Search Results (49)

The present study highlights how the Canaanite Amarna Letters offer unique insight into Canaanite literary culture in the Late Bronze Age. The letters represent the diplomatic acumen of scribes writing letters for local elites that were sent to the Egyptian court in the mid-fourteenth century BCE. Yet they also preserve the earliest evidence of Canaanite literary forms and compositional practices. The letters include memorized formulae and expressions, word pairs, poetic devices, and the use of repetition to frame poetic units, which are common in the practices of later first-millennium scribes working in this same region, including those who wrote the Hebrew Bible. The letters also offer insight into the ways that the scribes combined memorized units into new narrative contexts. Such features added literary texture to the letters, but also contributed to their rhetorical aims. While some poetic passages in the letters may be novel compositions, there is also evidence that literary forms and expressions were integral to Canaanite scribal education by the Amarna period. The Canaanite Letters therefore set an important precedent for literary creation, and for the scribes’ bricolage practices in the process of creating new diplomatic letters. Full article

Based on the theoretical framework of systems thinking, this study investigates the mechanism of systems thinking in promoting entrepreneurial persistence among technology entrepreneurs in China’s digital economy development. From a dynamic complex systems perspective, 409 technology entrepreneurs from China, were measured using the systems thinking scale, the psychological ownership scale, the resource bricolage scale, and the entrepreneurial persistence scale. Systems thinking among technology entrepreneurs has been found to enhance entrepreneurial persistence significantly. Psychological ownership of technology entrepreneurs partially mediates the process of systems thinking influencing entrepreneurial persistence. Resource bricolage positively moderates the systems thinking process, influencing entrepreneurial persistence among technology entrepreneurs. This study innovatively introduces systems thinking into the field of technology entrepreneurship, reveals the relationship between systems thinking and entrepreneurial persistence of technology entrepreneurs, and provides theoretical guidance for Chinese technology entrepreneurs to enhance entrepreneurial persistence through systems thinking. Full article

Business model innovation represents a critical pathway for firms to create value and enhance competitiveness, yet innovation processes are frequently constrained by resource limitations. To explore the determinants of business model innovation, we developed a theoretical framework examining the influence mechanism of resource bricolage on business model innovation, introducing digital transformation as a mediating variable and entrepreneurship as a moderating variable. We conducted an empirical study by surveying 263 entrepreneurs across China. Using Model 59 in the PROCESS macro for SPSS, we performed conditional process analysis, revealing that both resource bricolage and digital transformation positively influence business model innovation, and resource bricolage facilitates digital transformation. Furthermore, digital transformation partially mediates the relationship between resource bricolage and business model innovation, while entrepreneurship positively moderates the relationships among resource bricolage, digital transformation, and business model innovation, with higher levels of entrepreneurship demonstrating stronger moderating effects. Our findings suggest that organizations pursuing business model innovation must consider the integrated effects of multiple factors within a systems perspective. Full article

Background/Objectives: Adolescent girls’ physical activity levels are well below the minimum recommended levels for health and wellbeing. Rural-dwelling adolescents may also experience decreased physical activity levels than their urban counterparts, placing rural adolescent girls at a greater disadvantage. The reasons for these low levels are multifactorial, including, but not limited to, age, geographical locations, and gendered stereotypes surrounding activities. Qualitative investigations into adolescent girls’ physical activity can provide deeper understandings on the key barriers and supports that specific populations experience and have been limited in the current literature. This study explores the physical activity experiences of adolescent girls living in rural Nova Scotia to provide deeper understandings of the needs of this population to inform physical activity policy and programming. Methods: Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology and feminist post-structuralism were used in a bricolage fashion to analyze six semi-structured interviews from adolescent girls between 11–13 years old living in rural eastern Nova Scotia. Results: Three major themes were identified from the interviews: (1) what physical activity looks like depends on your definition; (2) “What do you do when the boys take over the gym?”; and (3) “It’s really nice to have space…but there’s a lot less options out here”. The themes were not independent, but rather all were linked by the threads of gendered sociocultural expectations and hegemonic femininity. Conclusions: Distinct physical activity identities were exposed within the stories, shaped by parental and peer supports, personal ideals, sociocultural gender roles, and individual sense of agency surrounding physical activity engagement. Rural adolescent girls need both increased social and parental support to better navigate barriers of location and gender stereotypes that may be limiting their physical activity. Full article

How can local governments in the Global South effectively implement and sustain digital public participation initiatives, and what specific roles do public officials and knowledge intermediaries play in catalysing and supporting this digital transformation? In this paper, we respond to this query by examining our experiences as researchers in implementing an ongoing multi-year applied research project on e-participation and policy modelling in various South African municipalities. The project and the country’s ongoing public participation initiatives align with government policy emphasising citizen-centric public service delivery through consultation, transparency, and accountability. We aim to highlight the practical aspects of introducing e-participation mechanisms in local governance structures with different human and material resource capacity levels, which is the case in Global South contexts. Our central question is as follows: How can public officials, working alongside researchers and knowledge intermediaries, navigate the sustainable adoption of e-participation through participatory design, system awareness, and bricolage? We explore this question from the perspective of researchers leading the implementation of a multi-year, participatory action-research project which aims to pilot e-participation in six municipalities across South Africa. In the paper, we analyse the interplay of various socio-technical factors influencing the early stages of implementation and use of e-participation tools in local government. Our findings highlight the importance of building socio-technical agency of front-line public participation officials, exploring malleable technologies that are flexible to adaptation, facilitating peer-learning amongst officials on what works in similar contexts, and having a system view within and across pilots. Full article

This article introduces systemism as a method of evaluating the expanding research agenda on the politics of migration. Systemism is a graphic method for presenting academic research concisely. It provides three methods of advancing the research agenda: elaboration, systematic synthesis, and bricolagic bridging. I employ two of these methods to follow the evolution of research on states’ migration policies from the 1990s to the 2020s, providing a critique of the research and suggesting methods for advancing our knowledge of this politically important policy issue. The article provides a short overview of systemism, and then illustrates its application through the presentation of two articles in graphic form: “No Vacancy. The Political Geography of Immigration Control in Advanced, Market Economy Countries” by Jeannette Money, and “The Migration State in the Global South: Nationalizing, Developmental, and Neoliberal Models of Migration Management”, authored by Fiona Adamson and Gerasimos Tsourapas. Elaboration is employed to expand the systemist presentation of “No Vacancy”, to communicate causal mechanisms more thoroughly. The next section employs systematic synthesis to bring together the two articles and to engage the research agenda on the politics of migration policy. The past 30 years have witnessed an expansion of the definition of migration management strategies captured by the four-fold typology proposed by Adamson and Tsourapas. However, continuing to pay attention to the domestic politics of migration management would help to illuminate variation among states within each category. Both articles acknowledge structural factors that constrain or provide opportunities for states’ migration policy choices, but neither develops a clear picture of the systemic factors that shape international mobility and the policy choices of states in the international system. The conclusions point to a continuing expansion of the research agenda along these three dimensions. Full article

Entrepreneurial resources are crucial to the success of ventures in underdeveloped regions. Leveraging limited resources to enhance entrepreneurial effectiveness and contribute to poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship has attracted significant academic interest. In this study, a conceptual model is developed, incorporating resource bricolage, entrepreneurial involvement, entrepreneurial action learning, and entrepreneurial behavior. Through an empirical analysis of data collected from 230 startup founders in the Wuling Mountain Area, the results indicate that resource bricolage positively influences entrepreneurial behavior, while entrepreneurial involvement partially mediates the relationship between resource bricolage and entrepreneurial behavior. However, the findings also suggest that entrepreneurial action learning negatively moderates the relationship between resource bricolage and entrepreneurial involvement and that entrepreneurial involvement exerts a significant moderated mediation effect on the relationship between resource bricolage and entrepreneurial behavior. This study advances our understanding of resource bricolage and its implication for the resource environment in underdeveloped regions, providing valuable insights into how entrepreneurs can effectively adapt to resource-constrained settings. Full article

Traditionally, systems thinking support has relied on an ever-increasing plethora of systems tools, methods, and approaches. Arguably though, such support requires something different from, and more accessible than, detailed instruction on somewhat abstract laws and detailed principles and/or constitutive rules associated with conventional systems approaches or systems ‘tools of the trade’. For busy managers and decision makers working in often-stressful conditions, what is perhaps more valued are simple principles for enabling systems thinking in practice. Such principles should acknowledge and build on existing (multi)disciplinary skill sets and expertise, allowing for more meaningful interdisciplinary support amongst professions, as part of a nested transdisciplinary support for addressing wider social challenges. This monograph offers three principles of systems thinking in practice (STiP): relational STiP, perspective STiP, and adaptive STiP. They each have two sets of operational principles applicable to first-order and second-order practice, respectively. The three general principles are nested in an overriding principle of STiP as praxis (theory-informed action or thinking in practice) manifest in the need for being both systemic and systematic. The three principles represent a distilled expression of a systematic literacy of systems thinking, a literacy that speaks to the systemic sensibilities of Inter-relationships, Perspectives, and Boundaries (sometimes referred collectively as IPB), associated with any area of intervention. Drawing on metaphors of bricolage, conversation, and performance, and building on philosophical foundations of boundary critique, the three principles provide for a requisite systems literacy (as an emergent property of systemic sensibilities and systems thinking literacy) for enabling appropriate STiP capabilities to flourish when making a meaningful change. Full article

Digital entrepreneurial ventures are increasingly embracing a high-quality development trajectory that prioritizes green, low-carbon, and sustainable practices, necessitating ongoing environmental enhancements and the active assumption of social responsibilities alongside economic progress. Despite this, there is a significant disparity in the sustainable entrepreneurial performance among these ventures, highlighting the need for an in-depth exploration of the underlying factors. This study develops a theoretical framework that links entrepreneurial bricolage to business model innovation and ultimately to sustainable entrepreneurial performance, all within the context of a digital entrepreneurial ecosystem (DEE). The research focuses on 371 digital ventures operating within the DEE, examining the relationships and effects among the variables. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial bricolage has a positive impact on sustainable entrepreneurial performance. Furthermore, entrepreneurial bricolage is found to foster business model innovation, which in turn, enhances sustainable performance. The investigation demonstrates that business model innovation partially mediates in the link between entrepreneurial bricolage and the sustainable entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, the DEE’s empowering influence is shown to positively regulate the connection between entrepreneurial bricolage and business model innovation, as well as between business model innovation and sustainable entrepreneurial performance. The empowering effect of the DEE also exerts a positive moderating influence on the indirect impact of sustainable entrepreneurial performance mediated by business model innovation, stemming from entrepreneurial bricolage. This study underscores the significance of entrepreneurial bricolage and the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem, demonstrating that digital startups ought to augment their bricolage skills and leverage the ecosystem’s support to attain enduring sustainable entrepreneurial performance. The conclusions drawn from this research offer valuable insights and serve as a reference for strategies aimed at enhancing the sustainable performance of digital entrepreneurial ventures within the DEE. Full article

The application of digital technology in China’s rural areas has triggered a brand-new allocation of agricultural factors, posing challenges to the sustainable growth of entrepreneurial income. Using empowerment theory and entrepreneurial process theory, this paper explores the mediating role of entrepreneurial alertness and resource bricolage in the relationship between digital capabilities and the sustainable growth of entrepreneurial income. Using questionnaire survey data from 490 farmer entrepreneurs in China, this paper empirically tests the effect of digital capabilities on the sustainable growth of entrepreneurial income through a multiple regression model. The findings show that: (1) digital capabilities have a significant positive effect on the sustainable increase in entrepreneurial income; (2) digital applicational capabilities and digital innovation capabilities can affect the sustainable increase in entrepreneurial income through the intermediary paths of entrepreneurial alertness and resource bricolage; and (3) digital capabilities have a more significant positive impact on the sustained growth of entrepreneurial income for young farmers and those with professional work experience in large cities who embark on farming entrepreneurship. This paper reveals the effect of digital technology when embedded in the entrepreneurial process. It also provides a theoretical reference and empirical support for the government to formulate reasonable entrepreneurial policies and offers new paths and solutions to promote sustainable entrepreneurial development through digital capabilities. Full article

Since the narrative turn in the social sciences from the 1980s onward, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of narrative identity. The concept of narrative identity, however, is open to multiple interpretations. Here, we take a narrative hermeneutic approach and apply one particular model of narrative identity—to three case studies, exploring how each of these was shaped by the storyworlds of the participants. The case studies have been selected as examples of different forms of identity: received, bricolage, and guided. Following this exploration, we reflect on the potential of this approach in other areas of identity work and the implications for narrative understanding in the promotion of social justice. Full article

The application of systemism, an innovative and user-friendly technique for generating lucid, graphic summaries of analytical arguments, can enhance the social sciences. Content, as research and pedagogy move forward, becomes increasingly vast and diverse in theory and methods. Systemism offers both a means and a method for enhanced communication in the face of challenges posed by the rapid expansion of the social sciences in the fast-paced world of the new millennium. This is the motivation for a Special Issue of Social Sciences that will show systemism in action. The Visual International Relations Project (VIRP) archive continues to accumulate materials. The contents of this Special Issue will demonstrate the value of that resource across a wide range of subject areas. This introductory article proceeds in five sections. The first section provides a general overview of systemism and the VIRP. The second section introduces systemism in greater detail as a graphic approach to the communication of ideas. The third section applies systemism to convey the framework for analysis utilizing a classic work of social science—The Logic of Collective Action. The fourth section outlines the articles that follow in making up the Special Issue. The fifth and final section sums up what has been accomplished in this introductory article. Full article

Sociolinguistic styles and the resultant ascribed identities are understood as the product of simultaneous variables, leading to the notion of bricolage, or the co-occurrence of variables and their collective indexical meanings. Relatively little attention has been paid to these processes as they manifest on social media platforms. The goal of the current paper is to understand which linguistic and thematic features co-occur in the online production of the no sabo kid style and identity, which manifests as a form of linguistic discrimination towards U.S. Latinx youth. “Hashtag communities” were used to locate posts about no sabo kids on TikTok (N = 95), and videos were automatically and manually coded for salient linguistic and discursive resources in the online no sabo kid community. The results show the co-occurrence of code-switching and phonological and lexical variation, alongside discursive themes, namely ‘proficiency’, ‘ethnicity’, and ‘performative lexical gaps’. I argue that the no sabo kid hashtag community is a mediated manifestation of ideologies surrounding U.S. Latinx bilinguals, where a supposed lack of proficiency in Spanish and grammatical blending of Spanish and English index inauthentic ethnicity. Mediated instantiations of sociolinguistic styles shed light on how linguistic features become enregistered through multimodality and semiotic bricolage. Full article

The evolution of base/bottom of the pyramid (BoP) literature from BoP 1.0 to 3.0 prompted the need for fresh theoretical perspectives to address complex and persistent social issues. This article investigates BoP through the lens of business model innovation, using a literature review along with bibliometric, network, and content analyses, to map the intellectual and conceptual structure and understand the key variables relating to BoP business models. The research encompasses 161 articles extracted from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Documents were screened manually and with the assistance of VOS Viewer 1.6.18, Biblioshiny 4.0, IBM SPSS 20, UCINET6, and NVivo12, using abductive and deductive coding techniques. The findings reveal a prevailing focus on the exploratory phase among the articles, with a predominant utilization of qualitative research methods, particularly centered on case studies. Interviews and public data sources constitute the primary sources for supporting empirical evidence. Notably, the majority of these cases pertain to emerging economies situated across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with India emerging as the most frequently cited country in the literature. Sectors, such as energy, healthcare, agrifood, finance, and telecommunications are studied, emphasizing themes of innovation, entrepreneurship, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Emerging themes include social entrepreneurship, frugal innovation, and inclusive business models. The research panorama encompasses a categorization of BoP enterprises based on their origin (top-down or bottom-up), their typology (commercial, assistance, or collaboration), and their interactions with BoP communities (either as customers or entrepreneurs). From an innovation standpoint, certain concepts emerged, notably frugal innovation and bricolage, accompanied by the incorporation of ecosystem theory and sustainability perspectives. The research also outlines a BoP business model framework, providing insights into key components favored by entrepreneurs in this realm. Full article

In the era of digital economy, digital literacy plays an important role in the process of enabling farmers’ entrepreneurship with digital technology. However, there are few studies in the literature on the impact and mechanism of digital literacy on farmers’ entrepreneurial performance. From the perspective of digital literacy, combining high-level theory and resource-based theory, this paper constructed a chain intermediary model of “digital literacy–entrepreneurial bricolage–entrepreneurial opportunity identification–entrepreneurial performance” based on the logical chain of “resource–opportunity–performance”. A hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrap method were used to analyze 308 samples of effective entrepreneurial farmers. The results show the following: (1) Digital literacy has a significant positive impact on the entrepreneurial performance of rural households. (2) Entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial opportunity identification play an intermediary role between rural households’ digital literacy and entrepreneurial performance. (3) There is a chain mediating effect of “digital literacy–entrepreneurial bricolage–entrepreneurial opportunity identification–entrepreneurial performance”. The research conclusions can broaden the research on the pre-influencing factors of farmers’ entrepreneurial performance and the driving effect of digital literacy and provide enlightenment on how to promote the improvement of farmers’ entrepreneurial performance and rural social and economic sustainable development. Full article