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The role of women in Pakistani society – largely embedded in its patriarchal socio–cultural environment – has important implications for women’s entrepreneurial activity in the country. This study aims to investigate and analyse the influence of informal institutional factors on women’s entry into entrepreneurship in Pakistan, and determine how women exercise agency to cope with the constraints posed by such factors.

A qualitative approach is used to explore the normative context and lived experiences of women entrepreneurs in relation to the influence of socio–cultural beliefs and attitudes on their entrepreneurial career choices.

The findings suggest that women’s entrepreneurial career choices both revolve around and are shaped by a complex interplay of socio–cultural influences. Pakistani women entrepreneurs exercise their agency as a means of negotiating gender roles within both household and society, using religious descriptions as a means to justify their entrepreneurial activity.

While every effort has been made to ensure that the data were objectively interpreted, and the derived findings were robustly analysed, the research team acknowledges the many difficulties associated with adopting a social constructionist approach. As articulated by Fletcher (2011), the key issues of contextual objectivity (i.e. where the researcher judges what is important), reflexive turn (the need for the researcher to constantly reconnect with the subject) and potential multiplicity of contexts (the various contextual and potentially conflicting influences on the researcher) presents ongoing challenges for researchers in this field.

This study offers valuable insights into the impact of the informal (socio–cultural) institutional factors on women’s entrepreneurial activity, opening up new avenues for further research. The study also contributes to the women’s entrepreneurship literature from the perspective of an Islamic developing country.

The paper aims to identify the form and significance of the influence of Buddhism upon the nature of past and future national economic change. It is divided to address two major tasks. The first section analyses the world view and behavioural prescriptions of Buddhism and examines their compatibility with the requirements commonly presumed for economic development. This analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional views, Buddhism has many positive features consistent with processes and change leading to growth in economic welfare (especially under the modern ecologically sustainable development framework). The second section consists of an empirical analysis of comparative social, economic and environmental indicators across nations where Buddhism is likely to have had a substantial influence. Although few regularities are identified across the entire group of nations, some internal similarities are noted together with discussion of the importance of historical factors and development potentiality linked to the influence of Buddhism. The analysis provides a useful overview of relative conditions and trends in Buddhist‐influenced nations on a diverse range of social, economic and environmental indicators.

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between Turkish ethnic entrepreneurs' socio‐cultural characteristics (namely education, experience and religion) and the entrepreneurial orientation of their firms.

The study collected data through 139 face‐to‐face structured interviews with Turkish ethnic entrepreneurs in London, UK.

The study illustrates that educational attainment of an entrepreneur makes a positive impact on a firm's entrepreneurial orientation. Educational attainment equips business owners with the skills and reflective mindsets of understanding customers and responding to their needs. Previous business experience of the entrepreneur also impacts positively upon a firm's entrepreneurial orientation, while religion of the entrepreneur does not have a significant impact on the firm's entrepreneurial orientation.

This paper reports findings based on Turkish ethnic entrepreneurs in London. Therefore, care should be taken in making generalisations from the sample.

This paper identifies those socio‐cultural attributes that entrepreneurs can capitalise on in order to enhance the entrepreneurial orientation of their firms.

The paper fills in a glaring gap by providing empirical evidence about the relationship between socio‐cultural characteristics of entrepreneurs and their small firms' entrepreneurial orientation.

This article aims to empirically investigate the influence of socio-cultural and political factors and actors on the perceived autonomy and control of state agencies in Pakistan. Taking an institutional perspective, which envisages a diverse course of agency reforms, owed to varied national cultures, historical paths and traditional mindsets, the authors argue that the institutional theory provides an explanation to the autonomy and control status of the agencies.

Data were collected from 39 senior public officials and governing board members in federal agencies by conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was performed using NVivo-12 for data analysis.

The results disclose that the agencies operate within an overriding politico-administrative culture of intervention and supremacy of the central government. There is a close relationship between the political actors and actors' implementing agents, the bureaucrats. Although the disaggregated public agencies are created under the agency model, a culture of political influence and control still prevails within them. Among the socio-cultural factors, corruption is reported as a critical influencing factor for agency autonomy.

The study emphasizes the need to adapt and modify agencification practices in developing countries based on the political, socio-cultural and administrative contextual factors and actors and the varying degrees of influence the practices exercise over the Government machinery.

This study unveils the implications of the new public management (NPM)-led agency model in Pakistan, which was primarily adopted as a part of the structural adjustment program (SAP) under loan conditionality from international donor agencies and explores the indigenous doctrines that govern agencies functioning under ministries.

The purpose of this paper is to study the differentiated impact of factors that influence the propensity to entrepreneur in a sample of people in Chile. A distinction is made between individuals that live in primary cities and secondary cities. The differentiating factors are socio‐cultural aspects (reference models – positive examples of entrepreneurs – and perception of social fear of failure) and the gender of the individual.

For the research data from the survey used in Chile by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for the years 2010 and 2011 were used. A logit model was used to determine the differentiated impact of the analysed factors and interactions were done using the method proposed by Corneliâen and Sonderhof (2009).

These showed that the fact that an individual lives in a secondary city decreases his entrepreneurship probability. The positive impact that the reference models have is weaker in women. Contrary to what was expected, the negative impact of the fear of failure perception is weaker in women.

These results have the implications to suggest focused public policies and differentiations that consider the socio‐cultural, territorial (focused in cities) and gender aspects.

The research contributes by giving empirical evidence of the existence of the negative impact of living in a secondary city and of differentiated effects of socio‐cultural factors from the gender perspective.

el objetivo general de este trabajo es estudiar el impacto diferenciado de factores que influyen en la propensión a emprender en una muestra de individuos en Chile. Se distingue entre individuos que viven en ciudades principales y ciudades secundarias. Los factores diferenciadores son aspectos socioculturales (modelos de referencia – ejemplos positivos de emprendimiento – y percepción de miedo social al fracaso) y el género de los individuos.

para llevar adelante la investigación se utilizaron los datos provenientes de la encuesta aplicada en Chile por el Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) para los años 2010 y 2011. Se aplicó un modelo logit para determinar el impacto diferenciado de los factores analizados y se realizaron interacciones utilizando el método propuesto por Cornelißen y Sonderhof (2009).

indican que el hecho de que un individuo viva en una ciudad secundaria disminuye su probabilidad de emprendimiento. El impacto positivo que tienen los modelos de referencia es más débil en mujeres. Contrario a lo esperado, el impacto negativo que tiene la percepción de miedo al fracaso es más débil en mujeres.

estos resultados tienen implicaciones para sugerir políticas públicas focalizadas y diferenciadas que consideren aspectos socioculturales, territoriales (focalizadas en ciudades) y de género.

el trabajo contribuye a aportar evidencia empírica de la existencia del impacto negativo de vivir en una ciudad secundaria y de efectos diferenciados de factores socioculturales desde el punto de vista del género.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between factors of socio-cultural contexts and disaster risk. Recent efforts by international organizations and research scholarship have emphasized that applying contextual understandings of human behavior can improve the effectiveness of disaster risk management (DRM).

The research employs multiple correlation analysis to find significant relationships between two sources of socio-cultural data and the World Risk Index scores.

There are interesting relationships between various measures of socio-cultural context and disaster risk, such as correlations with levels of individualism, self-expression, and secular-rational values.

While using the broadest sample available with the data sources, generalizations about the relationships must be tempered as inherently anecdotal and needing greater depth of study. The national level of analysis is controversial.

Emergency managers can extend the knowledge about socio-cultural influences on disaster risk to tailor policy for effective practices.

Societies may recognize their behaviors as being conducive or obstructive to DRM based on their socio-cultural characteristics; governments may operationalize the findings into policy responses for more nuanced mitigation efforts.

This research adds to the momentum for considering non-technical approaches to DRM and expands the potential for social science derived variables in DRM.

Women entrepreneurship has been growing and contributing significantly to economic activities, and it may also reduce unemployment, especially in developing countries. Many women entrepreneurs have begun to experience problems, including within their socio-cultural environment, in the beginning of or when they run their businesses. Among those developing countries, Indonesia has been recognized as having diverse ethnic groups, traditions, religions and languages. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the socio-cultural environment affects women entrepreneurs in Indonesia.

This study aims at exploring the impact of the socio-cultural environment on entrepreneurial behavior, including the involvement of women in entrepreneurial activities in Indonesia as a multicultural country. A theoretical framework is empirically tested to identify the impact of the socio-culture environment on behavior and on women entrepreneurial activity through an integrated analysis.

A quantitative method with a causal descriptive approach is used in this study. The data are analyzed by using a descriptive statistics with the structural equation modeling technique. This study is intended to focus on women entrepreneurs in micro, small and medium enterprises in Bandung, Indonesia. A total of 210 women entrepreneurs have participated in this study. Practical implications include useful information for women entrepreneurs to overcome the impact of the socio-cultural environment in their entrepreneurial activities, and suggest insights for future research.

The development of women entrepreneurship in emerging economies may continuously face challenges, particularly in countries with multicultural attributes.

This paper develops a theoretical perspective on gender and information technology (IT) by examining socio‐cultural influences on women who are members of the information technology profession in Australia and New Zealand. In‐depth interviews with both practitioners and academics give evidence of a range of socio‐cultural influences on the professional development and working lives of women IT professionals. The paper rejects the essentialist view of women and their relationship to IT that has been put forth in the information systems literature arguing, instead, the primacy of societal and structural influences. The particular contribution of this paper is a theoretical perspective of individual differences which is presented to characterize the way individual women respond in a range of specific ways to the interplay between individual characteristics and environmental influences. This perspective contributes to a better understanding of women’s involvement in the IT sector and suggests areas for proactive policy response.

Family socio-cultural values and its practices have pervasive effects on early age at first marriage in every society. The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare how family socio-cultural values and its practices exert effect on early age at first marriage between Muslim and Santal couples in rural Bangladesh.

First of all through snow-ball process and checking of marriage documents the author carefully identified 598 couples from Muslim and 560 from Santal who were married the first time between 1995 and 2005 years and whose age range was 12-48 years for husbands and 10-45 years for wives. Then, 585 pairs of couples (295 for Muslim and 290 for Santal) were randomly selected from the Talonda of Rajshahi district, Bangladesh. Data were collected, applying interview method with semi-structural questionnaire in family setting. Then the collected data were analyzed, using χ2 test and binary logistic regression (BLR) technique.

The frequency distribution showed that most of the Santal couples compared to the Muslim ones were married before the minimum legal age in Bangladesh. The results of χ2 test of the frequency distribution were significant at p<0.01 and p<0.05 level. In addition, results of BLR analysis suggested that early age at first marriage was significantly (p<0.01 and p<0.05) associated with family socio-cultural values studied. It is argued that ethnicity, family pattern, residence pattern, illiteracy and ascriptive occupational status were the risk factors to persist early marriage among the Santal couples than the Muslim ones in rural Bangladesh.

Although the findings are suggestive to understand differences in early marriage associated with family socio-cultural values between the ethnic couples, further cross-cultural study should be conducted on how socio-psychological factors affect early marriage between the ethnic groups. In spite of the limitations these findings may have implications in comparative social policy practice to prevent early marriage associated with changes in family socio-cultural values between the ethnic groups in Bangladesh.

The findings in the paper are original in linking between family socio-cultural theory, its related policy and practice to prevent early marriage between the ethnic couples in Bangladesh.

The goal of this study is to propose and test a model of the effect of the socio-cultural context on the disability inclusion climate of organizations. The model has implications of hiring people with disabilities.

To test the model, we conducted a cross-sectional study across four countries with very different socio-cultural contexts. Data were gathered from 266 managers with hiring responsibilities in Canada, China, Norway and France. Participants responded to an online survey that measured the effect of societal based variables on the disability inclusion climate of organizations.

Results indicated support for the theoretical model, which proposed that the socio-cultural context influenced the disability inclusion climate of organizations through two distinct but related paths; manager’s value orientations and their perception of the legitimacy of legislation regarding people with disabilities.

The vast majority of research regarding employment of people with disabilities has focused on supply side factors that involve characteristics of the people with disabilities. In contrast, this research focuses on the less researched demand side issue of the socio-cultural context. In addition, it responds to the “limited systematic research examining and comparing how country-related factors shape the treatment of persons with disability” (Beatty et al., 2019, p. 122).