The Mediating Role of Corporate Entrepreneurship
in the Organizational Support–Performance
Relationship: An Empirical Examination
Boštjan Antončič and Otmar Zorn
Corporate entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important element
in organizational performance. Organizational support in terms
of training and trusting individuals within the firm to detect opportunities
and in terms of resource availability has been proposed to positively
influence a firm’s entrepreneurial activities. Despite the recognition
of the organizational support–corporate entrepreneurship–
performance linkage, this relationship has been approached in different
ways from the theoretical and empirical perspective. Some unsolved
mediation issues of past research are addressed in this study by
testing three alternative hypotheses. The research design was a cross-sectional,
mailed questionnaire. The findings indicate that corporate
entrepreneurship (new firm formation, product/service and process innovation)
can be considered a potent mediator in the organizational
support–performance relationship.
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The Philosophy of Supply Chain Management
in the New Economy: Net Readiness
in the Net Supply Chain
Zbigniew Pastuszak
The internet has been described as breakthrough technology. Its use in
business can drastically change the situation in the business sector leading
traditional enterprise to collapse. In the era of the Digital Revolution,
postindustrial society is evolving towards the information society
creating the foundation of the New Economy. Its basic elements include
globalization processes, massive implementation of Information
Technology and the establishment of virtual enterprises. Implemented
processes take the form of pro-active business that fosters innovation and
personification of its market offer.
Enterprises that utilize Internet infrastructure in their activities carry
out a specific e-business model. Their key commodity is information. It
is based on changing the traditional SCM into e-SCN as well as on creating
the so-called ‘Internet value network.’ In order to be created, the
enterprise has to be properly prepared for the new conditions, which
is called net readiness. This article describes the characteristics of supply
chains in the new economy, stresses the significance of information
and effective business management in addition to a potential effect of
the new economy on the market competitiveness of enterprises. Net
readiness has been described here based on a study of a group of the
biggest Polish businesses.
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Is There a Gap in Economic Culture Between EU Countries and the Transition Economies?
Milan Zver, Tjaša Živko, and Vito Bobek
The process of EU enlargement is in its final stage, the CEECs havemore
or less adapted to the western standards, which is not yet sufficient for
successful completion of the transition process successfully. We have
learned from the failed communism that the imported norms, institutions
and practices can cause entropy, unless they reflect the prevailing
cultural orientation in the society. People should believe that what they
are presented as right (norms) is also good (values). For this reason
the system of norms and values should be developed simultaneously.
The research results show that the symptoms of economic cultures are
less evident in the CEECs than in the selected EU countries, thus the
democratic socialization (stimulated from outside) is the key issue. For
this reason the CEECs should be included in the network of the Euro-
Atlantic integrations as soon as possible in order to ensure the democratic
stability and economic efficiency of Europe.
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Welfare State Retrenchment in Central and Eastern Europe:
the Case of Pension Reforms in Poland and Slovenia
Igor Guardiancich
This paper endeavours to shed some light on the mechanisms that led
to the divergence of welfare state arrangements across Central and Eastern
Europe (CEE). In particular, pension system reforms displayed a
great deal of variance, which surprised both institutionalists and convergence
theorists. The Polish and Slovenian cases are thus presented
and compared in a political economy perspective. Theories of retrenchment,
recent studies on the dynamics of CEE pension reforms and consultations
with some of the relevant actors, were employed in order to
account for the divergence of reform outcomes in the two countries.
The study focused on three main explanations: partisan competition,
the interaction between relevant external (World Bank) and internal
actors (Minister of Labour and Minister of Finance) and the trade-off.
between power concentration and accountability concentration. The
latter yielded the best explanation. While Polish reformers managed
to internalise most veto actors’ reservations, Slovenian politicians excluded
from consultation the country’s main trade union. Its opposition
determined the rejection of radical reforms recommended by the
World Bank.
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Teaching and Globalization
Pasi Sahlberg
Globalization is typically understood as an economic, political and cultural
process that is reshaping the role of many nation-states in relation
to global markets, agreements, and traditions. Recently it has become
frequently analyzed in the context of education. However, there is
surprisingly little work done on the pedagogical implications of globalization
on teaching and learning other than shifting the emphasis
from traditional subjects to information and communication technology
and English as a foreign language. This article argues that globalization
is having an e.ect on teaching and learning in three ways: educational
development is often based on a global unified agenda, standardized
teaching and learning are being used as vehicles to improvement of
quality, and emphasis on competition is increasingly evident among individuals
and schools. The article concludes that recent development of
standardization and competition-based education will become increasingly
counter-productive to preparing students for meaningful lives for
and beyond knowledge economy. Furthermore, as a response to globalization,
educators need to rethink the ways teaching and learning are
organized in schools, promote appropriate flexibility at school level,
creativity in classrooms and risk-taking among students and teachers
as part of their daily work in school.
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