Entrepreneurship as catalyst for sustainable development : opening the black box

In the last decades, sustainable development has become an important topic of discussion for scholars and practitioners concerned with environmental issues. Since the publication of the Brundtland Report, which represents a milestone in triggering awareness for sustainability issues, sustainable development has steadily gained popularity to become one of the most important environmental discourses today. Together with innovation, the United Nations identified entrepreneurship as a key element for addressing sustainable development challenges. Due to its growing recognition as a driver of sustainable development, entrepreneurship is subject to research across many scientific disciplines. To systemize the current state of knowledge, the purpose of this paper is to systematically review recent literature and to outline how sustainable development influences entrepreneurial activities and vice versa. In addition, it investigates whether and under what circumstances entrepreneurship can contribute to the economic, environmental and social dimension of sustainable development. The systematic literature review shows that several research areas, such as opportunities, motivations, competencies, strategies and business models of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs, have already received wide coverage by academic literature. However, our knowledge about how entrepreneurial activities contribute to the achievement of the United Nations sustainable development goals is still limited and should be addressed by further research

Developmental networks and professional identity: a survey of active and former junior enterprise members

Principal Topic - This paper presents findings from an empirical survey of Junior Enterprise members and alumni in Central Europe. The study aims to examine the linkages between developmental networks and professional identity when alumni undergo career changes to embark on entrepreneurship. Our paper argues that the developmental network membership contributes to competence development and entrepreneurial identity and both elements contribute to overall employability. Method - Data collected from active and former members of Junior enterprises supported our hypotheses. As a result the study showed the linkages between entrepreneurial competences and developmental networks in a cross-industry sense. Few quantitative studies have examined entrepreneurial competences in a cross-industry setting in the context of organisational/strategic change, and few have adopted developmental network perspective. Result - The results seem to provide a good way to confront entrepreneurs with their own qualities and with areas for improvement and discussion. The findings elucidate differences between entrepreneurial identity configuration drivers with regard to the competence development processes of the individuals. Overall, our study repudiates the traditional mentoring perspective in favour of the „developmental network perspective” (Cotton, Shen, & Livne-Tarandach, 2011b)

Digital Transformation: An Overview of the Current State of the Art of Research

The increasing digitalization of economies has highlighted the importance of digital transformation and how it can help businesses stay competitive in the market. However, disruptive changes not only occur at the company level; they also have environmental, societal, and institutional implications. This is the reason why during the past two decades the research on digital transformation has received growing attention, with a wide range of topics investigated in the literature. The following aims to provide insight regarding the current state of the literature on digital transformation (DT) by conducting a systematic literature review. An analysis of co-occurrence using the software VOSviewer was conducted to graphically visualize the literature’s node network. Approached this way, the systematic literature review displays major research avenues of digital transformation that consider technology as the main driver of these changes. This paper qualitatively classifies the literature on digital business transformation into three different clusters based on technological, business, and societal impacts. Several research gaps identified in the literature on DT are proposed as futures lines of research which could provide useful insights to the government and private sectors in order to adapt to the disruptive changes found in business as a result of this phenomenon, as well as to reduce its negative impacts on society and the environment

Digital transformation in business and management research: An overview of the current status quo

It is no surprise that research on digital transformation (DT) has raised vast interest among academics in recent decades. Countries, cities, industries, companies, and people all face the same challenge of adapting to a digital world. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, map the thematic evolution of the DT research in the areas of business and management, because existing research in these areas to date has been limited to certain domains. To achieve this, articles were identified and reviewed that were published in the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ (ABS) ≥ 2-star journals. Based on these findings, the second objective of this paper will be to propose a synergistic framework that relates existing research on DT to the areas of business and management, which will help form the evolutionary perspective taken in this paper. Considering the emerging development of the topic under investigation, the framework is understood as a sound basis for continued discussion and forthcoming research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sicherung der Qualitaet von Beratungsprozessen in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen

'Kleine und mittlere Unternehmen beduerfen zunehmend externer Berater sowohl fuer das strategische als auch fuer das operative Geschaeft. Jedoch zeigen Studien eine deutliche Intransparenz des Angebotes sowie eine latent vorhandene Unsicherheit ueber den letztendlichen Nutzen der Beratungsleistungen auf. In dem Beitrag werden Ergebnisse aus der Begleitung von 40 laenger dauernden Beratungsprojekten in KMU zum Thema Personal- und Organisationsentwicklung vorgestellt. Ziel war die Analyse von Beratungsdefiziten und die Gewinnung von Anhaltspunkten fuer eine Erhoehung der Qualitaet von Beratungsleistungen. Die Kundenzufriedenheitsmessung erfolgte mit einem speziell entwickelten Erhebungsinstrumentarium auf der Basis des GAP-Modells von Parasuraman, Zeithaml und Berry, kombiniert mit Critical Incident Tests, ServQual- und ServImperf-Analyse. Die Studie zeigte ausgepraegte Defizite in den einzelnen Phasen des Beratungsprozesses (Vorklaerung, Analyse, Zielsetzung/ Planung, Durchfuehrung, Evaluation, Implementierung). Die wichtigsten Ansatzpunkte fuer Verbesserungen werden in folgenden Bereichen gesehen: Zielvereinbarungsprozesse, Widerstandsanalyse, klienten- und beraterseitiges Rollenverstaendnisund -wahrnehmung sowie laufende Evaluation.' (Autorenreferat)Available from IAB-3520 BM 016 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

The impact of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurial intention of students in science and engineering versus business studies university programs

Academic research has shown that Entrepreneurship Education (EE) increases Entrepreneurial Intention (EI). However, this does not happen uniformly in all contexts, as specific contexts may require different EE action. In this paper the authors investigate the context-specific questions in two separate categories of students. If context is important, we should see different outcomes from similar EE classes provided to different student groups. The authors' results suggest that there is a contextual difference. The results indicate that EE modified to suit a particular target group could address the issue of subjective norms separately for business students and science and engineering students. Their principal results show that EE is generally effective for business students and science and engineering students. However, the EI of science and engineering students is actually negatively affected by subjective norms, whereas that effect is not apparent among the business student sample. The authors suggest that future research is needed on effective didactic approaches in EE for science and engineering student

Business Model Innovation: A Systematic Literature Review

Researching business models (BM) and in specific business model innovation recently received growing attention by academics and practitioners due to increasing global competition and the constant need for adjustment to changing environments among others. Therefore, the main objective of our study is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of research on business model innovation by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR). Our review provides a deeper understanding and breakdown of key components of BMI. Likewise, our study identifies organizational, environmental, and societal factors influencing BMI and proposes avenues for future research

Opportunity recognition : conversational foundations and pathways ahead

Erworben im Rahmen der Schweizer Nationallizenzen (http://www.nationallizenzen.ch)This paper provides an overview of the ever-increasing literature on opportunity recognition, with a focus on its antecedents and determinants. With a two-step research approach, a bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review, we structure the current research in this field. By using bibliometric techniques, we analyzed 161 publications and, consequently, clustered the 30 most influential references. Apart from economic theories and the role of opportunity recognition in entrepreneurship, a strong research focus is on antecedents of opportunity recognition. Therefore, in our subsequent literature review, we focus on determinants which influence opportunity recognition. We find that the opportunity recognition process is influenced by various personal, organizational and environmental factors. We conclude with a research outlook for future research opportunities on opportunity recognition