Institutionalizing women’s enterprise policy:A legitimacy-based perspective

Despite efforts to increase the quantity and quality of women-owned businesses, enterprise policy has enjoyed only modest success. This article explores the role of legitimacy in these outcomes by examining how and when individual stakeholders evaluate and then influence the legitimacy of women’s enterprise policy. We draw on 45 interviews with actors in the UK enterprise policy ecosystem and an ethnographic study of the policy process. We present a multilevel model of two opposing legitimacy processes: a legitimacy repair loop and a delegitimizing loop. In doing so we provide a novel perspective on policy institutionalizing

Numerics with coordinate transforms for efficient Brownian dynamics simulations

Many stochastic processes in the physical and biological sciences can be modelled as Brownian dynamics with multiplicative noise. However, numerical integrators for these processes can lose accuracy or even fail to converge when the diffusion term is configuration-dependent. One remedy is to construct a transform to a constant-diffusion process and sample the transformed process instead. In this work, we explain how coordinate-based and time-rescaling-based transforms can be used either individually or in combination to map a general class of variable-diffusion Brownian motion processes into constant-diffusion ones. The transforms are invertible, thus allowing recovery of the original dynamics. We motivate our methodology using examples in one dimension before then considering multivariate diffusion processes. We illustrate the benefits of the transforms through numerical simulations, demonstrating how the right combination of integrator and transform can improve computational efficiency and the order of convergence to the invariant distribution. Notably, the transforms that we derive are applicable to a class of multibody, anisotropic Stokes-Einstein diffusion that has applications in biophysical modelling

The hidden price of free advice:Negotiating the paradoxes of public sector business advising

Business advisors working in publicly funded enterprise agencies encounter a range of tensions as part of their everyday work. These tensions subtly shape how they provide advice and can lead to variability in how enterprise policy is delivered on the ground. We explore the competing demands facing advisors by inductively analysing advice-giving practices in public sector enterprise agencies. We find three overarching drivers of advisor role tension, including institutional demands, client demands and intrinsic demands; additionally, a further seven discrete work tactics advisors deploy to navigate these tensions are analysed. From our findings, we develop a theoretical model that advances a dynamic understanding of public sector business advice. We conclude by reflecting on the structural issues with public sector advising that might constrain the efficacy of advisors

The intersection of entrepreneurship and selling: an interdisciplinary review, framework, and future research agenda.

Selling is integral to entrepreneurship, yet it has rarely been a focal topic of analysis for entrepreneurship scholars. To address this, we undertake a broad-ranging systematic literature review of research that in some way explores selling within entrepreneurial contexts. We inductively develop a framework that orders extant research into selling antecedents, activities, contexts, and outcomes. Then, drawing on these entrepreneurship-selling intersections, we suggest opportunity theory can be extended by integrating critical insights from selling literatures. In particular, we address ego-centric views of entrepreneurship which prioritize entrepreneurial agency, and advocate for the incorporation of customer agency into synchronized processes of opportunity identification, refinement, and exploitation. The article concludes that a promising avenue for future theory development resides in the study of situated sales interactions, which can serve as an empirical vista to the underexplored entrepreneur-customer nexus

Novel properties and potential applications of functional ligand-modified polyoxotitanate cages.

Functional ligand-modified polyoxotitanate (L-POT) cages of the general type [TixOy(OR)z(L)m] (OR = alkoxide, L = functional ligand) can be regarded as molecular fragments of surface-sensitized solid-state TiO2, and are of value as models for studying the interfacial charge and energy transfer between the bound functional ligands and a bulk semiconductor surface. These L-POTs have also had a marked impact in many other research fields, such as single-source precursors for TiO2 deposition, inorganic-organic hybrid material construction, photocatalysis, photoluminescence, asymmetric catalysis and gas adsorption. Their atomically well-defined structures provide the basis for the understanding of structure/property relationships and ultimately for the rational design of new cages targeting specific uses. This highlight focuses on recent advances in L-POTs research, with emphasis on their novel properties and potential applications.EPSRCThis is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Royal Society of Chemistry via https://doi.org/10.1039/C6CC03788G

Integrating Lucid's Declarative Dataflow Paradigm into Object-Orientation

The dataflow language Lucid applies concepts from intensional logic to declarative ISWIM expressions which are intensionalised relative to the dimension of time, thus introducing the notion of an expression’s history. Lucian, a language derived from Lucid, embeds dataflow into object-orientation allowing the intensionalisation of objects. Lucian introduces the notion of a declarative intensional object as the history of an object’s transformations. This paper discusses the embedding relationships and semantics of conjoining the dataflow and object-oriented paradigms to provide the language Lucian for defining intensional objects Mathematics Subject Classification (2000). 68N15 68N19 68Q5

The influence of halides in polyoxotitanate cages; dipole moment, splitting and expansion of d-orbitals and electron-electron repulsion

Metal-doped polyoxotitanate (M-POT) cages have been shown to be efficient single-source precursors to metal-doped titania [TiO$_2$(M)] (state-of-the-art photocatalytic materials) as well as molecular models for the behaviour of dopant metal ions in bulk titania. Here we report the influence halide ions have on the optical and electronic properties of a series of halide-only, and cobalt halide-‘doped’ POT cages. In this combined experimental and computational study we show that halide ions can have several effects on the band gaps of halide-containing POT cages, influencing the dipole moment (hole–electron separation) and the structure of the valance band edge. Overall, the band gap behaviour stems from the effects of increasing orbital energy moving from F to I down Group 17, as well as crystal-field splitting of the d-orbitals, the potential effects of the Nephelauxetic influence of the halides and electron–electron repulsion.We thank the EPSRC (Doctoral Prize for P. D. M.), A*STAR Singapore (Scholarship for N. L.), the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Fonds of the Chemical Industry (S. H.) for funding. The authors would like to acknowledge the use of the EPSRC UK National Service for Computational Chemistry Software (NSCCS) at Imperial College London and contributions from its staff in carrying out this work

Blockchain as an external enabler of new venture ideas: digital entrepreneurs and the disintermediation of the global music industry

This study explores some of the work entrepreneurial firms engage in to discover and then apply external enablers when developing new venture ideas. We present the results of our empirical research that examines digital entrepreneurs seeking to disintermediate the music industry. Through analysis of 32 start-up white papers and 18 interviews, we identify three interlinked enablers of new venture ideas in this context: blockchain, ideology and market volatility. Furthermore, we identify a range of venture-level shaping practices and field-level work that describes the framing and legitimizing activities undertaken by entrepreneurs to unlock the full potential of external enablers. This extends recent external enabler theory by proposing a novel actor-dependent category should be advanced in order to capture unique properties of digital entrepreneurship phenomenon, specifically where technological enablers are editable, interactive, reprogrammable and distributed

Tracking the Performance of High Growth Entrepreneurs

The Scottish entrepreneurial support ecosystem contains an enviable depth and breadth of free or low-cost support for entrepreneurs. Yet, despite this generous provision, the performance of Scottish HGFs lags other areas of the UK in competitiveness. Our report seeks to explore this issue by generating a deeper understanding of ecosystem dynamics and HGF behaviour. To develop this insight, we spoke to a broad range of HGFs, angel investors and policymakers to identify the issues that should be addressed by key stakeholders in the ecosystem. We examine three key themes in our analysis: growth mindset, ecosystem engagement and HGF activities. Firstly, in terms of growth mindset, we identified three categories of HGF in our study. These were high-growth aspiration firms, plateaued-growth aspiration firms and lifestyle-constrained aspiration growth firms. Prior research by the Enterprise Research Centre suggests that only those with high-growth aspiration coupled with an international outlook and innovation capabilities are likely to attain significant high growth. Only a small number of our research cohort possessed these qualities (for the time being), raising some questions around the allocation of support resources to those with lower growth aspirations. On a more positive note, we identified specific examples of how companies can move from low aspiration to high-aspiration given the right conditions and support. In terms of ecosystem engagement, we identified a range of both positive and negative experiences. Our research counted over 170 different organisations who are providing support to HGFs. Understandably, this volume of support led to navigational issues and information overload that often, unexpectedly, resulted in disengagement with the ecosystem. The system was also not felt to be reactive enough to entrepreneurs whose needs were often out of sync with the ecosystem support on offer. We identified three broad approaches towards ecosystem engagement, with firms falling into either: non-strategic engagement, strategic engagement, or strategic non-engagement categories. Our report suggests that the primary issue in Scotland is not the volume or quality of support on offer, but rather it concerns more closely linking the supply and demand of support. We argue that this demand can be more readily matched by developing a longitudinal, real-time tracking system that provides rich, predictive insight into what is a very dynamic business environment. We propose using an innovative methodology called Ecological Momentary Assessment, to address many of the cognitive biases identified in extant research. This form of sampling, captures temporal dynamics in such a manner that would allow stakeholders to configure ecosystem activities in response to behavioural patterns, hence closing the supply and demand gap. A potentially unique method of positively influencing growth aspiration, would be to implement an Ecological Momentary Intervention system that provides in-the-moment support for entrepreneurs and reinforces existing interventions. This would address the criticism that the ecosystem is not sufficiently responsive for HGFs