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Clear legal content of white papers provides certainty, stability and trust in the relations between all the participants in initial coins offering (ICO) procedures and contributes to the successful introduction of blockchain technologies in business. A white paper defines the relationship and interaction between a regulated social reality and program code, which is by itself not susceptible to legal regulation. This article investigates the legal conditions of the white papers that describe the projects of ICO. The author provides a legal analysis of numerous white papers published during ICO implementation around the world. Based on extensive data on implemented ICO projects, the correlation between the legal content of a white paper and the amount of funds collected as a result of the ICO is considered. Having analysed the determinants of the white paper legal content, the author suggests the legal provisions that any ICO white paper should have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White papers are a form of grey literature produced by businesses that can be a valuable source of information for librarians and business practitioners. This article reports the results of an exploratory investigation of whether commercial white papers can be successfully located in full-text form through the use of online databases, aggregators, and search engines as an alternative to retrieving the document directly from the Website of the authoring organization. Also examined are the extent of secondary references to these white papers and whether such white papers can be found in library collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on conferences of the first five years of the International Academy of African Business and Development (IAABD: 2000-2004) focusing specifically on the conference proceedings. The papers presented at the five conferences and published in their proceedings were reviewed and analysed in terms of functional areas covered, the research methodologies employed, as well as the geographical spread and country focus of the authors. The analysis demonstrates a number of significant achievements for IAABD and identifies a number of challenges for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the 30 years between 1837 and 1867, the Gateshead Observer provided coverage of local and national business, financial and political news that rivalled and frequently surpassed that of the various Newcastle papers and was vastly superior to that of other north-eastern publications. This article examines how this came about. It also considers how a newspaper avowedly political in its foundation emerged, as a result of the particular circumstances of Gateshead's enfranchisement and industrial development and the individuals involved, essentially as a paper for the business community. This case study also reveals how the provincial press can shed light on an otherwise very much under-documented period of local business history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Thun Group's discussion paperThe Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: An Interpretation for Bankslays the foundations for the first ever comprehensive guide on how universal banks should move from corporate social responsibility to human rights due diligence. As the arguments offered by the Thun Group are likely to influence not only public and private financial institutions but also companies belonging to other sectors, this article offers a critical assessment of the document. Notwithstanding several positive features, the Thun Group relies on a faulty subsidiary approach, avoids fundamental issues like access to effective remedy, and downplays the importance of engagement with affected stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 13(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper develops an economic geography model with trade costs in all sectors and different shares of unskilled labour in all locations. The second paper translates an economic geography model into a dynamic spatial econometric model and then estimates the unknown parameters to test for congestion spillover effects among Chinese cities. The following paper also investigates spillover effects, but of sovereign and banking risks across countries. The fourth paper empirically examines if a higher market potential results in higher average productivity and lower productivity dispersion of Italian retailers. The fifth paper demonstrates that modelling more than one spatial lag in the independent variables, using different specifications of the spatial weight matrix, can be used as a tool to correct for an omitted variable bias. The final paper develops a test for the existence of non-parametric non-linearities in a linear spatial econometric model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents summaries of papers of Business History Seminar. The Business History Seminar organized by Dr. Oddy met on 8 May 1981 in the Board Room of the Polytechnic of Central London. Dr. Charles Munn's paper, "Bank Finance for Industry: Scotland and Ireland 1820-1850" was concerned with the volume and techniques of lending by Scottish and Irish joint-stock banks in their formative years compared with their predecessors. In the 1820s and 1830s long established banking systems in the two countries gave way to systems of joint-stock banks and the average site of bank was larger than the English equivalent. The changing structures in the banking systems had implications for the ways in which they did business. Larger advances led the banks to look for more tangible forms of security than the traditional personal guarantee. Lending on the security of shares, property, goods, life assurance policies and ships became common but the banks struggled long and hard to find ways of obtaining effective security over these items. Acceptance finance and lending by means of unsecured overdraft also became common at this time.

Research and experimental development (R&D) is an important driver of economic growth and productivity. Gross expenditure on domestic R&D (GERD) is a country's total expenditure on R&D performed by all sectors of the economy. South Africa's GERD as a percentage of its GDP (GERD/GDP) remains below government targets and has stagnated over the past decade, largely due to declining business sector R&D. This paper aims to identify the drivers of firm-level R&D intensity, defined as the firm's R&D expenditure as a percentage of turnover. It is the first South African study to examine both micro- and macro-economic drivers of firm R&D, with a paucity of literature on this topic for middle-income countries. Using the South African National R&D Survey data, the study utilized the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model and found that public financial support for firms, smaller firm-size, firm-level collaboration, political stability, foreign direct investment, and public R&D investment are positively associated with firm R&D intensity. The results highlight the importance of public financial support for smaller firms and investments in higher education and research institutions in promoting firm-level R&D, thereby providing useful policy insights for boosting business sector and economy-wide R&D expenditure and reaching national GERD/GDP targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business actors create and operate in global production networks that bring them in contact with regulatory frameworks across multiple levels and domains. Importantly, they also participate in shaping those regulatory frameworks. But what are the specific interests they pursue in their involvement in regulation? Traditionally, scholars tended to assume that the focus of business actors is primarily on avoiding (stringent) public regulation. Recent developments have highlighted a broader range of business interests, however. Accordingly, this paper investigates business positions on the ascription of duties and rights in regulation, specifically in the fields of due diligence, supply chain liability, and extraterritorial jurisdiction. The paper explores these issues in the context of business regulation in the field of Human Rights, looking at the United Nations Guiding Principles on human rights, their German implementation in the 'Nationaler Aktionsplan Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte' and the associated processes, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing awareness that the effects of decarbonisation are highly spatial and will impact regions differentially. Old industrial regions are likely to be particularly affected but it is debateable how well equipped they are to engage with transition and for it to be just. Extant literature suggests that this will be highly contingent on the acceptability of this transition amongst old industrial communities, with a call to understand what and who will be impacted. There is, however, a need for more granularity of evidence on how acceptability is formed and how it plays out in practice. Taking the case of Port Talbot in the UK, this paper provides new insights into the interplay between place attachment and a 'just transition' in an old industrial region. This paper finds that there is a strong community understanding of and support for decarbonisation but an equally strong perception of powerlessness to act. There is an enduring sense of place attachment within Port Talbot but the lack of place-based consultation and engagement with the community means that there are no effective development strategies in place. Thus, it can be concluded that there is acceptability but without agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents various titles and abstracts of research papers related to geography by the Association of American Geographers. Some of papers included are "Problems of Geographic Influence," by Albert Perry Brigham, "Some Geographic Factors Influencing Brazilian Trade," by Walter S. Tower, "Postglacial Migrations of Vegetation in the Middle West," by Henry Allan Gleason, "Bases for Dividing the United States into Physiographic Provinces," by N. M. Fenneman, "The Losses of Nebraska," by G. E. Condra.

The paper examines how corruption-induced inhibitions influence business-related corruption from the perspectives of business leaders in Ghana. Data were collected through focus group discussion with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of multi-national and local companies operating in Ghana. The findings show that business leaders encounter multiple regulatory agencies with duplicated and overlapping functions, multiple charges for virtually the same and duplicated services, multiple law enforcement agencies also performing regulatory functions at the Ports of entry, inadequate information on processes and costs of services, and inadequate channels for reporting corrupt activities in Ghana. The paper argues that these challenges trigger corruption-induced inhibitors which in turn, negatively affect the growth of the private-sector in Ghana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the main areas and latest developments of logistics service quality (LSQ) in the context of business to consumer (B2C) online shopping and proposes future research directions. More specifically, this paper has three objectives: What is the status of research of LSQ in B2C e-tailing? Which themes involving the field are the most popular among scholars? What are the possibilities for future research? This study examined a sample of 177 papers from the Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases to find research activity on LSQ in B2C online shopping between 2001 and early 2021 using bibliometric analysis. The methodology involves selecting, analyzing, and classifying 177 papers into authors, journals, time, focus areas, keywords, country, citation, co-citation, and thematic distribution analysis. Four major themes have emerged, LSQ for integrating traditional retail with omnichannel retail; LSQ and inventory management; LSQ and supply chain collaboration and LSQ transformation to E-LSQ. It gives researchers and scholars information to help them work on new developments of LSQ in B2C e-tailing and create strategies, models, and structures for increasing firm performance and customer satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, an interdisciplinary debate on the social and political role of business corporations has evolved. With this special issue, we would like to facilitate a comprehensive discussion of three questions that are especially pertinent in that debate: (1) How is the social and political agency of corporations to be understood? (2) How should the power of corporations be analyzed? (3) Under which conditions would the social and political roles of corporations be legitimate? In this introduction to the special issue, we start with a short outline of the debate. In the next step, we provide an overview of the five contributions. We conclude by summarizing what can be learned from those contributions with respect to the three research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a systematic review of the existing literature on business longevity by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 142 papers published in the leading business history and management journals during the last three decades. The results show similarities (e.g. in explanatory models) and differences (e.g. in citation patterns, theories, and methods) between the disciplines, thus indicating that the literature is partially segmented into separate domains that prevent business longevity research from representing a truly unified field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of forensic science it is imperative for all laboratories to run smoothly and efficiently. To reach this goal, the administrative aspects of the field must not be overlooked. Despite the importance of successful administration, there is currently no accepted definition that accurately describes the roles and responsibilities of forensic science administration. The aim of this article is to outline forensic science administration as it relates to highly effective leadership. Included in the discussion are five proposed ideals for the successful management of a crime laboratory. Strong leadership is essential within a laboratory to achieve maximum efficiency and high-quality service. One possible method of confronting issues and providing guidelines for management of crime laboratories in forensic science would be the formation of a Scientific Working Group for Forensic Science Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), details from the submissions of each institution were made available to the public for the first time via the Internet, thus facilitating a greater degree of scrutiny of the results than had hitherto been the case. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on the publishing patterns of UK academics by examining the accounting education submissions to the RAE 2001. The paper begins by discussing the RAE process in the UK and the findings of prior literature on publication patterns within accounting research in the UK in order to contextualise the examination of the RAE submissions in accounting education. In particular, the dominance of refereed journals over other publication outlets, the increasing prevalence of co-authorship and the characteristics of publishing academics are examined. The paper then reports on the methods used to analyse accounting education research submitted to the RAE 2001 and discusses the main findings. The implications of these findings are discussed in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In difficult times, people turn to poetry, reading, and writing for solace and peace. In emotionally intense and traumatic times, people use poetry to process and understand the lived eyepieces. The havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals all across the world. Poetry has emerged as a savior in these difficult times. A phenomenon, "lockdown poems", came into existence as individuals all across the globe processed and shared their lived experiences of isolation, pain, and suffering through poems. In the present paper, students of a management program process and share their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns, and their community work experience. Poetry as a therapeutic and hope-building tool is discussed in the paper along with the original poems written by the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents a bibliometric analysis of the main advertising trends used as a means of investigation in the business area. This article identifies leading journals and provides a collaborative network researcher for future use in the generation of knowledge. This study examines 4,449 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection database for the 1992–2016 period. The authors analyze bibliometric indicators including the number of publications and citations, the citations per paper, five-year period analysis (quinquennial), h-index, citation thresholds and co-occurrence of authors keywords analysis. It develops bibliographical coupling and co-citations analysis by using the visualization of similarities Viewer Software. Results show a growing trend in the number of advertising´s publications. The Journal of Advertising has been the most cited and the Journal of Advertising Research has the largest number of papers. In regards to the h-index, the three most relevant journals in advertising are Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, and the International Journal of Advertising. This article is the first one that contributes with a complete overview of the field of advertising research as a mean of investigation, in a 25-year period. Especially from the business scientific research area through bibliometric indicators, journal rankings, content, citations, and bibliographic coupling, co-citations, and keywords analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business entities do not often include terms in commercial agreements unless those terms are relevant and are designed to maximise the gains of the parties to the agreement. To realise their reasonable and legitimate expectations, they expect that contractual terms and promises would be respected by the parties and courts. There is a growing body of literature suggesting that Nigerian courts are not giving maximum effects to foreign jurisdiction clauses (FJC). What is largely missing from the scholarly contributions is that no one has worked out a principled solution to overcome this conundrum. This article significantly contributes to the existing literature through an empirical analysis of Nigerian appellate court decisions on FJCs with a view to gaining deeper insights into the attitude of Nigerian courts to FJCs. Compared to the US where the national average of enforcement is 74%, a 40% rate for Nigeria does not project Nigeria as a pro-business forum. This outlook can potentially disincentivise cross-border trade and commerce between Nigeria and the rest of the world. To address this problem, the paper proceeds by presenting a normative framework, built principally on economic and contract theories, for enforcing FJCs. As most of the cases are B2B transactions, the paper invites the courts to treat FJCs and arbitration clauses equally and to replace forum non conveniens considerations with a more principled approach which limits non-enforcement to overriding policy, and a strong cause that is defined by reasonableness and foreseeability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prediction of 15 years ago regarding a "paperless society" has proven to be 100 percent incorrect. This brief look at paper and how we use it will lead you to only one conclusion-we need more forests! [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper develops an economic geography framework with positive trade costs in both manufacturing and traditional sectors, mobile skilled workers, and unequal shares of unskilled labour in regions. It shows that partial agglomeration always features the Home-Market Effect (HME) regardless of whether regions trade only the manufacturing good or both. Moreover, spatial factor mobility is significant for the HME to arise, while intersectoral mobility does not play a crucial role. Furthermore, a decrease in the traditional sector trade costs makes the HME weaker and increases the likelihood of full agglomeration in the larger region. Finally, the paper shows that a small departure from Cobb-Douglas upper-tier utility towards gross substitutability of manufacturing and traditional goods reinforces the HME, while the opposite holds for gross complementarity of goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing models of capitalist transformation have nearly always prioritised an analysis of domestic capital in shaping economic trajectories. Yet, even as industrial policy has been re-imagined in Africa, the potential contribution of domestic capital has remained marginal in academic analysis and policy discussions. The prevailing assumptions are that African capital is either non-existent or too weak to influence the policies of African governments. However, there is evidence within nascent literature that large African-owned businesses continue to influence the trajectory of capitalist transformation within their countries. This paper examines why the study of African capitalists – popular in the 1980s and 1990s – has remained dormant. This paper makes the case for analysing the politics driving the activity of large African-owned firms through researching the politics of diversified business groups (DBGs). Arguing that DBGs are the predominant form that large-scale domestic investment takes on the continent, the paper introduces an inductively-informed typology of African DBGs. The framework shows how domestic political economy (and the politics of state-business relations, in particular) shapes the form and trajectories of diversification of domestic business groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new certification authority authorization (CAA) resource record for the domain name system (DNS) was standardized in 2013. Motivated by the later 2017 decision to enforce mandatory CAA checking for most certificate authorities, this paper surveys the early adoption of CAA by using an empirical sample collected from the Alexa's top-million domains. According to the results, (i) the adoption of CAA is still at a modest level; only a little below two percent of the popular domains sampled have adopted CAA. Among the domains that have adopted CAA, (ii) authorizations dealing with wildcard certificates are rare compared to conventional certificates. Interestingly, (iii) the results only partially reflect the market structure of the global certificate business. With these timely results, the paper contributes to the ongoing large-scale empirical research on the use of encryption technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is reported that a large part of the mining activity abroad comes from Canada, a robust regulatory framework for addressing human rights violations committed by Canadian mining companies is lacking in Canada. From Canadian and international law perspectives, this paper addresses the issue of accountability of Canadian companies who commit human rights violations while operating in foreign countries. The paper discusses reports of human rights abuses by Canadian corporations and the jurisdiction of Canadian courts in cases of alleged violations committed abroad. It analyses selected recent decisions from Canadian courts as case-studies and argues that legal reform is needed to ensure accountability of Canadian corporations operating abroad and access to civil law remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exhaustive review of literature on the current developments in internet banking. It provides an overview of the changes as well as the ongoing research on internet banking. To identify relevant works, research databases were searched using 11 keywords. Only research papers on internet banking published in the last 15 years (2002-2016) were selected. The selected articles were further refined on the basis of country of origin, journal type, and research methods used for data analysis. Finally, 51 papers were selected on the basis of specific inclusion criteria for further analysis. These papers were grouped by research themes, and customer satisfaction with internet banking was identified as the most common theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of British universities before 1945 remains poorly understood. In particular, the factors shaping new academic developments, especially in the humanities, are under-researched. This paper looks at the development of teaching and research in the Modern Languages at the University of Leeds during the First World War, a period that was pivotal in the creation of new departments and programmes in many universities. Using extensive archival sources, the paper examines the pressures that led to the creation of new departments and the interplay of local and national influences that stimulated such change. Tensions are identified, such as that between employers urging an emphasis on the spoken language necessary for trade and commerce, and an 'academic' perspective that favoured more linguistic study and work on literature or history. Other factors, such as funding issues, institutional leadership, links with other educational institutions, staffing and student recruitment are also considered. In conclusion, the paper sheds light not only on developments in the Modern Languages, but also on the working of universities in the first half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offering a large variety of products at competitive prices and reasonable delivery times is a complex managerial challenge that many companies have to address. Software vendors responded to this challenge by developing and proposing various solutions, such as product configuration (PC) systems, product data management (PDM) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The relative newness, complexity and mutual interdependencies among these systems make it difficult to understand how they - individually and as a whole - actually support a firm in managing its product variety. Precisely these complexities, ultimately, add to the risks of software selection, leading companies to make inconsistent choices or to implement the wrong systems. Starting from this theoretical and practical concern, the present paper provides a conceptualization of the essential functions of PC, PDM and CRM systems, discussing how these functions help a company to manage its product variety and how they relate to each other. This paper proposes that two core data structures of PC systems - namely the sales and technical configuration models - are essential elements of the information management infrastructure of a company offering a large variety of products, because they enable a number of important product variety management functions also present within PDM and CRM systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In turbulent business times, organizations have sought to become more agile. Organizational agility has been asserted to require workforce agility, but thus far, little focus has been given to workers. Traditionally, salespeople have sought ways to differentiate themselves and create advantage for customers. This paper asserts that, in order to continue this tradition of differentiation and advantage, salespeople must engage in agility thinking. Agility has been studied as it applies to manufacturing processes and other firm activities. Agile salespeople have a mental dexterity at the point of customer contact. They are quick to observe opportunities and are able to anticipate customers' ever-changing needs, wants, and preferences. This paper presents a framework for agility selling, applying concepts from the agility manufacturing literature and proffering distinct characteristics of sales force agility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the atmosphere of mistrust that permeated the response to the tenth Ebola epidemic in Eastern DRC (2018–2020). The concept of an 'atmosphere of mistrust' that we develop in this article directs attention to the elusive-yet-pervasive presence of mistrust in interactions between responders and communities during the Ebola epidemic. This analysis focuses on the popular notion that 'Ebola is a business'. Our interviewees frequently used this saying during our research on the Ebola response to explain why mistrust had emerged, how it materialized, and against whom it was directed. Based on these interviews, we examine 'Ebola is a business' as a slogan that enabled people to voice mistrust. This slogan, as we aim to show, resonated with a wider atmosphere of mistrust that governed the emergency situation in Eastern DRC. In using it, people responded to their perceptions of mistrust whilst simultaneously perpetuating and extending this atmosphere of mistrust. Our analysis of the atmosphere of mistrust highlights the power of atmospheres in governing situations, mobilizing people, and disrupting structures of discrimination. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of the barriers inhibiting the collaborations between affected communities and responders, which are required to deliver effective epidemic responses. Moreover, we argue that voice and the atmosphere are important analytics for exploring the histories of mistrust that Ebola epidemics ask for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the drivers of global trade at the six-digit product level. The identification is achieved first by estimating the log-linear product-level bilateral trade implications of a model and second by aggregating the fitted estimation results across bilateral countries using Taylor series to obtain global measures in levels for each product. The empirical results suggest that supply-side effects (capturing production or exporting costs in source countries) contribute to changes in global trade more than six times the demand-side effects (capturing economic activity or preferences in destination countries) and more than ten times the effects of bilateral trade costs (capturing bilateral protectionism measures). Several product-level implications follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the nexus between innovation and internationalization (the "self-selection hypothesis") in the behavior of business organizations operating in the ICT sector. The data was gathered from a survey of national and multinational companies in the Romanian ICT sector. The results show a significant positive influence between innovation and internationalization, although this relationship is more robust for multinational companies, due to the history and strategies of parent companies. The findings have major implications for literature, macroeconomic management, and business practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses to what extent Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) are applicable in sparsely populated areas (SPA) departing from the S3 concept's theoretical background and the experiences of S3 implementation in five European SPA. It was found that S3 has induced a transition in how innovation is addressed, for example, through a more decentralized support system and more proactive approaches to natural resource management unlocking new market opportunities for bio-based innovations. Finally, the research noted a drive to find new governance mechanisms (multi-actor, multi-sectoral and multilevel), in order to sustain human capital development, the most critical resource in the SPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With regional science now into its seventh decade, it is timely to step back and look at what regional science is about, the past challenges it has faced, particularly its relevance, and to identify some of the challenges it has confronted in the past and at present. The paper demonstrates regional science research has had, and continues to have, policy relevance, as well as being relevant for business, and has addressed important issues. It provides an overview of recent commentaries on issues regional scientists might now be addressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the use of confidence intervals (CIs) and a sensitivity analysis called the number needed to disturb (NNTD), in the analysis of research findings expressed as 'effect' sizes. Using 1,000 simulations of randomised trials with up to 1,000 cases in each, the paper shows that both approaches are very similar in outcomes, and each one is highly predictable from the other. CIs are supposed to be a measure of likelihood or uncertainty in the results, showing a range of possible effect sizes that could have been produced by random sampling variation alone. NNTD is supposed to be a measure of the robustness of the effect size to any variation, including that produced by missing data. Given that they are largely equivalent and interchangeable under the conditions tested here, the paper suggests that both are really measures of robustness. It concludes that NNTD is to be preferred because it requires many fewer assumptions, is more tolerant of missing data, is easier to explain, and directly addresses the key question of whether the underlying effect size is zero or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic review of challenges to doing business in Africa. It complements the extant literature by answering two critical questions: what are the linkages between the ease of doing business and economic development; and what are the challenges to doing business in Africa? In providing answers to these questions, the nexus between the ease of doing business and economic development is discussed in six main strands, namely: wealth creation and sharing; opportunities of employment; balanced regional and economic development; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per capita; standards of living and exports. Moreover, challenges to doing business are articulated along the following lines: (i) issues related to the cost of starting a business and doing business; (ii) shortage of energy and electricity; (iii) lack of access to finance; and (v) high taxes and low cross-border trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some aspects of the textuality of historical narrative as a mode of organizing the past, drawing its inspiration from the work of Hayden White. The paper is unusual in that it takes as its central text for analysis a piece of historical narrative constructed `naively' by the author prior to the writing of the current paper. This text, which attempts to account for the varying development of the discipline of Business History in Britain and the United States, is explored for its narrative implications and implicit story-lines. The reactions of a number of readers of the original text are also examined, and an attempt is made to account for these in terms of the types of story each reader understands the text to be telling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the decline of the fraternity of St. George in Nottingham between 1459 and 1546. It uses the guild's accounts in conjunction with Nottingham's rich surviving documentary materials to investigate the financial management of the fraternity by its officers. It argues that the officers were adept at negotiating shifting economic conditions by switching between various revenue streams. However, this adroit management did not stem the tide of membership decline. It discusses the role of religious reform in the guild's ultimate demise. It investigates why the decline in membership started long before any moves towards state-sponsored religious reform in the 1540s. It examines the impact of key individuals upon the guild's history. It argues that, for a more nuanced view of the decline of fraternal organizations in this period, a recognition of individuals' impact upon institutions needs to be incorporated into our understanding of institutions' influences upon the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IT has been proven to have revolutionized business reality in its totality. As such, modern information technologies (IT) may also have an impact on business relationships. However, a detailed analysis of the impact of IT on relationships is still missing. This paper, therefore, provides a discussion of the interplay between IT and relationship variables, i.e., relationship functions, trust and relationship value. An analysis of over 100 German supplier-buyer relationships shows that the impact of IT is not as straightforward as all too often postulated. Moderate levels of IT competence are proven to be the worst-case scenario and as such themain managerial conclusion of this paper is to avoid half-hearted utilization of IT in business relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reexamines the papers on entrepreneurship and economic development that were previously published in the journal "Regional Studies." Impact of the papers on economic policy and policymakers; Contribution of the papers on economic development; Overview on the papers published in the November 2004 issue.

Translating business ethical rules into practical behavioral rules is controversial, and it is often overlooked by moral philosophers. Five rules are proposed, and the rationality for them are assessed. Forestry practices which are ethical per se may have an unethical resultdue to their impact on pulp and paper manufacturing. A higher forestry yield may be lost due to a lower pulping yield and/or inferior paper physical strength properties. A task is to determine which forestry practice secures in the best way pheno- and genotypical biodiversity. Social responsibility is an essential part of business ethical behaviour. Stakeholder analysis has a bias favouring the human viewpointat a given point in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As world's societal wellbeing is growing, in the near future the 'seniors condition' will force designers and companies to rethink the way they conceive, produce and sell products. This condition is fundamental for some strategic markets like the lighting domain. In this scenario, Human Centric Lighting (HCL) approach considers both seniors' biological aspects and technological advances to develop eco-efficient solutions that consider visual and non-visual aspects of light. This paper show the use of HCL as a new design approach able to help designers in the development of a wide range of lighting solutions; from the analysis of human conditions, this paper describes the research process used to design a HCL-Based System that perfectly meets seniors' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its relative newness, entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) have attracted much attention from research and policy but they are recognized to be largely untheorized. It is claimed that one aspect which distinguishes the EE perspective from other perspectives related to business environments is its systemic approach; however, much of the systemic approach still needs to be investigated. The aim of this paper is therefore to investigate how the systemic and complex approach of EEs can be theoretically strengthened. We do this by investigating what values complex adaptive system theory holds for advancing the EE perspective. We highlight four propositions which are of particular importance for strengthening the systemic approach of EE: spatial and component boundaries of the system; self-governance; the relational dimension between system components and the system; and the evolution of the system. We propose that boundaries should be seen as a natural part of the system, that a complex system is too complex to capture all components and all interactions, and that studying only individual activities will not enable us to fully understand the system's behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With renewed interest by the European Union in enlarging the bloc to include the countries of the Western Balkans comes the challenge for all countries to meet up to the competitiveness demands of the EU’s internal market. While youth entrepreneurship is increasingly considered an opportunity in building more entrepreneurial and job-generating economies, the paper argues for more order in the policy environment to maximize the potential of young people to the wider competitiveness drive. This includes defining more precisely in age terms who are young entrepreneurs and the recognition of both necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship to each country’s socio-economic development. Secondly, the case is put for more developed data and intelligence on youth entrepreneurship to support evidence-based policy-making, including improved capacity to monitor and evaluate, and independent research to support policy-makers. Finally, the paper recommends a better differentiation in start-up support including more customized finance options for young entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]