ABSTRACT Why do regional institutions initiated by secondary states often come to reflect the preferences of regional hegemons rather than those of their founders? This article examines this puzzle through a comparative analysis of three Eurasian organizations initiated or co-initiated by Kazakhstan: the Eurasian Economic Union, the Organization of Turkic States, and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. Using process tracing and structured comparison, the article shows that secondary states can exercise meaningful agenda-setting authority during founding moments, particularly under conditions of limited hegemonic engagement. Over time, however, this influence erodes as regional powers re-engage and redirect institutions through administrative control, institutional ecosystems and ideational leadership. The findings demonstrate how hierarchy in Eurasian regionalism is produced incrementally through institutions rather than imposed at their creation.

Sovereignty as a site of innovation: Institutional entrepreneurship in Native American tribal nations

Institutional entrepreneurship and digital transformation in higher education: a configurational and structural analysis of digital maturity

ABSTRACT This article examines the institutionalisation of participation at the World Bank at the turn of the twenty-first century. Moving beyond accounts centered on transnational advocacy or organisational learning, it argues that bureaucratic politics shape norm change within international organisations (IOs). More specifically, it shows that reform-minded staff, acting as institutional entrepreneurs under hierarchical constraints, advanced normative change from within. Drawing on archival research and interviews, the article traces the process by which social scientists first introduced participatory ideas into the Bank’s policy debates and a second group of senior reformers later reframed them in ways compatible with the institution’s dominant economic rationalities. It also highlights the boundary-spanning alliances these insiders forged with NGOs and academics to secure legitimacy, mobilise expertise, and embed social development concerns within the Bank’s policy apparatus. The case demonstrates that norm institutionalisation in IOs depends not simply on external pressure or learning, but on knowledge struggles, coalition-building, and epistemic conversion through which contested ideas become institutionally acceptable.

In terms of the level of innovation processes’ development Russia still noticeably falls behind the countries with the established market economy. Russian companies’ innovation activity related to using patents for benefiting from scientific advancements in their operations remains insufficient. The paper’s aim is to make recommendations on stimulating innovation activities in Russia through enhancing motivation of economic entities. Institutional economics forms the methodological foundation of the research. Methods of institutional and statistical analysis are applied. The data for the analysis is obtained from the World Bank, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the World Economic Forum, and the Russian Federal State Statistics Service. Having examined the institution of entrepreneurship, we can conclude that Russian economic entities are generally conservative when it comes to assessing the need for innovation. We suggest introducing a full-fledged patent box regime in Russia, which entails the application of a lower rate of corporate income tax to the revenues derived from the use of research developments. We justify the need to reduce the corporate income tax rate to 12.5 % for the organisations that grant and exploit their intellectual property rights, what should become a long-term incentive to earn revenues from innovating. A necessary condition for gaining the effect of innovation activities’ development is setting up such a benefit for the entire territory of the country, not for separate regions. The presented findings may bear on implementing innovation and tax policies by government bodies.

Purpose The purpose of this article is provide an insight in to the work of ABCA from a public relations history perspective. It addresses why and how ABCA was created in 1941, its purpose and resolves whether ABCA delivered PR, propaganda or education. Design/methodology/approach This historical research article was based on archival research of original historical documents relating to ABCA in seven UK archives, primarily: Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge: The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London; The National Archives, Kew, London. Analysis of the ABCA case was organised using the method of historical institutionalism to identify the institutional case study and time period. ABCA from 1941 to 1946, the formal and informal institutions, and the institutional entrepreneurs who created ABCA and its institutional ideas and effects. Findings The scope of ABCA's institutional and communicative purpose – to improve morale and motivation in the army by informing soldiers about what they were fighting for – was an internal communications task. ABCA adopted an educative style of informative public information for the army that had been laid out by Grierson, Tallents and others in the interwar years. The mode of delivery was an educative PR approach that involved soldiers actively in their learning, which encouraged expression of opinions and moved beyond the paternalistic approach of public relations in the 1920 and 1930s. Practical implications The historical case of ABCA case has relevance at a time when many voters – particularly young people– are disillusioned with mainstream politics and disengaged from civic life, or engaging with populist political options. Alongside this trend of civic disengagement, countries in Europe, including the UK, are planning expansion of their armed forces on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War in response to a rising threat level. Originality/value Although the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) in the Second World War is mentioned in several books on public relations (PR), this article offers the first in-depth analysis of ABCA as a PR organisation from the perspective of public relations history. ABCA's application of an educative style of communications on civic topics was novel to the army – and a direct response to the new demands of conscript soldiers – and built upon the educative style of public relations work in the interwar years.

Abstract This article examines the enduring connections between past and present in world history by analyzing recurrent social mechanisms and evolving practices that enact them. While sociology has traditionally emphasized discontinuities and social change, I argue that some foundational mechanisms persist across time and space, yet they appear under varying practices. Drawing from Charles Tilly’s framework of mechanisms and repertoires of practices, I identify six recurrent mechanisms in world-historical processes: threat attribution, group identification, subordination, affinity bridging, rebellion, and commodification. Then, I provide a broad historical narrative tracing their gradual emergence, beginning with threat attribution in early hominid evolution, group identification in the Upper Paleolithic, and subordination with the transition to agrarian civilizations. During the Axial Age, institutional entrepreneurs and their followers developed affinity bridging and rebellion, which emerged as a reaction to subordination, first manifesting through religious movements and later through secular political practices. I then combine these mechanisms to briefly discuss further historical processes, including the trajectories of Islam and Christianity, the European conquest of Hispanic America, the rise of modern society (where I discuss the intensification of commodification), and the evolving global order following World War II. This perspective views human history as structured by both continuity and change between the past and the present: while mechanisms persist and recur, they are enacted through historically specific and evolving repertoires of practices.

The primary purpose of our theoretical essay is as a team of scholar-practitioners; we seek to bridge the gap between abstract sociological theory and the practical realities of organizational leadership. We aim to challenge the pervasive Great Man theories that still dominate the field by offering a theoretical vocabulary for what many practitioners intuitively feel but struggle to articulate. Our goal is to explore the theme of intra-subjective reality, which we define as the collective inner dialogue that shapes an organization. By demonstrating how leadership is not merely a set of individual traits but a dynamic and socially constructed reality, we hope to show how leaders can transition from being passive consumers of culture to active architects of interdependencies. This effort directly supports our daily work in leadership development by offering a framework that moves beyond the behavioral compliance often found in transactional leadership toward systemic awareness. We deliberately employed a synthesis of Berger and Luckmann's (1966) foundational sociology with modern institutional theory to deconstruct the objectivated nature of leadership norms. We mapped these theoretical concepts directly onto our Stages of Leadership model. This technique allows us to illustrate that understanding social construction is a learnable skill that evolves from unconscious adherence to systemic design toward intentional institutional entrepreneurship. By integrating these concepts, we aim to provide a practical tool that empowers practitioners to diagnose why their organizations may be stuck. This medium allows us to reframe accountability and blame, which are often sources of organizational stasis, as structural failures rather than individual moral failings. Ultimately, our work seeks to equip emerging leaders with the strategies necessary to engage in institutional work. This enables them to disrupt stagnant patterns and foster genuine human engagement within the complex environments we navigate daily.

The study examines the effects of employing digital hiring methods on workforce sizes in both MUHAS and MNMA organizations. As more Tanzanian companies embrace digital solutions in human resources management, remote job recruitment could lead to increased efficiency, better tracking of responsibilities, and access to diverse talent pools. Drawing upon the university’s entrepreneurial model and technological adoption principles, this study explores how perceptions of usefulness within online recruitment systems impact employee loyalty, bolstering organizational flexibility, and promoting enduring market superiority. Data were collected through surveys given to human resources personnel at MUHAS and MNMA organizations as well as interviews held with employees of these entities. Data calculations utilized SPSS for numerical analysis, while thematic interpretations proceeded deductively. Studies suggest using online methods in recruitment improves job application speed, stimulates innovation among employees, quickens organizational growth by expanding operations efficiently, and strengthens corporate longevity due to optimized screening procedures. Even though challenges such as limited access to high-speed internet, low levels of digital skills in communities, and resistance against new technologies stand in their way, they severely impede advancement. Therefore, this study recommends that a targeted training initiative, integrating advanced technology into current infrastructures smoothly, along with enhancing overall institutional capabilities for improving digital hiring processes and encouraging innovation internally in academic institutions.

This article explores individuals’ motivation to alter workplace behaviour and enact institutional change. Through an exploitative abductive study of the early phases of Vision Zero, a Swedish road safety policy shift, this article uncovers the motivational factors among individuals who, early in the process, enlist support and become involved in efforts to break with existing expectations, norms and regulations despite contextual embeddedness. Drawing on the value-belief-norm theory, the results reveal that activation of personal values and anchoring of personal beliefs are key functions in mobilising the enactment of institutional change. These findings offer insights into individual-level processes for catalysing institutional entrepreneurship and contribute to the literature on value-driven behaviour, providing valuable lessons for policymakers and scholars in institutional entrepreneurship. • Activation and anchoring are key elements for enacting institutional change. • Motivational factors prompt value-based workplace behaviour. • Individual-level frameworks help explain emerging institutional entrepreneurship.

In this article, we examine the role of person brands in shaping emergent markets, markets in which the norms, values, and practices of exchange have yet to be firmly established. Using ethnographic and archival data in the context of the early online news market, we find that person brands use their social, cultural, and symbolic capital to create a unique organizational identity, establish a founding myth, and mobilize resonance with early followers. These organizational assets are carried forward in the emergent market to build cultural-cognitive, normative, and pragmatic legitimacy in a context where these factors are initially low. While prior research in marketing has investigated the market-driving effects of firms, consumers, and intermediaries, our findings yield insight into the role of specific people—person brands as institutional entrepreneurs—in shaping emergent markets. These findings inform managers and other stakeholders in emergent markets as to how to strategically manage the organizational identity, founding myths, and audience resonance built by person brands in order to carry these assets forward as the market further develops.

Progress towards the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) particularly within supply chains remains slow. One reason is the lack of sustainability awareness and understanding due to limited sustainability learning. Sustainability learning involves acquisition of sustainability-related knowledge and behaviours. Supply chain sustainability practices underpinned by supply chain sustainability learning mechanisms are likely to have lasting effects than those driven by compliance, which can be superficial and short term oriented. However, it is unclear what learning mechanisms enable the effective deployment of supply chain sustainability practices. Conducting a systematic literature review adopting a practice-based view of supply chain sustainability, this study examines the intersection of supply chain sustainability learning and supply chain sustainability practices literature. Employing content, frequency and contingency analysis techniques on fifty-five peer-reviewed journal articles, we reveal: (1) frequently studied supply chain sustainability practices, learning mechanisms and associated outcomes, (2) configuration of learning mechanisms impacting the levels of the supply chain and phases of learning and development, (3) three distinct clusters of learning mechanisms that enable specific supply chain sustainability practices and outcomes. Undertaking a practice-based view and positioning learning mechanisms as mediators of supply chain sustainability practices, this study contributes to theory and practice by identifying learning mechanisms supporting supply chain sustainability. Future research should investigate 1) digital platforms as emerging learning tools, 2) learning mechanisms in social settings such as communities of practice and, 3) identification and development of individual champions and institutional entrepreneurs as drivers of sustainability learning. • The adoption of supply chain sustainability practices (SCSPs) and attainment of associated outcomes is significantly associated with learning mechanisms. • SCSP are predominantly environmentally driven, with green practices being the most studied, while social sustainability practices remain underexplored. • Within learning mechanisms, knowledge transfer emerged as the most frequently employed, while experimentation is less utilised, which may limit the drive for innovative sustainability trajectories. • Economic considerations remain the dominant driver of sustainability initiatives, with lesser focus on environmental and social sustainability outcomes. • Learning mechanisms impact multiple levels within the supply chain, contributing to different phases of learning and development. • Using thematic clustering, we identify three distinct groups of learning mechanisms associated with specific supply chain sustainability practices and outcomes: Systematic Pathways, Eco-Catalysts and Sustainability Nurturers. Each group reflects differences in learning dynamics, engagement levels and influence across the TBL dimensions.

Amidst the rapid growth of digital literacy, subsistence UMKM are a low-income group, particularly female heads of households who are the backbone of their families, facing the dual challenges of limited access to resources and digital literacy gaps. The government plays an active role in community empowerment programs through training in general business development. Therefore, community empowerment through digital-based entrepreneurship education addresses these challenges by opening mindsets, connecting ideas, skills, and market access through digital technology, and promoting cross-sector collaboration in a mutually reinforcing ecosystem. This study aims to determine the role of digital-based entrepreneurship education in the success of such community empowerment programs. This research collaborates with the Women's Empowerment Agency (DP2PA) in collaboration with the Indonesian Creative Women's Community and academics from the UMKM Entrepreneurship Institute of Widya Gama Mahakam University in Samarinda in an empowerment program through non-formal entrepreneurship education at women's business schools. This research is a qualitative descriptive study, with data obtained through interviews and observations, using instruments in the form of interview guides and observation guides. There were 15 participants consisting of organizers, mentors, facilitators, and business school participants. The data analysis process was applied inductively by referring to Miles and Huberman's interactive model, which includes five stages, namely data collection, data presentation, data reduction, conclusion drawing, and verification. The results of the study show that the success of the empowerment program requires the role of entrepreneurship education in encouraging an entrepreneurial attitude, the ability to identify and create business opportunities, and the ability to integrate digital technical skills and strengthen the entrepreneurial mindset. In practical terms, this study concludes that amid digital disruption, digital-based entrepreneurship education, mentoring, and community become the main catalysts for the transition of subsistence UMKM to sustainable businesses

Abstract This paper gives light on the role of entrepreneurship in economic development of the India; entrepreneurs are the pillar of the nation, its leads to the industrialization, generation of employment, rural development, technological development, Export promotion, contribution in national income. Considering all these benefits, government has been taken initiatives time to time for entrepreneurship development in the India, such as Industrial Policies and Five-Year Plans specifically focusing on the growth of small scale sector, setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), setting up of Entrepreneurship Institutions, organizing Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (EDPs) and various Government Programmes and Schemes for the promotion of entrepreneurship. One of the key factors that have contributed to the growth of entrepreneurship in India is the availability of capital. India has a robust venture capital ecosystem, with several domestic and international venture capital firms investing in Indian startups. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Challenges, Opportunities

Purpose This article aims to investigate how upgrading practices, understood as value-adding strategies through innovations in products, processes, functions and intersectoral articulation, are operationalized in the cashew production chain in Guinea-Bissau, a low-income country characterized by structural scarcity and institutional fragility. By integrating insights from global value chains (GVCs), frugal innovation and institutional entrepreneurship, the study explores how local actors develop context-specific upgrading practices. The article introduces the notion of “upgrading under scarcity” to describe hybrid, informal and adaptive strategies of value creation that reflect the constraints and agency dynamics in marginal environments. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a qualitative approach, combining an integrative literature review, document analysis and semi-structured interviews with local actors involved in the cashew value chain in Guinea-Bissau. The methodology is grounded in the analysis of upgrading practices as they unfold in settings characterized by structural informality, low institutional density and limited access to resources. An analytical framework structured around four dimensions – product, process, functional and intersectoral upgrading – guides the empirical investigation and supports the identification of context-specific strategies shaped by local agency and material constraints. Findings The findings identify a set of upgrading practices that emerge in fragmented and adaptive ways within the cashew value chain in Guinea-Bissau, shaped by structural scarcity and informal institutional environments. These include partial adoption of organic and fair-trade certification, selective automation of processing stages, use of by-products for energy generation, small-scale diversification of cashew derivatives and horizontal cooperation among cooperatives. Rather than following linear or technology-intensive trajectories, these practices reflect pragmatic responses to local constraints and conditions. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by integrating insights from GVCs, frugal innovation and institutional entrepreneurship to examine productive upgrading in a low-income African context. By focusing on practices shaped by informality, limited resources and weak institutional support, it offers a situated perspective on how value is added under structural constraints. The notion of “upgrading under scarcity” offers an analytical lens for exploring alternative trajectories of transformation in peripheral economies without assuming alignment with dominant development models. The study also offers insights for policy discussions on supporting context-sensitive and locally grounded productive initiatives.

It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article Fañanás-Biescas AP, Ključnikov A, Bargoni A, Ferraris A (2025), “Senior entrepreneurship and opportunity recognition: a systematic review of the literature”. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-04-2025-0436 includes the funding information and additional affiliation for the author Alberto Ferraris. The funding information should read as:Funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V04-00004. This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract No. APVV-23-0562. The Slovak Research and Development Agency also supported this work under Contract No. APVV-23-0319.and the affiliation for the fourth author Alberto Ferraris should be:Department of Management “Valter Cantino”, University of Turin, Torino, Italy; School of Business, Gnosis: Mediterranean Institute for Management Science, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus and Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary.The publisher asks that acknowledgement be entered correctly at submission and confirmed at the article proofing stage.

ABSTRACT The implementation of effective climate governance increasingly relies on advisory bodies that monitor the effectiveness of policies and management mechanisms. Despite their strategic importance to institutionalizing climate governance, limited attention has been paid to the roles, trajectories, and effectiveness of these advisory bodies within evolving governance systems. This study aims to better understand the challenges of institutionalizing advisory boards in climate governance and examines the factors that may influence the evolution of the governance model. This article examines the institutionalization of climate advisory bodies within Quebec's climate governance between 2012 and 2023. This in‐depth case study is based on analyses of interviews ( N = 31), briefs submitted during public hearings ( N = 90), and press articles ( N = 122). The study identified three main phases in the evolution of the governance structure and highlighted recurring and evolving issues related to the transparency and effectiveness of management processes. Drawing on the literature on institutional entrepreneurship and the life cycles of public organizations, the study shows how recurring tensions over mandates, resources, legitimacy, and performance monitoring have constrained advisory bodies' ability to support effective climate decision‐making. Despite repeated reforms, problems of transparency, accountability, and organizational effectiveness have persisted in various forms. This article contributes to research on climate governance by offering a process‐oriented analysis of advisory bodies as organizational actors embedded in complex institutional environments. This study highlights the limitations of frequent reforms aimed at integrating advisory organizations into climate governance systems.

Purpose Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are critical to enhancing economic growth and the rejuvenation of tourism destinations. However, current research offers limited insight into the broader evolutionary logic behind tourism SMEs as a collective effort by various stakeholders. This paper aims to use an institutional entrepreneurship lens to analyze the evolution process of tourism SMEs. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from three representative cases in China, with responses from 80 interviewees, including tourism SME owners and key stakeholders such as tourists, government officials and residents. Thematic analysis was applied to examine the data across cases, identifying both common patterns and contextual variations within the institutional entrepreneurship framework. Findings The three cases provide three different but most likely prevalent modes of development, i.e., collective-oriented, policy-oriented and market-oriented modes, which have proved to be very generalizable to other regional and international situations. The findings indicate that the transformation of tourism SMEs takes various trails in these modes that introduce a twist to the institutional entrepreneurship paradigm. To be more exact, the mobilization and legitimization sequence can be inverted, clustering is a crucial process in the development of tourism SMEs, and the sequence of clustering depends on contextual factors. Originality/value This study not only advances theoretical understanding of how tourism SMEs interact with their institutional environments but also critically contributes to the advancement of the institutional entrepreneurship theory. The results provide practical implications for various destinations with various development modes to adequately inform the development of the tourism SME sectors.

ABSTRACT Cities in the Global South are often unable to include marginalised communities in smart city programmes. This paper identifies barriers to inclusion and explores new roles of urban planners within the context of informality. We explore case studies from India, Kenya and Indonesia, employing a qualitative meta-analysis. We conclude that informality serves as a paradox, both hindering and facilitating collaborative planning. We identify three barriers to inclusive collaboration: scarce resource allocation, top-down design of smart city programmes and mistrust. These barriers require planners to adopt new roles: institutional entrepreneurship to adapt rules to informal contexts, community development and facilitative leadership.

Increasingly, in their annual reporting, companies are required to disclose climate-related sustainability risks and opportunities, including their governance and the effects on strategy and finance. While this generates legitimate need for accountants’ knowledge, skills, and capabilities about the entailed accounting practices, evidence suggests some levels of unpreparedness by the profession. Accordingly, our study explores the role of accounting academics in adapting university accounting curricula to prepare future accounting professionals. Based on interviews with 30 academics in Australian and New Zealand universities, findings show curricula adaptations are currently being achieved by entrepreneurial educators whose actions are underpinned by their commitment to societal and regulatory expectations for climate-related sustainability. Participants’ belief in the cognitive and moral legitimacy of adapting curricula to prepare students for professional accounting roles is sustaining their actions. Our focus on the micro-foundations of change show academics’ agency has two dimensions: reflective evaluation of their current position (cognitively valuing the need for accounting education to develop requisite skills), and pre-reflective consideration of their own moral and ethical values (derived from prior knowledge and commitments). As such, some structural constraints affecting change to accounting curricula are being obviated by enabling conditions associated with global imperatives for climate-related sustainability.