Dr Jeremy Zwiegelaar

Wellbeing is an integral part of living a fulfilled life. It is intimately related to people's capacity to work and maintain positive relationships. Wellbeing plays an important role in scholarly conversations and public policy debates. In this respect, entrepreneurship can be a source of personal fulfillment and satisfaction, which, in turn, can energise entrepreneurs to persist in improbable tasks that can become a force for a positive change in society. For example, new ventures are created by entrepreneurs not only to benefit themselves but to a greater extent to contribute to customers and other multiple key actors in society. Wellbeing is a complex topic that can be taught across a multitude of areas, including psychology, entrepreneurship and health. This book adds to the context of entrepreneurship by highlighting different types of wellbeing. In this book, the focus is placed on SME owners, and wellbeing and various ways of measuring it in different contexts are discussed. The SME owner is a critical stakeholder in economies, and therefore, the highlighted focus is on how they can apply and practically implement strategies linked to wellbeing which is deemed to be essential for business success. Entrepreneurial Wellbeing: Perspectives in SMEs based on Gender and Immigrant Entrepreneurs will provide views on wellbeing for entrepreneurs, students, employees and research audiences and will help them to further understand this multifaceted topic. -- Provided by publisher.

Abstract Smart technologies (such as big data, AI, robotics, smart platforms/apps) have become important in the hospitality industry, as they allow companies to interact with a variety of stakeholders and provide better experiences to consumers, while improving efficiency (Stylos et al., 2021b, b). Industry 4.0 applications (e.g., big data, robotics, 3D printing, blockchain technologies and smart platforms/apps) have given a boost to open innovation, and call for new business models (BMs) to turn technological capabilities to new business opportunities for organizations across the spectrum of the service sector (Jiang & Stylos, 2021). SMEs in the hospitality sector have been distressed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with much uncertainty about their ability to survive. Organizational resilience has become a key concern for SMEs in the hospitality industry (Ntounis et al., 2022; El-Said et al., 2023; Rahimi & Kozak, 2017; Rahimi & Gunlu, 2016). Smart technologies have been considered to provide the potential to help SMEs for recovering from the severe damage caused globally due to the lockdowns, and to build resilience and adaptability (Stylos et al., 2021, b; Prayag et al., 2023).

Date: 2024

The Ubuntu ideology is different from an individualistic perspective. It considers that the benefits of being connected to a collective grouping, such as a community, are more beneficial than operating as an individual. This chapter conceptualises how Ubuntu, a Southern African ideology, perceives the mindset of collectivism to be used as a catalyst in developing synergies through open innovation. Ubuntu can be seen as three layers, family (f), community (c), and the world at large (w). Taking a perspective that focuses on the “we” before “me”, with the focus placed on societal uplift, has both economic and sustainable benefits. This concept is similar to open innovation, which emphasises the co-creation of future benefits with partners/stakeholders as a means to provide synergistic opportunities. In so doing, this chapter proposes a conceptual model that illustrates a mindset that is community and society-focused (Ubuntu mindset), whilst going through the process of realising benefits from open innovation.

Self-employment has been suggested as a way to increase well-being, and a body of research has found evidence that self-employed individuals achieve higher levels of well-being compared to wage employees. However, while there is a general positive association between self-employment and well-being, for specific groups of self-employed/entrepreneurs (e.g., women entrepreneurs, immigrant entrepreneurs, etc.) the relationship between being independent and achieving fulfillment, personal growth, and wellness through their work is complex and multifaceted. This is due to structural limits, societal norms, and contextual limitations that can impede their ability to achieve meaningful work and well-being while being self-employed. This chapter reviews both the promise and the limits of self-employment as a path to well-being for the self-employed with a particular focus on women entrepreneurs and immigrant entrepreneurs.

This chapter proposes four distinct techniques to boost subjective well-being, also called happiness, tailored to hybrid-working employees. These techniques suggested here are: 1) Selected goal-setting techniques around the “why of goal pursuit” with a particular focus on self-concordance and approaching/avoidance driven goal-strivings, 2) Job crafting/leisure crafting, 3) Acts of kindness, and 4) Gratitude exercises. The chapter discusses each technique on its merits by reviewing the related literature, and how they can be useful in boosting people’s subjective well-being for employees who are predominantly working in a hybrid format and therefore their experiences at work as well as at home impact strongly on their subjective well-being.

Description and examples of the terms data analytical tools.

With the advent of web analytics, data mining and predictive modeling, businesses have nowadays a better knowledge in creating more efficient and effective processes for meeting customers’ needs, driven by a wealth of available information. The value of big data in influencing business intelligence in the tourism and hospitality industry has also been widely acknowledged, as the synergetic utilization of big data can enhance organizations’ decision support systems to reach process optimization. Notwithstanding empirical research on exploring the implications of utilizing big data in the tourism sector has been published in the last few years, there is still need of a framework that would serve as the bedrock of taking the relevant conceptualization one step forward. Therefore, this chapter demonstrates the crucial role of big data in matching organizational objectives with tourist needs through delineating and detailing the analytical frameworks to support an advanced B2C interface, based on various internal databases and external data sources. The role of stakeholders and necessary resources are explained, and the full potential of big data in tourism and hospitality is revealed.

There is a pressing need to research Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications and the mechanisms by which value is produced and captured (Astrom et al, 2022), driven by the nature of competition within markets, and consequently consumer’s behaviours have changed owing to the emergence and diffusion of the digital transformation technologies (Verhoef et al, 2021). It is more widely accepted that technology and banking are being used on digital devices. Inevitably because of the rise and popularity of digital banking and the transformation, there is burgeoning demand to understand how Artificial intelligence is affecting the way that the value is being created for banks to serve customers with more innovative digital tools.

This study presents an integrated relational framework for investigating and comprehending organizational climate using the interactive dimensions of Quinn and Rohrbaugh's Competing Values Model (CVM). With a survey of 1,053,118 workers from 156 Brazilian companies and the application of a psychological networks technique, this research identified five distinct clusters from the vicinity of the most central nodes, offering further insights into the interactions between different CVM domains. Using the clusters within the four CVM quadrants, a Relational Framework for Organizational Climate was developed, providing an integrated approach that displays the most relevant item connections from various dimensions, aiding in the understanding of organizational climate. Among the various findings, this study emphasizes the centrality of enabling workers to participate in decision-making processes as the inter- and intra-organizational aspect most critical to the understanding and improvement of organizational climate. This study also considers additional issues in the context of the contributions of utilizing psychological networks for researching organizational climate, providing insights for further development.

The role of work-life balance and wellbeing has received great interest during the pandemic. There is support for research in entrepreneurship focused on this area, but it has predominantly been addressed based on hedonic aspects of wellbeing (e.g., life satisfaction). In contrast, we focus on eudaimonic wellbeing, which includes psychological functioning, e.g., purpose in life, autonomy, etc. This study examines how several factors (work-life enhancement, personal life interference with work, and sense of community) affect the wellbeing of self-employed women and men. The wellbeing model is tested using structural equation modelling with data from the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. Our research shows how the interaction of work, family, and community enable or constrain entrepreneurs’ ability to fulfill their eudaimonic wellbeing.

The amount of research investigating psychological networks has grown substantially over the last decade but to our knowledge this is the first study applying network analysis methodology to the fields of OB/HRM. As such, this study aims to provide researchers and practitioners with an easy-to-use syntax to conduct network analysis for the exploration of relationships among organizational behaviors. Unlike the mainstream techniques used in psychometrics (e.g., principal component analysis and structural equation modelling), which are constrained by the number of associations among variables or assumptions regarding  dimensionality, network analysis is able to analyze the whole set of items at once in order to find the most representative associations among them. A step-by-step guide is provided with an example showing how to test potential relationships between engagement and authentic leadership using the R package bootnet. Besides information on edge-weights and centrality measures, this paper covers a bootstrapping procedure to test their accuracy and stability when small sample sizes are used. The possibilities of applications of psychological networks to organizational behavior and HRM practices are endless and can help overcome some of the limitations of the traditional statistical techniques applied to these fields.

Pharmaceutical companies in Eastern European region are facing urgent quality tools implementation due to fierce global competition. The aim of this research is to provide current understanding of TQM in this region and provide further guidance on how to improve quality standards and techniques. The study follows a qualitative method and data was collected through 5 semi-structured interviews. The study highlights that TQM in pharmaceutical industry in this region is not well developed. The findings shows that there is lack of senior management commitment to TQM principles explanation and emphasises on its importance. Additionally, lack of governmental influence on quality standards and budgeting problems also affects TQM development. Moreover, there is a believe that TQM will not influence the overall performance of the company in the positive manner, since the development of such quality improvement method has to be efficiently budgeted and under current economic and political circumstances it is not possible.

There is a pressing need to research Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications and the mechanisms by which value is produced and captured (Astrom et al, 2022), driven by the nature of competition within markets, and consequently consumer’s behaviours have changed owing to the emergence and diffusion of the digital transformation technologies (Verhoef et al, 2021). It is more widely accepted that technology and banking are being used on digital devices. Inevitably because of the rise and popularity of digital banking and the transformation, there is burgeoning demand to understand how Artificial intelligence is affecting the way that the value is being created for banks to serve customers with more innovative digital tools.