47 research outputs found
Extending the notion of boundaryless careers in the creative economy: evidences from Italian TV drama series industry
The aim of this paper is to extend our knowledge on the boundaryless career theory by providing a
quantitative study on how the diversity of career patterns accumulated by project workers affects
the project team performance. More specifically, we analyze the dimension of diversity by
investigating the different products on which project workers worked in the past. In order to address
this issue, we focus on the creative context of Italian TV drama series production teams by
investigating the career patterns of 1,736 actors who worked in this industry from 1996 to 2010. To
quantify the diversity of career patterns, optimal matching analysis \u2013OMA- is used
Inspired or foolhardy: sensemaking, confidence and entrepreneurs' decision-making.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of confidence in how both new and experienced entrepreneurs interpret and make sense of their business environment to inform decision-making. We illustrate our conceptual arguments with descriptive results from a large-scale (n = 6289) survey on entrepreneurs' perception of business performance and their decisions taken at a time of uncertainty in an economic downturn. Quantitative findings are stratified along experiential lines to explore heterogeneity in entrepreneurial decision-making and directly inform our conceptual arguments, while qualitative data from open questions are used to explain the role of confidence. Newer entrepreneurs are found to be more optimistic in the face of environmental risk, which impacts on their decision-making and innovative capabilities. However, the more experienced entrepreneurs warily maintain margin and restructure to adapt to environmental changes. Instead of looking directly at the confidence of individuals, we show how confidence impacts sensemaking, and ultimately, decision-making. These insights inform research on the behaviour of novice and experienced entrepreneurs in relation to innovative business activities. Specifically, blanket assumptions on the role of confidence may be misplaced as its impact changes with experience to alter how entrepreneurs make sense of their environment
Encouraging female entrepreneurship in Jordan: environmental factors, obstacles and challenges
The number of female entrepreneurs and their contribution to the economy is steadily rising. Yet research suggests that female entrepreneurs face more challenges and barriers than their male counterparts. This is expected to be even more prevalent in Islamic contexts, which are characterised by conservative and patriarchal societies. In this research, 254 female business students from a private and a public university responded to a questionnaire that gauges their perceptions about potential barriers to entrepreneurship in Jordan and whether the business education they are receiving helps to prepare them for future entrepreneurial activity. Our results help to form a basis on which a deeper understanding of the phenomena can be achieved through more in depth future research. Among the main environmental factors that worry potential female entrepreneurs are the weakness of Jordanian economy, lack of finance, fear of risk, gender inequality and inability to maintain a work and private life balance. Our results also show that students are really not aware of the opportunities available to them and are unable to make a proper assessment. We call on both universities and the Jordanian government to put more emphasis on practical entrepreneurial education and encouraging women to play a much more active role within the workforce
Heterogeneous business models and heterogeneity in networked services: do they lead to heterogeneous performances, also?”
The sources of competitive advantage have been investigated over the years first following the tradition of industrial organization (IO), later from a resource-based view (RBV) and, more recently, through dynamic capabilities (DC). In this paper we combine the perspectives including industry-and firm-specific factors in explaining firm performance in order to investigate its determinants in terms of the adaptation of the business models to the innovations in the industries. Using the business model framework to explain heterogeneity among firms, we argue that the configurations of business models respond to the need for networking and complementarity from a dynamic capabilities’ perspective. In fact, they are related to different outcomes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, and ultimately to competitive advantage