Employees’ entrepreneurial behaviour: the influence of employees’ socio-cognitive traits and country-level institutional context

Firm-level entrepreneurship, referred to as corporate entrepreneurship (CE), is a strategic choice for firms’ vitality and competitiveness. Over the last five decades, research focused on CE’s firm-level or group-level antecedents to determine factors fostering organisations’ entrepreneurial activities. Research also established that, at the individual-level, employees’ entrepreneurial behaviour (EEB) influences an organisation’s entrepreneurial growth and overall performance. However, research on the individual-level antecedents of EEB is disparate and scarce. In Stage 1, this thesis applies a multi-level meta-analysis to aggregate findings from 102 independent samples from 97 articles from 1994 up to 2022. This meta-analysis, the first to assess CE’s antecedents, combines empirical findings on the antecedents of CE across the top management team (TMT) and firm levels. The cumulative evidence, examined through a metaregression, shows that a TMT’s entrepreneurial human capital, transformational leadership and firm’s building blocks, resources, and capabilities are positive drivers of CE. Stage 2 focuses on the employee level and answers recent calls to study EEB as a multilevel phenomenon. Based on the integrative framework of social cognitive theory (Bandura 1988) and institutional economics theory (North 1990), it investigates the associations among EEB, employees’ socio-cognitive traits and country-level institutional factors using a multilevel logistic regression. A sample of 225,640 employees from 70 countries representing various institutional contexts was created by merging data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the Economic Freedom Index, the Global Competitiveness Index, World Bank and the International Labour Organisation. The results suggest that employees’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and opportunity perception, along with supportive managerial attitudes and norms, promote EEB, while fear of failure and rigid employment regulations discourage it. The results also suggest that countrylevel institutional factors influence the likelihood that employees will mobilise their sociocognitive resources to pursue high-growth entrepreneurship

SARS-CoV-2 vaccination modelling for safe surgery to save lives: data from an international prospective cohort study

Background: Preoperative SARS-CoV-2 vaccination could support safer elective surgery. Vaccine numbers are limited so this study aimed to inform their prioritization by modelling. Methods: The primary outcome was the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one COVID-19-related death in 1 year. NNVs were based on postoperative SARS-CoV-2 rates and mortality in an international cohort study (surgical patients), and community SARS-CoV-2 incidence and case fatality data (general population). NNV estimates were stratified by age (18-49, 50-69, 70 or more years) and type of surgery. Best- and worst-case scenarios were used to describe uncertainty. Results: NNVs were more favourable in surgical patients than the general population. The most favourable NNVs were in patients aged 70 years or more needing cancer surgery (351; best case 196, worst case 816) or non-cancer surgery (733; best case 407, worst case 1664). Both exceeded the NNV in the general population (1840; best case 1196, worst case 3066). NNVs for surgical patients remained favourable at a range of SARS-CoV-2 incidence rates in sensitivity analysis modelling. Globally, prioritizing preoperative vaccination of patients needing elective surgery ahead of the general population could prevent an additional 58 687 (best case 115 007, worst case 20 177) COVID-19-related deaths in 1 year. Conclusion: As global roll out of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination proceeds, patients needing elective surgery should be prioritized ahead of the general population