Contextualizing risk and building resilience: returnee versus local entrepreneurs in China

Risk is a pivotal concept in entrepreneurship research, as entrepreneurs constantly face uncertainty, ambiguity, setbacks, and stressful situations. Attitudes toward risk vary contingent upon individual risk preferences and cultural influences. Building resilience is critical for entrepreneurs to overcome obstacles, deal with risk, and grow their ventures. By juxtaposing effectuation theory and resilience literature, we compare the perceptions of risk held by Chinese returnees and local entrepreneurs and their coping strategies in building resilience. Our research reveals two types of coping approaches, namely effectual coping and causal coping. This study contributes to the comparative international entrepreneurship literature by contextualizing the notion of risk held by entrepreneurs influenced by Eastern and Western cultures. Our study further contributes to the nascent literature on resilience in organizations by specifying the entrepreneurial occupational context and exploring the influence of cultures on resilience, and by identifying distinctive resilience‐building coping strategies based upon cultural influences and interpretations of risk. Furthermore, we suggest that resilience can constitute one micro‐foundation of effectuation theory in the context of entrepreneurship dealing with risk

Maintaining corporate dominance after decolonization: the first mover advantage of Shell-BP in Nigeria

Nigeria's oil industry came into being during colonial rule. Preferential treatment by British colonial authorities had given a British oil company — Shell — a virtual monopoly over oil exploration in the country and Shell has remained the dominant oil company in Nigeria. While there is substantial evidence to suggest that Shell-BP established its dominant position in Nigeria with the support of British colonial officials, it was by no means clear that Shell would be able to maintain this advantageous position. Indeed, the historical record shows that both the Nigerian government and a number of competitors posed a potential threat to Shell's dominant position. The purpose of this article is to answer the question why Shell was able to maintain a position of dominance in Nigeria. It examines Nigeria's diversification and nationalisation policies from the late 1950s to-date with the view of identifying the factors which allowed Shell to maintain its position vis--vis potential competitors. This investigation is based on the analysis of secondary sources as well as documents from the Public Record Office (PRO) in London and the BP Archive. In order to explain Shell's dominance in Nigeria, the article proposes to utilise the concept of a 'first mover advantage'. On the most basic level, this concept suggests that pioneering firms are able to obtain positive economic profits as the consequence of early market entry, that means, profits in excess of the cost of capital. The article concludes that a micro-theoretical analysis based on the idea of a 'first mover advantage', which explores the position of individual corporate entities within a political economy framework, provides a superior explanation of Shell's dominance in Nigeria as compared to conventional macro-theoretical structuralist approaches

Maternal activity in relation to birth size in rural India. The Pune Maternal Nutrition Study

Objective: To describe the relationship of the mother's physical activity to the birth size of her baby in a rural Indian population.Design: Prospective observational study.Setting: Six villages near Pune, Maharashtra, India.Subjects: A total of 797 women were studied after excluding abortions and termination of pregnancies (112), foetal anomalies (8), multiple pregnancies (3), incomplete pre-pregnancy anthropometry (14) and pregnancies detected later than 21 weeks of gestation (168).Method: An activity questionnaire was developed after focus group discussions and incorporated community-specific activities. It was validated against an observer-maintained diary. Activity scores were derived using published data on energy costs to weight the contributions of various activities. It was then administered to assess physical activity at 18 (±2) and 28 (±2) weeks of gestation.Outcome measures: Birth outcome, maternal weight gain and neonatal anthropometry.Results: The activity questionnaire was used to classify women into light, moderate and heavy activity categories. Maternal activity did not influence the incidence of prematurity or stillbirth, or the duration of gestation. It was inversely related to maternal weight gain up to 28 weeks of gestation (P=0.002). Higher maternal activity in early, as well as mid gestation, was associated with lower mean birth weight (P=0.05 and 0.02, respectively ), and smaller neonatal head circumference (P=0.005 and 0.009) and mid-arm circumference (P=0.03 and 0.01) after adjusting for the effect of major confounding factors.Conclusions: The Findings suggest that excessive maternal activity during pregnancy is associated with smaller foetal size in rural India, The approach described for developing an activity questionnaire has potential for adoption in other settings.<br/