23,798 research outputs found
Defragmenting the terms self-employed, entrepreneur and business owner
There is a growing belief from a range of sources that the only way forward economically is through the support and growth of entrepreneurial behaviour (Olaison, & Sørensen, 2014). Consequently, governments have been developing policies to facilitate entrepreneurship, universities have set up programmes to encourage entrepreneurship and organisations exist to support entrepreneurship (Rae and Woodier-Harris N, 2012; Anderson et al, 2014).
Unfortunately, it is not clear exactly what entrepreneurial behaviour is and is not (Hunter, 2012). There are multiple theories on the nature of entrepreneurial behaviour (Shook, Priem, & McGee, 2003; Davidson, 2004; O’Gorman, 2015). This lack of clarity and disagreement causes confusion about the roles and actions of people who engage in entrepreneurial behaviour (Lyons, Lynn, & Bhaird, 2015). Part of the confusion lies in the way people who own operate businesses are defined. Traditionally people who work for themselves are seen as either self-employed, entrepreneurs or business owners. However, despite having different meanings, the terms are often used interchangeably (Parker, 2004; Hartog et al., 2010; Van Solinge, 2015), primarily for the purpose of convenience or simplicity.
The interchangeable use of the terms in an environment, in which entrepreneurial behaviour is the favoured phenomenon, is likely to suppress important debates around the nature of entrepreneurial behaviour. This suppression is likely to divert the attention of policy makers and supporters away from important issues concerning the different roles, functions and needs of the self-employed, entrepreneurs or business owners. As a result, support that focuses on entrepreneurship could be at the expense of the other roles.
Therefore, there is a need for academic research to seek clarity concerning the use of different terms used to describe people who work for themselves. The authors intend to present a discussion paper that aims to generate some clarity around what the terms self-employed, entrepreneur and business owner actually mean. The purpose of this study is to consolidate a number of notions, theories and concepts found in the literature concerning the definition, conceptualisation and characterisation of self-employed, entrepreneur and business owner. The intention is to identify both similarities or overlaps and distinct differences, in order construct a model that embraces self-employed, entrepreneur and business owner in a single structure
Mutual information in random Boolean models of regulatory networks
The amount of mutual information contained in time series of two elements
gives a measure of how well their activities are coordinated. In a large,
complex network of interacting elements, such as a genetic regulatory network
within a cell, the average of the mutual information over all pairs is a
global measure of how well the system can coordinate its internal dynamics. We
study this average pairwise mutual information in random Boolean networks
(RBNs) as a function of the distribution of Boolean rules implemented at each
element, assuming that the links in the network are randomly placed. Efficient
numerical methods for calculating show that as the number of network nodes
N approaches infinity, the quantity N exhibits a discontinuity at parameter
values corresponding to critical RBNs. For finite systems it peaks near the
critical value, but slightly in the disordered regime for typical parameter
variations. The source of high values of N is the indirect correlations
between pairs of elements from different long chains with a common starting
point. The contribution from pairs that are directly linked approaches zero for
critical networks and peaks deep in the disordered regime.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; Minor revisions for clarity and figure format,
one reference adde
Group theory for structural analysis and lattice vibrations in phosphorene systems
Group theory analysis for two-dimensional elemental systems related to
phosphorene is presented, including (i) graphene, silicene, germanene and
stanene, (ii) dependence on the number of layers and (iii) two stacking
arrangements. Departing from the most symmetric graphene space
group, the structures are found to have a group-subgroup relation, and analysis
of the irreducible representations of their lattice vibrations makes it
possible to distinguish between the different allotropes. The analysis can be
used to study the effect of strain, to understand structural phase transitions,
to characterize the number of layers, crystallographic orientation and
nonlinear phenomena.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure
Five-Dimensional QED, Muon Pair Production and Correction to the Coulomb Potential
We consider QED in five dimensions in a configuration where matter is
localized on a 3-brane while foton propagates in the bulk. The idea is to
investigate the effects of the Kaluza-Klein modes of the photon in the
relativistic regime, but in low energy, and in the nonrelativistic regime. In
the relativistic regime, we calculate the cross section for the reaction . We compare our theoretical result with a precise
measurement of this cross section at GeV. As result, we
extract a lower bound on the size of the extra dimension. In the
nonrelativistic regime, we derive the contribution for the Coulomb potential
due to the whole tower of the Kaluza-Klein excited modes of the photon. We use
the modified potential to calculate the Rutherford scattering differential
cross section.Comment: minor changes, three new refs. added, to appear in IJMP
Spotlighting quantum critical points via quantum correlations at finite temperatures
We extend the program initiated in [T. Werlang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105,
095702 (2010)] in several directions. Firstly, we investigate how useful
quantum correlations, such as entanglement and quantum discord, are in the
detection of critical points of quantum phase transitions when the system is at
finite temperatures. For that purpose we study several thermalized spin models
in the thermodynamic limit, namely, the XXZ model, the XY model, and the Ising
model, all of which with an external magnetic field. We compare the ability of
quantum discord, entanglement, and some thermodynamic quantities to spotlight
the quantum critical points for several different temperatures. Secondly, for
some models we go beyond nearest-neighbors and also study the behavior of
entanglement and quantum discord for second nearest-neighbors around the
critical point at finite temperature. Finally, we furnish a more quantitative
description of how good all these quantities are in spotlighting critical
points of quantum phase transitions at finite T, bridging the gap between
experimental data and those theoretical descriptions solely based on the
unattainable absolute zero assumption.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, RevTex4-1; v2: published versio
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