The dark side of leadership: A systematic review of creativity and innovation

It is believed that workplace creativity and innovation are fostered by positive leader behaviours and positive workplace relationships and hindered by the opposite. However, some challenge this view, arguing that creativity and innovation can actually be fostered when employees experience what is increasingly referred to as the dark side of leadership and workplace mistreatment. Research on this area is sparse, contradictory and overly confusing. We begin by defining the dark side of leadership and then provide a comprehensive systematic review of 145 empirical studies on the topic. We review research on a broad range of constructs related to leadership and workplace mistreatment, such as abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, destructive leadership, narcissistic leadership and relationship conflict. Our review reports the main effects, summarizes the results of the mediating and moderating variables, and highlights methodological shortcomings of the past literature. On this basis, several recommendations are made to advance this field of research

The entrepreneurial financing of the immigrant entrepreneurs: a literature review

There is an increasing interest in the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship. Despite the growing number of studies, the financing aspect of immigrant entrepreneurship is still an emergent subject. In this paper, we critically and systematically review the field of the entrepreneurial financing of immigrant entrepreneurs. For this purpose, we conduct a two-step analysis of 37 systematically selected articles. In the first step, we provide an overall description of the field, while in the second step we perform a SWOT analysis on different aspects of the field, including the units of analysis, the main questions, and the use of theories and methods in the field. The review identifies gaps and weaknesses in the field, suggests potential opportunities for future research, and highlights some threats that could impede the implementation of future opportunities. Finally, the review suggests further questions to be explored for future advancement of knowledge in the field

Careers in family business: New avenues for careers and family business research in the 21st century

The purpose of our special issue is to demonstrate how a careers perspective can contribute to the study of family businesses and bring to light how the family business context extends and challenges career theories and concepts. Inspired by the studies in our special issue and our review of previous research, we propose a conceptual model that leverages the concept of family embeddedness and intertwines it with career processes and outcomes. Building on the family embeddedness perspective, we propose several avenues for future research for family business and career scholars

Employee layoffs in times of crisis: do family firms differ?

In this study, we seek to understand firm behaviour during times of crisis, with a particular focus on family firms in different contexts. We theorize that family control mitigates (i.e. negatively moderates) the relationship between economic crisis and the layoff of employees, resulting in a higher propensity of family firms to retain their employees during a crisis compared to their nonfamily counterparts. Furthermore, taking a closer look at family firms, based on their location, we argue that family firms in rural regions are more likely to adopt measures leading to involuntary job turnover than family firms in urban areas due to a higher sensitivity to the loss of socioemotional wealth following a business closure. Relying on a panel dataset of Swedish private firms active in the period 2004–2012, our study contributes to a better understanding of family firms as employers in different contexts

A map-matching algorithm dealing with sparse cellular fingerprint observations

The widespread availability of mobile communication makes mobile devices a resource for the collection of data about mobile infrastructures and user mobility. In these contexts, the problem of reconstructing the most likely trajectory of a device on the road network on the basis of the sequence of observed locations (map-matching problem) turns out to be particularly relevant. Different contributions have demonstrated that the reconstruction of the trajectory of a device with good accuracy is technically feasible even when only a sparse set of GNSS positions is available. In this paper, we face the problem of coping with sparse sequences of cellular fingerprints. Compared to GNSS positions, cellular fingerprints provide coarser spatial information, but they work even when a device is missing GNSS positions or is operating in an energy saving mode. We devise a new map-matching algorithm, that exploits the well-known Hidden Markov Model and Random Forests to successfully deal with noisy and sparse cellular observations. The performance of the proposed solution has been tested over a medium-sized Italian city urban environment by varying both the sampling of the observations and the density of the fingerprint map as well as by including some GPS positions into the sequence of fingerprint observations

The effects of private equity investors on the governance of firms

Companies that receive external equity typically experience a separation of ownership and control, where owners who are not involved in the company (principals) have to rely on the management team (agents) for achieving expected goals and target levels. Theoretical literature argues that when ownership and control are separated, principals develop governance structures to reduce agency costs and align agents’ incentives (Berle and Means, 1932; Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Grossman and Hart, 1986; Zingales, 1995). Likewise, optimal financial structure design by financial intermediaries can effectively help to mitigate agency problems by identifying self-enforcing equilibria (Diamond, 1984; Fama and Jensen, 1985; Stiglitz, 1985; Bhattacharya and Thakor, 1993; Barry, 1994). In general terms, governance and financial devices can be thought of as either internal control mechanisms (such as the board) or external control mechanisms (such as the market for corporate control). An increasingly important external control mechanism affecting the governance of young and fast-growing companies worldwide is the emergence of institutional and private equity investors, as equity owners. Institutional investors have the potential to influence management’s activities directly through their ownership, and indirectly by trading their shares (Gillan and Starks, 2003). In this respect private equity investors are differentiated from institutional ones in the longer-term view and in the significantly more hands-on approach that they pursue when investing in a portfolio company. As a result, companies backed by private equity investors represent a fruitful environment to investigate the use and efficiency of a multitude of control mechanisms. The surge over the last 30 years in investment activity by private equity investors at large has given rise to an increased specialization of this class of investors conditional on the risk return profiles associated with different investment and firm life cycle stages. For instance, business angels supporting the archetypical ‘paper company’ start-up face a risk exposure that in terms of both magnitude and characteristics is significantly different from that incurred by a private equity investor acquiring control of a mature company. Yet, investors in this market share common traits such as a value maximization approach, risk‒return informed decisions, and a deep knowledge of governance mechanisms. As such their influence on portfolio company governance mechanisms is largely similar in terms of depth and breadth. In this chapter we aim at presenting an up-to-date review of the main theoretical contributions and empirical results in this active and growing field of research

Global variability and controls on the accumulation of fallout radionuclides in cryoconite

The accumulation of fallout radionuclides (FRNs) from nuclear weapons testing and nuclear accidents has been evaluated for over half a century in natural environments; however, until recently their distribution and abundance within glaciers have been poorly understood. Following a series of individual studies of FRNs, specifically 137Cs, 241Am and 210Pb, deposited on the surface of glaciers, we now understand that cryoconite, a material commonly found in the supraglacial environment, is a highly efficient accumulator of FRNs, both artificial and natural. However, the variability of FRN activity concentrations in cryoconite across the global cryosphere has never been assessed. This study thus aims to both synthesize current knowledge on FRNs in cryoconite and assess the controls on variability of activity concentrations. We present a global database of new and previously published data based on gamma spectrometry of cryoconite and proglacial sediments, and assess the extent to which a suite of environmental and physical factors can explain spatial variability in FRN activity concentrations in cryoconite. We show that FRNs are not only found in cryoconite on glaciers within close proximity to specific sources of radioactivity, but across the global cryosphere, and at activity concentrations up to three orders of magnitude higher than those found in soils and sediments in the surrounding environment. We also show that the organic content of cryoconite exerts a strong control on accumulation of FRNs, and that activity concentrations in cryoconite are some of the highest ever described in environmental matrices outside of nuclear exclusion zones, occasionally in excess of 10,000 Bq kg−1. These findings highlight a need for significant improvements in the understanding of the fate of legacy contaminants within glaciated catchments. Future interdisciplinary research is required on the mechanisms governing their accumulation, storage, and mobility, and their potential to create time-dependent impacts on downstream water quality and ecosystem sustainability