess the structural models, validate the outer models and examine the inner model.

The findings reinforce empirical support for sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. The environment where sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems are evolved influences their functionality. Further, entrepreneurial culture mediates the relationship with other ecosystem factors. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This study focuses on understanding the interdependent nature of sustainable ecosystem factors. The authors identified entrepreneurial culture as a mediator to business support services, educational institutional support and financial capital availability with business and social networks.

This study focuses on a regional education network in the Mid-Atlantic that aims to facilitate equitable learning practices by providing ongoing teacher/leader support, cross-sector collaboration and professional learning for educators. The authors probe networks as providing core support for systems level change and serving as precursors to the community engagement that is essential for deeper learning. Specifically, this study is driven by the hypotheses that (1) deeper learning may be supported by pathways for students and educators to meaningfully engage with the local community; (2) deeper learning is more likely to happen when educators connect to communities beyond their own school or organization and (3) education networks can help facilitate those functions.

The authors aimed to understand how participation in an education network influenced members (which include school leaders, teachers and leaders of youth programs) and how experiences might differ by level of participation. The authors conducted interviews with individuals across three groups of adults (n = 111 total): core members (n = 16), members with mid-level engagement (n = 30) and peripheral members (n = 65).

Educators who participated most intensely and deeply described the network as a vehicle for learning about and advancing equity through specific practices including individualized learning, increasing access and resource redistribution. Mid-level participants emphasized the professional network building function of the network. For peripheral or new participants, the most salient function of the network was celebration of education and educators. These findings suggest that education networks have a role in strengthening the structures that support leaders to make deeper learning happen.

More research is needed on how participants move from the periphery to more core involvement in education networks, where they may gain the full benefits of participation. Further research is also needed to explore the link between education network engagement among school leaders and the deeper learning environments in schools.

Research on education networks is limited. To the authors' knowledge, the present study is one of the largest collections and analyses of interviews with education network members to date. The authors present education network engagement as a precursor for community embedded deeper learning in schools.

Whistleblowing plays a crucial role in revealing organizational misconduct and systemic corruption in industry and government. This paper investigates changing practices of whistleblower activism, with particular reference to the role of solidarity and the increased role of support networks. Many modern whistleblower disclosures have revealed gaping flaws in the system of global governance related to a range of important social and economic issues, such as tax evasion, global mass surveillance, the use of torture and illegal wars of aggression. All these forms of systemic corruption are reliant on the use of secrecy havens to conceal the abuse from public scrutiny and democratic oversight. Counter-hegemonic social movements that oppose forms of systemic corruption can find important allies in those whistleblowers, who leak vital information about misconduct and corruption to the public. In this paper, we argue that there is a clear relationship of mutual support between whistleblowing and activist social movements, both in the process of whistleblowing and in furthering the campaigns of the social movements themselves. We theorize this, unpacking the processes and dynamics underlying the relationship, and offering a framework for analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of the changing role of whistleblower activism and support networks in undertaking social reform and counter-hegemonic practice.

This study aims to investigate the impact of entrepreneurs’ decision-making styles on enterprise performance and suggests several entrepreneurial ecosystems – factors are impacting this relationship. The authors extend this line of work by examining how regional entrepreneurial culture, educational institutional support and business and social networks mediating the relationship between entrepreneurs’ decision-making style and small medium enterprises (SME)s’ financial performance.

The data were collected through an e-survey of SME owners in New South Wales, Australia. This study developed a model combining a set of entrepreneurial ecosystem factors, entrepreneurs’ decision-making styles and SMEs’ financial performance. Data were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling.

The results suggest regional entrepreneurial culture, educational institutional support and business and social networks mediate the relationship between entrepreneurs’ decision-making style and SMEs’ financial performance. Hence, this study developed a more complete methodical understanding of entrepreneurs’ decision-making styles and their impact on SMEs’ financial performance. This study provides deeper insights into the conditions and processes by which an entrepreneurs’ decision-making style impacts SMEs’ financial performance.

The focus of this study was to understand the relationship of entrepreneurs’ decision-making styles on SMEs’ financial performance. The authors identified that the entrepreneurs’ decision-making style positively impacts SMEs’ financial performance. This study augments the body of knowledge by proposing ways in how the entrepreneurs’ decision-making style can be more strengthened.

This study aims to explore the socio-cultural barriers to enterprise in economically disadvantaged communities across five countries: UK, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece.

This study’s EU-funded project took the form of community-based participatory action research. This study focusses on the data from the interviews and network mapping exercises. A total of 40 individual interviews took place, with interviewees from communities with entrenched disadvantage and limited opportunities for employment and education and low rates of business start-ups.

The research shows that barriers to entrepreneurship can be overcome where a trusted representative (or “mediator”) can act as a bridge, facilitating access to new knowledge and networks. This approach can be used to support micro/SMEs for growth and innovation. In targeting these businesses, policymakers need to recognise the power imbalances between actors and take steps to overcome these, by establishing links with community-based mediators who can act as trusted interlocutors, enabling sustainable relationships to be developed.

This research targets many often hard-to-reach groups and offers insights into the lived experiences of those who often operate at the peripheries. In doing so, it shows how trusted individuals can be used to remove barriers and promote growth, making clear links between theory to practice.

Research suggests that engaging in networking behaviors can affect individual work outcomes. However, relatively less is known about how internal versus external networking behaviors influence work outcomes, and whether gender moderates these relationships. Drawing on social capital theory and social role theory, the authors propose a positive relationship between employees' internal and external networking behaviors and their work outcomes (job commitment and career success), and the moderating effect of gender. The authors also explore employee preference in networking.

Based on a sequential mixed-method research design with a four-month time lag, Study 1 data on networking behaviors and employee outcomes were collected via a survey of middle managers and their supervisors from 10 private sector organizations in Sri Lanka. Study 2 data were collected via interviews from a sample of those middle managers and their supervisors.

Study 1 findings indicate a positive relationship between internal networking behaviors and job commitment, and external networking behaviors and career success. The authors also found that internal networking behaviors enhance job commitment. Study 2 findings indicate men and women network differently and benefit differently from that networking but achieve equitable workplace benefits.

This study provides pioneering evidence that internal networking behaviors enhance job commitment among women. It appears that past research did not test the moderating effect of gender for internal versus external networking behaviors separately. Moreover, this study refines the evidence that internal and external networking behaviors differentially impact employee outcomes and explains the processes through a qualitative inquiry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the ‘real’ world and substantially impacted the virtual world and thus the Internet ecosystem. It has caused a significant exogenous shock that offers a wealth of natural experiments and produced new data about broadband, clouds, and the Internet in times of crisis. In this chapter, we characterise and evaluate the evolving impact of the global COVID-19 crisis on traffic patterns and loads and the impact of those on Internet performance from multiple perspectives. While we place a particular focus on deriving insights into how we can better respond to crises and better plan for the post-COVID-19 ‘new normal’, we analyse the impact on and the responses by different actors of the Internet ecosystem across different jurisdictions. With a focus on the USA and Europe, we examine the responses of both public and private actors, with the latter including content and cloud providers, content delivery networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs). This chapter makes two contributions: first, we derive lessons learned for a future post-COVID-19 world to inform non-networking spheres and policy-making; second, the insights gained assist the networking community in better planning for the future.

The study sets out to explore the mediating role of intellectual capital (IC) dimensions (i.e. human, structural and relational) between scholars' affiliation to online academic networks and institutional knowledge capitalization. Online academic networks are tackled through the lens of knowledge networks which have been of primary importance for new relevant knowledge acquisition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A questionnaire-based survey of 305 academics from 35 different countries was conducted from July to December 2021, employing a partial least squares structural equation modelling technique. The database was initially filtered to ensure the adequacy of the sample, and data were analyzed using the statistics software package SmartPLS 3.0.

Evidence was brought forward that the proposed conceptual model accounted for 52.5% of the variance in institutional knowledge capitalization, the structural and relational capital availed by knowledge networks exerting strong positive influence on the dependent variable.

The study has both research and managerial implications in that it approaches a topical phenomenon, namely the capitalization of online academic networks in the COVID-19 context, which has dramatically altered the way that research and teaching are conducted worldwide.

The most important contribution of the paper resides in the comprehensive research model advanced which covers individual, organizational and network multifaced layers, starting with the personal and institutional motives to join a specialized network, continuing with the opportunities provided by knowledge networks in terms of intellectual capital harnessing, and ending with its influence on higher education organizations.

The purpose of this study is to the role of bonding and bridging social capital of women entrepreneurs in dealing with the business crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 24 women entrepreneurs from Deoria district from the state of Uttar Pradesh in India are selected through the snowball sampling technique. Out of these 24 female entrepreneurs, 14 belong to some network and 10 are not a part of any network. A qualitative methodology based upon in-depth personal interviews is used to get insights about the personal views of the female entrepreneurs on the role played by their bonding and bridging social capital to deal with the problems during the current business crisis.

Contrary to the general belief that women-owned businesses succumb easily to business crises and respond to reduce risks, the findings suggest that women business owners confidently faced the adverse business conditions. The bonding social capital of women entrepreneurs provided emotional support and motivation through internal interactions and responsibility sharing, and business networks (bridging capital) facilitated identification of new opportunities. The respondents emphatically mentioned the role of peer entrepreneurs as sources of information and resources.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study in the Indian context that seeks to investigate the role of bonding and bridging social capital during the business crisis induced by the current pandemic using qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews.