Inés Alegre

Work-life balance and its relationship with organizational pride and job satisfaction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between work-life balance, organizational pride and job satisfaction. When evaluating employee work-life balance the present paper takes into consideration two relevant antecedents: supervisor support and job autonomy; and explores their link with organizational pride and job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – To verify the hypothesis, a questionnaire survey was used to collect data in a Spanish pharmaceutical organization; 374 responses were obtained. Structural equation modeling was used for the data analysis. Findings – Data confirms the relationship between the analyzed constructs. The results support the hypothesized relationships of supervisor work-life balance support and autonomy with employee work-life balance. In addition, employee work-life balance is positively related with organizational pride and job satisfaction. Practical implications – This study provides a useful measurement model that employers and employees can...

Social innovation success factors: hospitality and tourism social enterprises

Purpose This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on social enterprises and business model innovation. Particularly, it sheds some light on those factors that turn a social innovation initiative into a success, both in terms of meeting social needs and achieving economic sustainability. Design/methodology/approach By using a grounded theory approach, an inductive comparative case study is conducted. Two work integration social enterprises in the hospitality and tourism sector are selected. Both companies are located in Barcelona (Spain) under the same legal regulation and economic situation and initially run a manufacturing business. Due to the economic crisis they were forced to reinvent themselves to survive. Data were collected from different sources and coded using content analysis procedures. Findings Results indicate that three factors, namely, value proposition, appropriate market research and stakeholder involvement, heavily contributed to firm’s success, corroborating previous studies. Furthermore, our study reveals that social need pressures and managerial trust on employees are additional factors that drive social business model innovation. Practical implications Changes in the demand, the rules governing the market or economic downturns are external drivers for demand-pull innovations. In such context, firms need to reformulate their business models if they wish to survive. Acknowledging the factors that help firms overcome these obstacles is of great interest for both academics and entrepreneurs. Originality/value Social innovation in business models is a topic still poorly defined in the literature, yet, its boundaries to other fields are still fuzzy. This paper aims to fulfill this gap by presenting the theoretical domain in which this topic fits in and evidencing those successful factors that should be considered when designing and implementing a business model innovation which may help other firms facing a similar process.

Crowdfunding Entrepreneurial or Humanitarian Needs? The Influence of Signals and Biases on Decisions

Crowdfunding platforms have become a valid alternative for raising funds for both entrepreneurial and humanitarian projects. The aim of our study is to investigate the factors influencing the likelihood of funding success across these two project types. Building on the charitable giving and entrepreneurial finance literature streams, we employ the lenses of signaling theory and behavioral decision making to hypothesize how the impact of certain factors varies contingent on the nature of the project, from a humanitarian plea to an entrepreneurial venture. We conduct our investigation on Kiva and find that gender bias and risk signals exhibit a stronger impact on the likelihood of funding success for entrepreneurial projects, whereas humanitarian projects are more affected by home bias. By reconciling prior inconsistencies in crowdfunding research and bringing forward new ideas, we aim to support the vigorous growth of an emergent phenomenon that is of growing social and economic importance.

Why Would You Ever Want to Become An Academic Entrepreneur

In this chapter, we explore the underlying motivations of researchers that lead to entrepreneurial activities in Academia. Existing literature in the specific field of academic entrepreneurship has mainly studied the infrastructures and policies aimed at fostering spin-off and patent creation at the university level. However, few studies have concentrated on the individual level. We posit that researchers’ motivation is the critical cornerstone for entrepreneurship activities to flourish.

Entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa: A Bibliometric Analysis

Bibliometrics is an important field of information science that enables bibliographic material to be studied quantitatively. Using bibliometric techniques, this chapter offers an overview of entrepreneurship research in the Middle East and North Africa. Using the Web of Science and Scopus databases, we identify the most relevant research in this field, classified by the most influential authors and the top papers, journals and countries. The sample includes 657 articles published from 1963 to 2016, from 387 different sources. The findings show that studies addressing this topic have been published mainly in non-JCR-indexed journals. In contrast, it is important to note that the top papers (in terms of citations) appear to be published in well-known journals such as the Journal of Business Venturing, Organization Studies and Technovation. The most significant countries are those in the region being studied (such as Israel) but also the United States. The chapter ends with some recommendations for further research.

Researchers’ willingness to engage in knowledge and technology transfer activities: an exploration of the underlying motivations

Increasingly, universities have become conscious of their important role as centres of knowledge generation and diffusion. Accordingly, they have put in place policies, methods and resources to increase knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) activities. However, succeeding in this endeavour is not that easy. An active involvement of researchers is fundamental. Literature examining researchers’ attitude towards KTT activities is limited, offering a partial view on the subject. This study aims at bringing new light to this issue. First, we identify those factors that influence researchers’ willingness to engage in KTT activities. From a comprehensive literature review, we distinguish between intrinsic motivations, extrinsic motivations and university support and services as critical elements. A scale is developed and validated. Second, the scale is applied to the case of R&D contracts. The sample consists of 249 researchers from one of the biggest Spanish universities. Results suggest that the proposed scale has a good fit, indicating that it can be considered as a good instrument for measuring researchers’ willingness to get involved in KTT activities. Policy implications and directions for future research are provided.

Organized Chaos: Mapping the Definitions of Social Entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT Over the last 20 years, social entrepreneurship has attracted the attention of researchers from a wide variety of disciplines which has generated a great range of definitions of the term social entrepreneurship. This paper maps the existing definitions, using a citation map and cluster analysis methods. Studying 307 documents in total, the analysis reveals that – contrary to what has been commonly believed – there does, in fact, exist widespread consensus within the academic community on the definition and meaning of the term social entrepreneurship and it is primarily centred on the combination of social and financial goals, community ideals and innovation.

Quality management systems in European social service organizations: A survey of EQUASS Assurance pioneer adopters

Purpose This paper analyses from an adopters’ perspective the European Quality in Social Services (EQUASS) Assurance standard, a certification programme to implement a quality management system specifically tailored to European social service organisations (SSO). Specifically, it analyses the motives, internalisation, impacts, satisfaction, and renew intentions of this standard. Design/methodology/approach The research uses a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey methodology with both closed and open-ended questions. Of the 381 organisations contacted, 196 responses from eight different European countries were considered valid (51.4%). Descriptive statistical techniques and content analysis were employed to analyse closed- and open-ended questions, respectively. Findings The results show that SSO typically (a) implement the certification for internal reasons, (b) internalize EQUASS Assurance principles and practices in daily usage, (c) obtain mainly operational and customer benefits, and (d) conside...

Crowdfunding: A Review and Research Agenda

Crowdfunding is an alternative model for project financing, where a large and dispersed audience participates through relatively small financial contributions, in exchange for physical, financial or social rewards. It is usually done via Internet-based platforms that act as a bridge between the crowd and the projects. Over the last few years, academic scholars have explored this topic, both empirically and theoretically. However, the mixed findings and array of theories used have come to warrant a critical review of past works. To this end, we perform a systematic literature review on crowdfunding and seek to extract (1) the key management theories that have been applied in the context of crowdfunding and how these have been extended, and (2) the principal factors contributing to success for the different crowdfunding models, where success entails accomplishment of both fundraising and timely repayment. In the process, we offer a comprehensive definition of crowdfunding and identify avenues for future research based on the gaps and conflicting results in the literature.

Entrepreneurship and the Influence of History: How Much Impact Do Country-Specific Historical Factors Have on Entrepreneurship Initiatives?

The elements that enhance entrepreneurship have been widely studied. There are factors at different levels: (i) institutional factors such as some governmental policies, or the access entrepreneurs have to financial support; (ii) cultural and social factors such as national culture or networking opportunities; and (iii) individual factors that take into consideration personality traits of the entrepreneur. This chapter reviews the various influences and adds a new one: the historical perspective. Based on historical data (nineteenth and twentieth century) about the number and types of companies in a country, and comparing this data with the current number of entrepreneurship initiatives (2011), we explore the weight historical clusters have on current entrepreneurship.