New development: A game of responsibility? The regulation of health and social care professionals

The UK's law commissions in a recent joint report have recommended that individual regulatory bodies for medical and other healthcare professions receive more decision-making power and that procedural regulation (for example fitness to practice proceedings) be standardized. Patient wellbeing and professional standing of practitioners are likely to be deeply affected. The legislative process needs to be scrutinized closely to ascertain that government and regulatory bodies do not use the reform to shirk accountability and engage in a blame game.     

More strategies, more Nash equilibria

We show in this paper that for the class of two-player games with compact real intervals as strategy spaces and continuous and strictly quasi-concave payoff functions there exists a monotone relation between the size of strategy spaces and the number of Nash equilibria. These sufficient conditions for our theorem to hold are shown to be tight.     

Private Equity Involvement and Earnings Quality

Abstract:  This paper examines the relation between private equity (PE) investors' involvement and their portfolio firms' earnings quality. We operationalize earnings quality through comparative analyses of conditional loss recognition timeliness. For a sample of unlisted Belgian firms, we find that PE involvement increases a firm's willingness to recognize losses more timely as compared to industry, size and life-cycle matched non-PE backed firms. Further, we document more powerful earnings quality effects for firms backed by independent and captive PE-investors as compared to firms backed by government-related PE-investors. Finally, we find no systematic variation in earnings quality across different levels of PE ownership. Our results are robust to the inclusion of various controls and remain unaffected when we consider the endogeneity of PE investments and compare pre- and post PE investment years. The current results provide novel evidence towards the understanding of PE investors' governance implications for portfolio firms' earnings quality.     

The Centrality of Community Capacity in State Low‐income Housing Provision in Cape Town,South Africa

The development of low‐income housing continues to be a political imperative and an urban reconstruction priority for the post‐apartheid South African state. But, even though policies for housing construction and delivery by the state are in place, in practice many homeless families initiate, direct and drive the process through which they secure state‐provided housing. I analyse in this study two such cases where homeless residents in peripherally located, poor areas of the Cape Metropolitan Area successfully accessed state‐provided housing. In both instances, homeless families organized around the different sets of capacities that structured the nature of the linkages that each forged to resources outside of their respective areas, and thus the ways in which they pursued their need for housing. I argue in this study that uneven and place‐specific, community‐based capacity often directs the manner in which communities interpret, interface with and access state‐run urban reconstruction projects such as housing provision. An analysis of community‐based capacity thus proves useful to investigate the potential and the problems that underlie state initiatives for development and the manner in which communities participate and engage with urban reconstruction and development. L'expansion du logement social reste un impératif politique et une priorité de la reconstruction urbaine pour l'État sud‐africain de l'après‐apartheid. Des politiques de construction et de fourniture de logements par l'État ont été mises en place mais, en pratique, de nombreuses familles sans‐domicile induisent, orientent et mènent le processus par lequel elles s'assurent un logement public. Cette étude analyse deux de ces cas dans lesquels des sans‐domicile vivant dans des quartiers pauvres à la périphérie de la zone métropolitaine du Cap ont réussi à se loger. Dans les deux situations, les familles se sont organisées autour des capacités spécifiques qui structuraient la nature des liens établis pour trouver des ressources hors de leurs quartiers respectifs, définissant ainsi leurs modalités d'action pour obtenir un logement. L'étude démontre qu'une capacité inégale, particulière à un lieu et à un groupe, oriente souvent la manière dont les communautés interprètent, interagissent avec et accèdent aux projets de reconstruction urbaine menés par l'État tels que la fourniture de logement. Il apparaît donc utile d'analyser la capacité propre à une communauté, si l'on veut déterminer non seulement le potentiel et les problèmes fondamentaux des initiatives gouvernementales de développement, mais aussi la manière dont les communautés participent et contribuent à la reconstruction et à l'aménagement urbains.     

Use and knowledge of food labels of shoppers in a city with a high proportion of heart disease

This study aimed to assess consumers’ use and understanding of food labelling and the improvements that they would like. Systematically selected supermarket shoppers were interviewed using a questionnaire. Data showed that the use of food labels was low. Among those who read food labels, at least occasionally, use‐by‐date was the most reported information looked at. Understanding of the content of five nutrients on a standard food label provided was poor. Although a high proportion of participants claimed to have no problem with the current format, those who had problems wanted food labels that were ‘bigger’, ‘highlighted’ or written in ‘plain English’. These results suggest that before improved food labels can have an impact on consumers’ food choice, strategies to encourage shoppers to read them are needed.     

A longitudinal study on the relationship between financial bootstrapping and new venture growth

While bootstrap finance is widely used in entrepreneurial ventures, both scholars and practitioners have presented conflicting views on the relation between financial bootstrapping and venture growth. This article empirically investigates the association between bootstrap strategies used at startup and subsequent venture growth. For this purpose, we use a longitudinal database comprising data from both questionnaires and financial accounts of 214 new ventures. Findings demonstrate that the association between financial bootstrapping and venture growth is either nonexistent or positive. More specifically, new ventures that use more owner funds, employ more interim personnel, encourage customers to pay more quickly, and apply for more subsidy programs exhibit higher growth over time. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of these results and suggest avenues for future research.     

Beyond environmental scarcity: Human and social capital as driving forces of bootstrapping activities

Although entrepreneurship scholars highlight bootstrapping as a key resource acquisition approach to respond to the inherent resource constraints that nascent ventures face, little is known about what causes nascent ventures to engage in bootstrapping. Theory highlights the environment as an important determinant of bootstrapping activity. Analyzing bootstrapping behavior of 298 nascent ventures, we find that beyond perceived environmental factors, individual characteristics of the nascent entrepreneurs and factors relating to the embeddedness of the entrepreneurs in the environment determine their venture's bootstrapping behavior. In a more fine-grained analysis we gain insights into how these antecedents shape the use of particular bootstrapping strategies. Findings contribute to our understanding of factors driving resource management approaches in nascent ventures.     

‘And now I’m free’: Women’s empowerment and emancipation through entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia and Sweden

Critical perspectives have called for the study of women’s entrepreneurship as a route to social change. This ‘social turn’ claims women are empowered and/or emancipated through entrepreneurship with limited problematisation of how these interchangeably used concepts operate. Using an institutional perspective in combination with a narrative approach, we investigate women entrepreneurs’ life stories on their ‘road to freedom’ where entrepreneurial activity enables them to ‘break free’ from particular gendered constraints. Through juxtaposing women’s narratives in the contexts of Saudi Arabia and Sweden, the relationship between empowerment and emancipation is disentangled and (re)conceptualised. The findings distinguish between empowerment narrated as individual practices to achieve freedom for the self within institutional structures and emancipation as narrated as a wish to challenge and change structures of power and reach collative freedom. The yearning for collective emancipation propels women’s stories of entrepreneurship by raising expectations for entrepreneurship as a vehicle for institutional change. Such stories may fascinate and inspire others to engage in entrepreneurial endeavours to become empowered, but whether they reach emancipation remains an empirical question to be answered. The performative dimension of entrepreneurial narratives is, however, their ability to turn emancipation into an (un)reachable object of desire, with a quest for even more individual empowerment and entrepreneurial activity, at the same time excluding other forms of human conduct as conducive for change.     

Innovating for elderly people: the development of geront’innovations in the French silver economy

The objective of this paper is to study the supply side of the silver market, which is usually neglected by research on this topic. Adopting a systemic approach to innovation, our main goals are to identify the nature of the innovations developed, the way innovations are created, and the issues related to their emergence and diffusion. Our research is based on an empirical study of the French silver economy, which consists in an enquiry carried out in Silver Valley. The results of our study lead us to suggest a new term ‘geront’innovation’ to qualify the various forms of innovations developed to cater for the needs of elderly people. We also put forward the importance of networking and open innovation strategies. Finally, the identified barriers to emergence and diffusion as perceived by the supply side of the market lead us to suggest recommendations to support the diffusion of geront’innovations.