Individual entrepreneurial orientation on MSME's performance: the mediating effect of employee motivation and the moderating effect of government intervention

PurposeThis research would like to address the issues associated with individual entrepreneurial orientation, which involves entrepreneurial leadership and entrepreneurial ability as the key determinants of MSME growth. It will also explore both mediating and moderating roles of employee motivation and government intervention, respectively during the pandemic situation.Design/methodology/approachA purposive sampling technique was applied during pilot study and during the final data collection phases. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted using varimax rotation to reduce a large number of variables into a smaller set of interpretable underlying factors. Further CFA and SEM are respectively applied to examine the psychometric properties of the scales and test the hypotheses of the research model.FindingsThe study's findings revealed a favourable association between entrepreneurial orientation, business financing, management, market practices, and MSME growth performance. The results support the notion that government policy plays a significant role as a full moderator.Practical implicationsAlthough the MSME sector receives government support, its implementation requires a skilled leader who can run the business profitability. The findings support this objective.Originality/valueThis paper seeks to give important insights into one of the understudied but quickly expanding MSME entrepreneurship, and how this environment influences individual entrepreneurial orientation and the formation of entrepreneurial leadership. This opens up a previously unexplored area for fresh insights and future study on enhancing entrepreneurship development research and practice for the MSME sector.

Markets, infrastructures and infrastructuring markets

Despite a growing understanding of market infrastructures—the rules and socio-material arrangements that enable agreements on the properties of goods, and the calculation of value, equivalence and exchange—we know little of what lies beneath the arrangements that underpin and are implicated in exchange. The socio-material lens has done much to explain how specific assemblages circulate information and goods, but has done little to explain how different infrastructures configure relations between dispersed market practices. Using the history of the development of the market for market research we show how knowledge-based infrastructures constitute markets as knowledge objects: new expertise emerged through alliances between academia, government, and private actors form a new occupation embodied in specialist agencies that set themselves up in an infrastructural relation to marketing practices. Our conceptualization of markets as knowledge objects extends extant understandings of markets by showing how: (1) extant knowledge-based infrastructures are drawn on to construct new markets; (2) infrastructural relations emerge between different markets to constitute multiple systems of provision and demand, leading to an increasingly valuable knowledge infrastructure; and (3) organized practices in one market are often heavily reliant on connections to other markets, including knowledge-based infrastructures such as market research services.

Predatory Pricing Under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act of 2019 of Nigeria: An Unfinished Business

Predatory pricing is one of the market practices that are prohibited in competition law. It occurs when a dominant firm sells its product at an unreasonably low price in order to eliminate competitors from the market. The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2019 of Nigeria prohibits this practice. This article, therefore, examines predatory pricing under the Act. It argues that the prescription of the cost-based principles of marginal and average cost as sole determinants of predatory pricing under the Act would not provide the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and courts with the appropriate legal standard in determining predatory pricing. It suggests that the provision of the law should be reformed to include the principle of recoupment as a legal standard for imposing liability for the practice against defaulting firms. This will assist the FCCPC and courts to distinguish pro-competitive predatory pricing from anticompetitive predatory pricing.

Frequency Support Markets and Wind Power Integration

Europe’s initiative to reduce the emissions of harmful gases has significantly increased the integration of renewable sources into power networks, particularly wind power. Variable renewable sources pose challenges to sustain the balance between generation and demand. Thus, the need for ancillary services to cope with this problem has increased. In this regard, the integration of larger shares of wind generation would have a clear system benefit when wind generators are able to provide these ancillary services. This would also have implications for electricity markets, enabling these services from wind power plants. This article gives an overview of several European markets for frequency support (FS) services, also referred to as FS markets. It identifies the changes in national regulations of 10 European countries to standardize these services based on the ENTSO-E guidelines. However, most of the countries still use their national service definitions, which presents a problem for researchers to understand the national regulations in relation to the ENTSO-E guidelines. This article provides a classification of the national FS services under the definitions of the ENTSO-E guidelines to facilitate research on this topic. Furthermore, it highlights the main requirements for the market practices that would encourage the participation of wind power generation in the provision of these services. An estimation of the economic benefits for wind producers from the provision of FS services is provided as well to show a possible outcome if changes are not made in national policies.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as an Alternative Market System: An Appreciation-Based Activist Order of Worth

In the context of constructivist market studies, this research aims to understand how value is calculated in alternative agrifood markets, more specifically in the community-supported agriculture (CSA) market system. Methodologically, this qualitative study was based on observation, document analysis and interviews, and the study subjects were actors from various Brazilian CSA communities. The results showed that the CSA system is based on an activist order of worth (Lindberg & Mossberg, 2019), which affects the value calculations performed by the agents. In addition to calculations present in conventional markets (quantitative, qualitative and collective - Cochoy, 2008), the CSA system fosters a new type of calculation, herein termed appreciation calculation, which considers various social and environmental benefits of the system. Thus, CSA members incorporate appreciation calculation into other calculation methods when making decisions on whether to join and remain in the community. The article contributes to market studies by presenting a peculiar system that challenges the prevailing logic, thereby improving our understanding of how ideological issues are incorporated into market practices.

The localization of video games into less widely spoken languages that share a common history

Even though video games are highly popular, localization into Slovak is rather rare and the language struggles to maintain a presence in the video game industry. This is partly because Slovak is a less widely spoken language, and also because it is mutually intelligible with the more dominant Czech language, having a common history. Our paper examines the Slovak-Czech parallels in the respective language-, audiovisual- and multimedia- related legislation as well as market practices. A similar comparative analysis is conducted with other less widely spoken European languages, namely Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian. Our results show that among the examined languages, Czech is by far in the strongest position as a supported language in video games on various platforms whereas Slovak, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian are hardly present. We hope that the results of our research will stimulate the discussion on this issue.

Working with(in) kinship: value in Italian family businesses

In Italy, living close to or even within a place of business is not in and of itself unusual. Forms of housing in Italy are similar to many other European countries in that people primarily live in mixed-use spaces. It is common to have an apartment above cafés, bars, and bakeries. In this article, I examine how this form of mixed-use residence shapes market practices, decision-making, and labour relations among owners and workers. I argue that the spaces in which employees participate in the market economy also mirror their commitments to family. By examining workspaces across two food certifications in Milan, Italy – a Made in Italy certification (Food Italy) and a halal certification (Halal Italia) – I argue that Italian kinship networks structure how workers in each business operate. This intervention contributes to a larger literature on the cultural dimensions of capitalism.

The criminal and administrative type of front running practice and damage to the securities market

The purpose of this article is to clarify non-equitable market practices and crimes against the securities market, especially the practice of front running, in addition to point cases in which individuals acted illegally and indicate the damages to the market that this practice has caused. It also explains the possible criminal and administrative sanctions applied to the practice of front running presently in Brazilian law and whether using HTFs is considered a way of front running. The conclusion is that the practice of front running affects the proper functioning of the securities market. It damages the liquidity of assets and the parity of information principle through the inappropriate use of inside information. In addition, there is an appeal for hardening custodial sentences on crimes against the securities market, as it has greater coercive power than regular fines.

Resisting to Game of Thrones: a fannish agonism

PurposeFans have been characterized as specialized consumers who often express disagreements with the entertainment industry's decisions, especially when it comes to the original content of the works that serve as the basis for the development of media products, evidencing a kind of consumer resistance. Under a Foucauldian perspective aligned with the consumer culture theory (CCT), power relations are established in a dynamic of power exercise and resistance to power. Based on this, the authors pose the following research question: how do fans of media products resist the changes made by the entertainment industry in relation to their canons?Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted the Foucault's genealogy of power as a method, analyzing the comments posted on the Westeros.Org website, the main discussion forum of fans of A Song of Ice and Fire (ASoIaF) book series and Game of Thrones (GoT) TV series.FindingsThe findings reveal ways of resistance in relation to the adaptation of the media text permeated by an entertainment dispositif, which considers the adaptation legitimate, and a fannish dispositif, which criticizes the way this adaptation was made. However, their empirical categories reveal that they are forged not only from singularities but also from overlaps. The authors conclude, therefore, that this process occurs in an agonist way, in which conflicts are fought as a reciprocal incitement revealing a productive and ethical relationship.Originality/valueThe agonism shows how consumers can simultaneously be led to incorporate and resist to discourses and market practices. This demonstrates how resistance is not necessarily a force opposed to another, but a dynamic of reciprocal negotiation.