Published: Oct. 29, 2016

This study identifies and discovers best practices in entrepreneurship education from highly-ranked universities and business schools globally. The study has been qualitative in nature, utilizing semi-structured interviews with 23 respondents at 12 higher education institutions. The study has made use of non-probability sampling by means of a convenience sampling approach. Data have been analyzed by means of thematic analysis. Results indicate that best practices in entrepreneurship education include little to no specialization at undergraduate level, with a strong preference for generic and widely applicable entrepreneurship modules. Individual entrepreneurship-related modules contain distinct individual themes. These modules are most commonly structured as …

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Published: Nov. 19, 2014

The article provides a direct test of the applicability of a western paradigm to Russia – a country with a different cultural and economic system. This article aims to give knowledge-intensive companies in Tatarstan (Russia) a better understanding about influence of their level of market orientation on business performance. This study validated Kohli and Jaworski’s market orientation scale in knowledge-intensive industries, particularly in small and medium knowledge-intensive companies in Russia. The findings show that the market orientation has a positive impact on nancial and non-financial business performance in knowledge-intensive industries. It is important for hi-tech companies to improve their performance …

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Published: Sept. 24, 2013

Robert Kaplan and David Norton emphasize that the four perspectives of their standard balanced scorecard (BSC) need to be adapted to the organizational context. Yet, we lack a coherent body of knowledge on these adaptations. 20 years after the implementation of the BSC, a literature review is warranted to investigate if and how the original BSC has been modified in practice. The authors conduct a systematic literature review of leading academic journals from 1992 to 2012 to identify and analyze the extant empirical evidence on the BSC. The authors find 117 empirical studies on the BSC, of which 27 deal …

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Published: Dec. 1, 2013

Management fashion theory is a growing research area in management studies. The focus of this management fashion literature is to understand why some management concepts spread quickly and widely, while others do not. However, doing research on fashionable management concepts is a difficult task, and many commentators have pointed out the limitations of the research methods used in extant research. A consequence of these difficulties is that the theory has many understudied areas and ‘blind spots’. This paper aims at providing a review of the research methods typically used in management fashion research, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of …

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Published: April 1, 2014

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is one of the most widely used and discussed management concepts in the world. Although many BSC success stories have been cited in the practitioner-oriented literature and in the business media, researchers have shown that the implementation of BSC can be a complicated process. There are many pitfalls and dysfunctional consequences associated with the implementation and use of the BSC. Still, little research is conducted on BSC implementation issues. This paper reports on a qualitative study of Scandinavian BSC users. Based on interview data, the paper identifies four main problem areas associated with the implementation of …

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Published: Sept. 18, 2014

Since its introduction more than 20 years ago the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has garnered the interest of both academics and practitioners. In the ‘official’ practitioner-oriented literature the BSC’s main proponents Kaplan and Norton have touted the concept’s potential performance enhancing effects. Academics have been more skeptical, and have not found a clear-cut relationship between the use of the BSC and organizational performance. It appears that some uses of the BSC may increase performance, while other types of BSC use might decrease it. Still, research has shown that the concept is widely used in practice, more than 20 years after its …

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Published: Oct. 21, 2014

This study examines the effect that age and business size have on business performance. A structured research instrument was used to collect data from 500 SMEs in retail industry through interviewer administrated and selfadministrated survey and 93% of questionnaires were returned. The results show that there is no statistical significant difference between the means of business size and business performance. There is no significant difference between the age categories; under one year and 20 years and more and business performance. Age is no longer a significant factor in a company’s performance after twenty years. Life cycle approach of the company …

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Published: Oct. 19, 2014

The present study highlights the importance of alignment between a business model (BM) and business processes. The authors employ a case study method and analyze a young company focused on R&D in high technology. In order to explicate the observations, the researchers invoke the newly developed ‘VIP framework’ (Solaimani and Bouwman, 2012). The research reveals that the business processes (BP) carried out in the company must fit the stated business model. The case study demonstrates how some of the processes are not optimal and efficient, and that the two main requirements for achieving a higher level coherence and consistency between …

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Published: Dec. 15, 2014

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between organizational culture and work engagement. Work engagement is shown to be powerfully linked to a range of business success outcomes. Although a large number of studies investigate the link between employees’ work engagement and organizational variables, there remains a dearth of scientific research on organizational culture and its impact on work engagement. A quantitative research design is undertaken in a South African ICT company. A total of 455 employees complete the South African Culture Instrument and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Correlation analysis shows that all the dimensions of …

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Published: Dec. 15, 2014

It has been widely advocated that SMEs create most of the jobs in an economy. However, studies from both the developed and developing world have shown that only a small amount of SMEs create most of the jobs in an economy. These set of SMEs have been termed high quality firms that grow and create the much needed jobs. While studies from the developed world have identified a number of factors that depict the quality of a firm, there is however, little empirical evidence from the developing world on firm quality. This study has as main objective to determine the …

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