Search Results (178)

Market gardening is increasingly discussed as a sustainability-oriented farming model with the potential to support resilient, locally embedded food systems and to contribute to food security through diversified fresh-produce supply, short value chains, and closer producer–consumer relations. However, limited empirical evidence exists on the competences and training needs required for its professional and agribusiness development. This study examines perceived competence confidence and training priorities for market gardening across Ireland, Greece, France, Germany, and Austria. The research draws on 53 interviews with education and training providers and a cross-sectional survey of 275 respondents, including practitioners, advisory actors, and institutional stakeholders. The survey was structured around EntreComp, DigComp, and GreenComp to assess entrepreneurial, digital, and sustainability competences. The findings show that practitioners reported relatively strong confidence in motivation, vision, ethical thinking, environmental responsibility, and local contextual awareness, but weaker confidence in market research, resource mobilisation, record-keeping, planning, digital farm management, online sales, technical troubleshooting, stakeholder engagement, and participatory sustainability action. Advisory and institutional respondents rated entrepreneurial and sustainability competences as highly important, while digital competences were also considered relevant but showed stronger cross-country variation. The study concludes that market gardening education should move beyond technical horticultural instruction and adopt an integrated, competence-based curriculum combining entrepreneurial, digital, green, and practice-oriented learning. The findings highlight competence-development priorities that may strengthen market gardening and its potential contribution to local food availability, resilient short value chains, and food security. Full article

Digital transformation is now one of the key engines of entrepreneurial behavior and company development, but there is still a lack of empirical evidence on the creation of digital ecosystems, especially in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. This paper examines how digital capabilities affect the sustainable development of entrepreneurial ventures and how the relationship changes depending on the three emerging digital ecosystems of Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Data were collected through a structured online questionnaire developed using Google Forms and distributed via email, WhatsApp, and the Prolific research platform to owners, managers, and key decision-makers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 250 questionnaires were distributed, yielding 131 responses, of which 22 were excluded after screening for completeness and eligibility. The final analytical sample comprised 109 valid firm-level responses from Egypt (n = 51), Lebanon (n = 34), and Iraq (n = 24). The study quantitatively assesses digital capabilities on several dimensions, including digital infrastructure adoption, data and analytics capabilities, digital product development, and digital revenue integration, and attributes those capabilities to sustainable business growth indicators (the revenue stability, scalability, profitability, and long-term resilience). The results showed that more robust digital capabilities have more significant impacts on sustainable business growth outcomes, whereas basic digitalization has no significant effect. Further, the analysis found no statistically significant moderating effect of ecosystem contextual factors, including institutional quality and digital maturity, on the relationship between digital capabilities and sustainable business growth across Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. This study contributes to the body of knowledge of entrepreneurship and sustainability in emerging markets by integrating Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Digital Ecosystem Theory. The findings have practical implications for entrepreneurs and policymakers who aim to use digital transformation to attain sustainable entrepreneurship in the vulnerable and dynamic digital ecosystems. Full article

As religious tourism expands across Asia, it remains unclear who benefits from its growth and who is overlooked in policy and industry accounts. Drawing on fieldwork in the temple-towns of Jejuri and Tuljapur in Maharashtra, India, this paper aims to make a timely and original contribution about the significance of informal, family-run and ritual-linked enterprises to the centre of debates on entrepreneurship and inclusive tourism development. The study combines visitor surveys, detailed enterprise mapping and entrepreneur interviews to reveal a dense but precarious local economy which is sustained by religious retail (a term articulated for sale of items related to rituals), street vending and small-scale service provision. These micro-enterprises are culturally central but economically fragile, low-margin and weakly recognised in policy. The paper argues that entrepreneurship is constrained by traditional religious authority, informality, seasonality and limited innovation capacity, while rising visitor numbers are creating opportunities in travel, accommodation and food. It shows that sustainability in temple-towns depends on livelihood durability, socio-cultural continuity, participatory governance and distributional justice. By foregrounding actors often omitted from formal economic analysis, the paper reframes religious tourism as an embedded entrepreneurial ecosystem and calls for policies that strengthen local enterprise capability, resilience and participation. Full article

Sustainable Digital Infrastructure plays an increasingly important role in strengthening regional economic resilience and promoting inclusive growth. However, its dynamic effects on nascent entrepreneurship remain underexplored. Treating China’s smart city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this study uses data on newly registered enterprises in 288 Chinese cities from 2005 to 2019 and a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine this relationship. The results show that Sustainable Digital Infrastructure significantly promotes new venture creation. Owing to environmental dynamism—manifested in creative destruction, strategic wait-and-see behavior, and learning-curve effects—its entrepreneurial impact is initially volatile before becoming significantly and persistently positive. The industry-level analysis reveals heterogeneous effects across sectors: the largest estimated effect occurs in wholesale and retail trade, while the estimated effect in scientific research and technical services strengthens over time. Mechanism analyses provide suggestive evidence for three channels: technological innovation, human capital development, and digital finance. The effects are also more pronounced in eastern China and smaller cities. This study provides empirical evidence and practical guidance for emerging economies seeking to promote new venture creation through digital infrastructure. It conceptualizes “sustainability” in the SDI context as the capacity of digital infrastructure to support enduring and inclusive economic development, rather than as a property of the infrastructure’s environmental performance. Full article

This study examines the role of digital transformation in strengthening organizational resilience in Moroccan tourism accommodation firms operating in crisis-prone environments. Successive economic, health, and environmental disruptions have highlighted the need to better understand how entrepreneurial orientation contributes to organizational resilience and whether digital transformation acts as a mediating mechanism. Data were collected from 137 owners and managers of Moroccan tourism accommodation firms and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Entrepreneurial orientation was operationalized through its three dimensions (innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking), while organizational resilience was assessed across the readiness, response, and recovery phases to provide a multidimensional perspective. The results show that digital transformation plays a significant mediating role in enhancing organizational resilience. Among the entrepreneurial orientation dimensions, proactiveness emerged as the strongest predictor, exerting significant direct and indirect effects on all resilience phases through digital transformation. Innovativeness contributed primarily through its indirect effect via digital transformation, whereas risk-taking showed no significant direct or indirect influence. These findings suggest that digital transformation constitutes a key organizational capability through which entrepreneurial orientation strengthens resilience. The study contributes to the literature by adopting a multidimensional approach to both entrepreneurial orientation and organizational resilience, and provides practical insights for managers seeking to enhance resilience through digital transformation. Full article

Universities worldwide face escalating financial pressures while simultaneously confronting demands to adopt sustainable practices. This study examines whether Sustainable Green Innovation (SGI) serves as the central transmission mechanism through which AI-Driven Entrepreneurial Orientation (AI-DEO) and Green Metrics for Self-Efficacy (GMSE) influence University Financial Sustainability (UFS) in higher education institutions, within the broader framework of Circular Economy Principles (CEP). Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 1279 faculty and staff members at King Faisal University (Saudi Arabia) and Benha University (Egypt) between October 2025 and January 2026. Regression-based structural path analysis with nonparametric bootstrapped mediation testing (5000 resamples) was employed to test four hypotheses. The results show that AI-DEO emerged as the dominant positive predictor of SGI (β = 0.732, p < 0.001), while GMSE did not show a statistically significant association with SGI once AI-DEO was included in the model (β = −0.034, p = 0.246). SGI emerged as the strongest predictor of UFS (β = 0.369, p < 0.001), supporting an innovation-mediated route to financial sustainability. The indirect effect of CEP on SGI through AI-DEO was statistically significant (indirect = 0.3473; 95% CI [0.3123, 0.3835]), supporting full mediation. Hypotheses H1, H2a, H2b, and H3 were supported; H4 was not supported. These findings indicate that financial resilience in universities is primarily innovation-mediated and orientation-driven. The study contributes to the sustainability-in-higher-education literature by clarifying SGI as a central transmission mechanism and highlighting the importance of building operational green competence alongside strategic AI-Driven entrepreneurial orientation. Full article

In fragile economies where formal employment is constrained and conventional entrepreneurial pathways are structurally limited, universities represent one of the few institutional actors capable of cultivating digital entrepreneurial intention at scale and contributing to local economic resilience and sustainable development. Yet the mechanisms through which digital entrepreneurship education is associated with intention remain inadequately understood, particularly the institutional and cognitive pathways that education activates. Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory, Digital Transformation Theory, and Human Capital Theory, this study proposes and tests a moderated serial mediation model in which perceived university digital transformation and digital entrepreneurial knowledge sequentially mediate the education-to-intention relationship, with digital mindset moderating the knowledge-to-intention path. Survey data from 344 Palestinian university students were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. All nine hypotheses are supported and the model accounts for 77.0% of the variance in digital entrepreneurial intention, a result that should be interpreted with caution given the single-source cross-sectional design. The indirect association of digital entrepreneurship education with intention through perceived university digital transformation is comparable in magnitude to the direct effect, indicating that the university’s institutional digital environment carries approximately as much of education’s influence on entrepreneurial intention as the direct attitudinal channel. The serial indirect path through both mediators is significant, confirming that institutional digital transformation and entrepreneurial knowledge are associated with intention in sequence rather than in parallel. Digital mindset significantly strengthens the knowledge-to-intention association, constituting a dispositional boundary condition. The findings advance understanding of how universities build digital entrepreneurial capacity in fragile contexts and carry implications for institutional digital investment, curriculum design, and higher education policy in resource-constrained settings aligned with SDG 8 and SDG 9. Full article

From a systems-thinking perspective, firms can be understood as adaptive socio-technical systems in which strategic resource allocation, innovation activities, organizational capabilities, and environmental conditions interact through dynamic feedback processes. This study examines whether strategic focus alternation, defined as the recurrent reallocation of resources between technology focus and market focus, is associated with firm resilience. Using 30,930 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2024, we construct a firm-level measure of strategic focus alternation and examine its association with resilience using industry and year fixed-effects models, complemented by multiple robustness analyses, propensity score matching, instrumental-variable estimation, Heckman two-stage estimation, and within-firm analyses. The results indicate that strategic focus alternation is positively associated with firm resilience, although the magnitude of this association is economically modest, suggesting that strategic focus alternation represents one contributing element within a broader organizational resilience system rather than a dominant managerial determinant. Strategic focus alternation is also positively associated with persistent innovation and ambidextrous innovation synergy; however, mediation analyses do not support these innovation outcomes as statistically significant transmission mechanisms linking strategic focus alternation to resilience. Furthermore, while the capability to undertake strategic focus alternation is positively associated with resilience across firms, greater within-firm alternation intensity, measured by switching frequency and magnitude, does not generate additional resilience benefits and is marginally negatively associated with resilience, indicating potential coordination and adjustment costs. Entrepreneurial orientation and knowledge integration capability further strengthen the positive association between strategic focus alternation and resilience. Finally, the findings suggest that organizational resilience depends less on frequent strategic switching than on disciplined strategic reconfiguration that maintains dynamic stability while enabling organizational adaptation under uncertainty. By integrating systems thinking with research on strategic resource allocation, organizational resilience, and innovation, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of how firms balance strategic flexibility and organizational stability in dynamic environments. Full article

This study employs a qualitative narrative inquiry to explore how support systems and industry engagement influence youth employability and entrepreneurial aspirations within South Africa’s TVET sector. The central research question examines how young people’s personal stories reveal the impact of systemic barriers and support mechanisms on their identity construction, resilience, and agency. Using in-depth interviews and focus groups with 24 purposively sampled youth across Gauteng’s TVET colleges, the analysis combines thematic and narrative approaches to uncover recurring patterns and narrative structures. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 30, with a balanced gender distribution, representing various socio-economic backgrounds and career interests, selected through purposive sampling to ensure data richness and saturation. The analysis integrated thematic and narrative approaches, with a detailed coding process, theme development, and measures to mitigate bias through member checking and peer debriefing. Findings indicate that experiential learning, mentorship, family encouragement, and industry connections serve as critical support mechanisms that shape youth perceptions of opportunity and self-efficacy. Conversely, systemic barriers such as resource limitations and skills mismatches are frequently narrated as obstacles constraining pathways to employment and entrepreneurship. The study concludes that integrating youth narratives into policy development can foster more inclusive and effective strategies for youth empowerment. These insights contribute to the literature on youth employment by highlighting the active role of storytelling in identity negotiation and social critique within socio-economic contexts. Full article

Agritourism is increasingly intersecting with digital technologies to foster rural resilience, economic growth, and sustainable development. This study conducts a comprehensive systematic bibliometric review to map the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and collaborative networks characterizing the digitalization of agritourism from 2010 to 2025. Guided by the PRISMA framework, data from the Scopus database were analyzed using scientific mapping techniques, including keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution tracking, and spatial collaboration analysis. The findings reveal a paradigm shift categorized into three evolutionary phases: an incubation period of basic web adoption (2011–2017), a disruptive phase catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic (2018–2022), and an exponential maturation phase driven by Industry 4.0 technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Virtual Reality (2023–2025). Four primary thematic clusters emerged: digital marketing and connectivity, smart tourism and advanced analytics, immersive technologies for heritage preservation, and macro-level sustainability policies. Geopolitically, research is driven by two distinct networks: an Asian-centric hub led by China focusing on state-sponsored smart villages, and a Western hub anchored by the USA and Italy emphasizing entrepreneurial diversification. The study concludes that digitalization has transitioned from a reactive survival mechanism to a proactive strategic necessity. It highlights the critical need to bridge the digital divide through human capital investment and provides a future research agenda focusing on the ethical application of AI, the circular economy, and the preservation of rural authenticity in emerging ’phygital’ environments. Full article

Rural entrepreneurship is a key driver of rural economic development. However, limited evidence indicates how financial support affects rural households’ entrepreneurship through integrated mechanisms. Using 2109 micro-survey data points from rural Henan Province, Probit and OLS models were used to examine the impacts, moderating effects, and mediating pathways of formal and informal finance on rural households’ entrepreneurial decision-making and performance. This study makes two contributions. First, it differentiates entrepreneurial decision-making and performance as two stages of the entrepreneurial process. Second, it proposes an integrated three-path framework incorporating one moderating effect (the interaction between financial support and financing constraints) alongside two mediating mechanisms (risk-taking willingness and investment scale), which enables a more refined interpretation of the heterogeneous impacts exerted by financial support throughout distinct entrepreneurial stages. Both formal and informal finance can positively facilitate entrepreneurial decision-making, with formal support having stronger marginal effects. Financial support has varied impacts on rural household entrepreneurship, depending on household income, entrepreneurship type, and region. By alleviating financing constraints and optimizing resource allocation, financial support improves rural households’ entrepreneurial probability and business performance. By enhancing households’ risk-taking willingness and expanding asset investment, this support injects endogenous impetus into rural development. This financial empowerment mechanism can remove entrepreneurship barriers, facilitate the expansion of opportunity-based entrepreneurship, drive rural economic resilience, and promote inclusive, sustainable regional development. Full article

This study examines the associations among entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial resilience, financial constraints, and sustainable business practices among micro and small women entrepreneurs in the West Bank, Palestine. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory and Conservation of Resources Theory, a moderated mediation model is proposed and explored in which entrepreneurial resilience mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and sustainable business practices, while financial constraints moderate this indirect pathway. Survey data were collected from 282 micro and small women entrepreneurs through a purposive stratified sample facilitated by microfinance institution and NGO networks, and the model was assessed using partial least squares structural equation modeling via SmartPLS 4. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is positively associated with sustainable business practices both directly and indirectly through entrepreneurial resilience. Financial constraints significantly weaken the resilience-to-practices pathway, and the moderated mediation analysis reveals that the indirect association diminishes as financial constraints intensify. These findings contribute to sustainable entrepreneurship theory by identifying the sequential psychological pathway through which self-efficacy translates into responsible business conduct and by establishing material resource scarcity as a boundary condition of that pathway in fragile economy contexts. Full article

Against the backdrop of frequent global shocks and increasingly complex supply chain networks, supply chain disruption risk exposure has become a major challenge affecting firms’ operational stability and sustainable competitive advantage. Meanwhile, generative artificial intelligence is being increasingly embedded in business operations and has demonstrated strong application potential in information processing, risk identification, and decision support. Based on data from Chinese A-share listed firms from 2017 to 2024 and using text measures based on Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) disclosures of Generative AI application and supply chain disruption risk exposure, this study examines the relationship between Generative AI application and corporate supply chain disruption risk exposure, and further explores the channels through which this relationship may operate from the perspective of risk governance transformation. The results show that Generative AI application is significantly associated with lower corporate supply chain disruption risk exposure, and this relationship remains robust across a series of robustness checks and supplementary endogeneity analyses. Channel analyses suggest that this relationship may be related to firms’ risk governance transformation, mainly reflected in enhanced risk identification capability, improved resource allocation capability, and strengthened collaborative response capability. Heterogeneity analyses show that this association is more pronounced among firms facing higher environmental uncertainty, manufacturing firms, and firms located in cities with lower entrepreneurial vitality. This study provides text-based firm-level evidence for understanding the relationship between Generative AI application and supply chain risk governance, and offers managerial implications for firms seeking to promote scenario-based Generative AI application and enhance supply chain resilience and risk governance capability. Full article

Industry 5.0, deploying artificial intelligence (AI) at its core, reframes industrial evolution from a predominantly technology- and efficiency-driven innovation model toward a virtuously human-centric, sustainable, and resilient model of value creation by organizations. This review paper, based on an interdisciplinary literature review, explores how AI, within the Industry 5.0 paradigm, reshapes economic logics, the understanding of information asymmetry, and sustainability trajectories, and the implications for entrepreneurial strategy and business model innovation, which demand the development of a new form of organizational intelligence. While the literature suggests that AI, when deployed within a mature Industry 5.0 framework, could generate synergistic economic and sustainability values through circular, human-centered, and digitally augmented systems, human–AI co-intelligence gains are contingent on insights that address systems quality, reskilling, ethics, and reorienting resources from overly short-term profit maximization toward wisdom for long-term socio-ecological, climate resilience, and ESG performance. This study introduces a framework for tackling organizational sustainability dynamics, anticipating the emergence of new industries and the retransformation of enduring ones amid creative destruction in the AI era. Future studies to fill knowledge gaps and implications for human competencies that will enhance organizational intelligence are articulated. Full article

This study examines how entrepreneurial ecosystem constraints shape MSME resilience in the Jakarta–Bogor–Depok Indonesia corridor using a qualitative multiple-case design. Drawing on 20 MSME case reports across food and beverage, retail, services, and small-scale manufacturing, the study addresses two questions: (1) which ecosystem domains are the most binding constraints, and (2) how MSMEs convert ecosystem resources into resilience outcomes. The analysis shows that market pressure is the most universal constraint (20/20 cases), followed by digital-managerial support infrastructure gaps (18/20), supply chain volatility (13/20), and finance, human capital, and institutional constraints (each 12/20 cases). Cross-case evidence identifies four recurrent mechanisms: market pressure is managed through digital channel orchestration and customer engagement; capital constraints are managed through internal cash discipline and partnership-based financing; input volatility is managed through supplier diversification, local sourcing, and inventory control; and skill gaps are managed through internal training and process standardization. Building on these mechanisms, the study develops a threefold resilience typology: Adaptive Leaders, Operational Survivors, and Vulnerable Traditionalists. The main theoretical contribution is to show that MSME resilience is configurational and depends on inter-domain alignment rather than on isolated ecosystem components or entrepreneur-level grit alone. The practical contribution is a typology-based policy logic that prioritizes integrated intervention bundles, which are finance, digital capability, operations, supply chain, and managerial upgrading, over fragmented support programs. Full article