Start-ups in entrepreneurial ecosystems: the role of relational capacity

PurposeEntrepreneurial ecosystems provide the context for start-ups to access resources. The authors investigate the reliance of start-ups on their entrepreneurial ecosystem and the driving factors behind the proportion of local actors (belonging to their entrepreneurial ecosystem) within their overall set of relationships (their business ecosystem). Recognizing the limited relational capacity of firms, the authors focus on three differentiating firm characteristics: size, age and innovation of firms.Design/methodology/approachThe authors developed a sample of 163 start-ups located in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Toulouse, France. The authors investigated the characteristics of their relationship sets using regression analysis.FindingsThe results confirm that age is inversely related to the proportion of a start-up's relationships located in its entrepreneurial ecosystem. More surprisingly, for older start-ups, the authors also highlight the presence of a moderating effect of the start-up's size on the relationship between its degree of innovation and the proportion of its relationships in its entrepreneurial ecosystem: Larger and more innovative start-ups appear to rely more on their local entrepreneurial ecosystem.Originality/valueThis research increases the understanding of the characteristics driving the interactions of start-ups with their entrepreneurial ecosystems by adopting a relational capacity approach. The authors introduce digital methods as an innovative approach for uncovering firms' ecosystems. Finally, from a practical point of view, the research should provide public authorities seeking to promote the link between local resources and the development of innovative start-ups in their regions with interesting insights.

Sharing Experiences in Infancy: From Primary Intersubjectivity to Shared Intentionality

We contrast two theses that make different assumptions about the developmental onset of human-unique sociality. The primary intersubjectivity thesis (PIT) argues that humans relate to each other in distinct ways from the beginning of life, as is shown by newborns' participation in face-to-face encounters or “primary intersubjectivity.” According to this thesis, humans' innate relational capacity is the seedbed from which all subsequent social-emotional and social-cognitive developments continuously emerge. The shared intentionality thesis (SIT) states that human-unique forms of interaction develop at 9–12 months of age, when infants put their heads together with others in acts of object-focused joint attention and simple collaborative activities. According to this thesis, human-unique cognition emerges rapidly with the advent of mind-reading capacities that evolved specifically for the purpose of coordination. In this paper, we first contrast the two theses and then sketch the outlines of an account that unifies their strengths. This unified account endorses the PIT's recognition of the fundamental importance of primary intersubjectivity. Any act of sharing experiences is founded on the communicative capacity that is already displayed by young infants in primary intersubjectivity. At the same time, we question the PIT's interpretation that dyadic encounters have the triadic structure of joint attention. Lastly, we draw on empirical work on the development of joint attention, imitation, and social referencing that serves as evidence that primary intersubjectivity continuously unfolds into the capacity for triadic joint attention.

Dance Intervention Affects Social Connections and Body Appreciation Among Older Adults in the Long Term Despite COVID-19 Social Isolation: A Mixed Methods Pilot Study

The ability of dance to address social isolation is argued, but there is a lack of both evidence of such an effect and interventions designed for the purpose. An interdisciplinary research team at University of Calgary partnered with Kaeja d’Dance to pilot test the effects of an intervention designed to facilitate embodied social connections among older adults. Within a mixed methods study design, pre and post behavioral tests and qualitative surveys about experiences of the body and connecting were administered to thirteen participants along with test instruments of loneliness and body appreciation. In the short-term, no significant changes were found on quantitative tests. Exploratory analysis revealed intervention improvements on individual body appreciation questions only. This indication of change was strongly supported by converging qualitative data and identified as relating to: increased connection through task-based collaboration, increased awareness of interpersonal boundaries, and a shift to experiencing the body as responsive. These indications of increased relational capacity were deemed likely to cause further impact in the long term. Examining this possibility and the subsequently arisen factor of COVID-19 risks and restrictions, test instruments were administered again to 10 participants 4 and 5 months after the intervention. A significant increase in loneliness was found. Despite this negative impact of COVID-19 isolation, several positive intervention changes remained detectable and some continued to increase over time. Seventy percent of the participants, who made new social contacts during the intervention and later sought continued contact, improved significantly across all body appreciation measures over the full study. The qualitative data from the last two time-points revealed both consistent values and new, negative changes. While these preliminary findings speak to the durability of intervention changes, they also identify areas of urgent priority to help older adults restore embodied relational capacity that has declined during COVID-19. Within the limitations of a small-sample pilot study, converging mixed methods results support the hypothesis that dance interventions designed for the purpose can positively affect the social inclusion of older adults. Although we recommend further study, these promising results also indicate that dance interventions can help older adults recover from pandemic isolation.

Building relational research capacity in care homes in the COVID-19 era: applying recognition theory to the research agenda

Purpose Research can be an influential driver in raising care home standards and the well-being and human rights of residents. This paper aims to present a case for how a relational research capacity building programme could advance this agenda. Design/methodology/approach This study uses Axel Honneth’s Recognition Theory as a lens through which to explore organisational and institutional factors (such as research capacity and investment) that can either enable or limit “recognition” in the context of research in care homes. This paper draws on recent evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK and worldwide, to argue that such a relational capacity building agenda is even more pressing in the current context, and that it resonates with evidence from existing relational capacity building initiatives. Findings A lack of relevant research arguably contributed to the crisis experienced by the care home sector early in the pandemic, and there are only tentative signs that residents, care home providers and staff are now informing the COVID-19 research agenda. Evidence from pre COVID-19 and insights from Honneth’s Recognition Theory suggest that relational approaches to building research capacity within the care home sector can better generate evidence to inform practice. Originality/value This is a novel application of recognition theory to research in the care home sector. Drawing on theory, as well as evidence, has enabled the authors to provide a rationale as to why relationship-based research capacity building in care homes warrants further investment.

Spatiality and Agency: A Phenomenology of Containment

In this essay, I consider how spatial experience is fundamentally connected to the development and maintenance of “existential healthy” agency. More specifically, I examine how our formation as choosing, active, and self-defining persons is dependent upon the spatially-thick and interpersonally-interwoven “gestures” through which we develop a lived sense of space as supportive and cooperative or hostile and threatening. I conclude from this both that existentially healthy agency is always already a relational capacity, and, more central to my focus here, that it depends in significant part upon the cultivation of an appropriately supportive spatial environment.

Gaming Expertise

This article argues for an attempt to rethink what counts as gaming expertise. Often, expertise is configured as a fixed and measurable rather than relational capacity – having the necessary level of knowledge with a skill to become expert, or to rise above a particular and objectively defined level of competency. Drawing on interviews with women playing the massively multiplayer online gameMassively multiplayer online games are games capable of supporting large numbers of players interacting, competing and cooperating, as they simultaneously inhabit the persistent open world of the game space.World of Warcraft, the article argues for an understanding of gaming expertise as a relational, highly contextual capacity, operating and embedded in everyday situations. Through the lens of gaming expertise, the article teases out the complex ways in which gender, technology and identity intersect and are constructed and negotiated in different social contexts.

"Diamond Stage" in Sino-Croatian Relations

By borrowing an ad hoc concept 'diamond stage' uttered by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during his visit to Croatia in April 2019 to describe a new stage in Sino-Croatian bilateral relations, this article sets to analyse the reasons behind this flattering diplomatic designation. It departs from the context of weak, historically distant and asymmetrical Sino-Croatian cooperation (SCC), giving, firstly, a short account on historical relations between China and Croatia and, secondly, relying on small state power scholarship in IR, depicting the opening and advancing of SCC. While categories of state size, geographical proximity, bilateral history and relational capacity are relatively pointless given the previous track of SCC, the dynamics of decreasing asymmetry between a small state and a big power helps to understand the recent upcoming of a new, 'diamond' stage in bilateral relations. Therefore, the article proposes several features as particularly relevant for understanding decreased asymmetry in SCC.

Using a Developmental-Relational Approach to Understand the Impact of Interpersonal Violence in Women Who Struggle with Substance Use

Substance use among women is a major public health concern. This review article takes a developmental-relational approach to examine processes through which early relational trauma and violence in relationships may lead to substance use. We examine how early exposure to violence in relationships can impact neurological development, specifically through interference with physiological mechanisms (e.g., the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), brain structure and functioning (e.g., the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex), and neuropsychological development (e.g., executive functioning and emotion regulation) across the lifespan. Further, we discuss the impact of exposure to violence on the development of relational capacity, including attachment, internal working models, and subsequent interpersonal relationships across the lifespan, and how these developmental pathways can lead to continued problematic substance use in women.

ORION—Art Collections and Collectors in Portugal

ORION is a digital art history research-oriented project focused on the study of art collections and collectors in Portugal, supported on a relational database management system. Besides the obvious advantage of organizing and systematizing an enormous amount of information, promoting its analysis, this database was specifically designed to highlight the relationships between data. Its relational capacity is not only one of the most relevant features of ORION, but a differentiating quality, one step forward in comparison to other international databases and studies that use digital methodologies. This article discusses the methods and the advantages of using ORION in research related to the history of collecting, art markets and provenance of art objects in Portugal, where it is the very first time that an approach such as this is intended, looking for a systematization of data that paves the way to the emergence of new research questions. Furthermore, and because ORION aims to share the data and knowledge with other projects, institutions and researchers, the database uses different international standards, such as data structure (CIDOC-OIC and Getty-CDWA), controlled vocabulary (Iconclass, Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), and Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)) and communication and exchange of information (CIDOC-CRM).