Better means more:property rights and high-growth aspiration entrepreneurship

This paper contrasts the determinants of entrepreneurial entry and high-growth aspiration entrepreneurship. Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys for 42 countries over the period 1998-2005, we analyse how institutional environment and entrepreneurial characteristics affect individual decisions to become entrepreneurs and aspirations to set up high-growth ventures. We find that institutions exert different effects on entrepreneurial entry and on the individual choice to launch high-growth aspiration projects. In particular, a strong property rights system is important for high-growth aspiration entrepreneurship, but has less pronounced effects for entrepreneurial entry. The availability of finance and the fiscal burden matter for both.

Visual acuity measures do not reliably detect childhood refractive error - an epidemiological study

Purpose To investigate the utility of uncorrected visual acuity measures in screening for refractive error in white school children aged 6-7-years and 12-13-years. Methods The Northern Ireland Childhood Errors of Refraction (NICER) study used a stratified random cluster design to recruit children from schools in Northern Ireland. Detailed eye examinations included assessment of logMAR visual acuity and cycloplegic autorefraction. Spherical equivalent refractive data from the right eye were used to classify significant refractive error as myopia of at least 1DS, hyperopia as greater than +3.50DS and astigmatism as greater than 1.50DC, whether it occurred in isolation or in association with myopia or hyperopia. Results Results are presented from 661 white 12-13-year-old and 392 white 6-7-year-old school-children. Using a cut-off of uncorrected visual acuity poorer than 0.20 logMAR to detect significant refractive error gave a sensitivity of 50% and specificity of 92% in 6-7-year-olds and 73% and 93% respectively in 12-13-year-olds. In 12-13-year-old children a cut-off of poorer than 0.20 logMAR had a sensitivity of 92% and a specificity of 91% in detecting myopia and a sensitivity of 41% and a specificity of 84% in detecting hyperopia. Conclusions Vision screening using logMAR acuity can reliably detect myopia, but not hyperopia or astigmatism in school-age children. Providers of vision screening programs should be cognisant that where detection of uncorrected hyperopic and/or astigmatic refractive error is an aspiration, current UK protocols will not effectively deliver.

Evaluating small business performance : a matched pair analysis of African Caribbean owned businesses in the UK

African Caribbean Owned Businesses (ACOBs) have been postulated as having performance-related problems especially when compared with other ethnic minority groups in Britain. This research investigates if ACOBs may be performing less than similar firms in the population and why this maybe so. Therefore the aspiration behind this study is one of ratifying the existence of performance differentials between ACOBs and White Asian Owned Businesses (WAOBs), by using a triangulation of methods and matched pair analysis. Every ACOB was matched along firm specific characteristics of age, size, legal form and industry (sector), with similar WAOBs. Findings show support for the hypothesis that ACOBs are more likely to perform less than the WAOBs; WAOBs out-performed ACOBs in the objective and subjective assessments. Though we found some differentials between both groups in the entrepreneur’s characteristics and various emphases in strategic orientation in overall business strategy. The most likely drivers of performance differentials were found in firm activities and operations. ACOBs tended to have brands that were not as popular in the mainstream with most of their manufactured goods being seen as ‘exotic’ while those by WAOBs were perceived as ‘traditional’. Moreover, ACOBs had a higher proportion of clients constituting of individuals than business organisations while the WAOBs had a higher proportion consisting of business organisations.

Political radicalism in France:perspectives on a protean concept

This introductory article reflects on the new momentum that political radicalism has taken on in France. The ebb and flow of radical aspiration featured regularly in French politics under the Fourth and early Fifth Republics, before the failure of the "Socialist experiment" in the early 1980s brought about a paradigm shift. In the wake of this failure and with the "end of ideology" supposedly in sight, political leaders and parties tempered their appeals to radical solutions and conspired, not least through recurrent power-sharing, to vacate mainstream political discourse of much of its former radicalism. Since the presidential election of 2007, however, there has been a marked return to promises of radical change as the common currency of political discourse across the full left-right spectrum in France. This article introduces a special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society that brings together scholars from France, Britain, and Canada to discuss some of the meanings, expressions, and prospects of political radicalism in France today.

Market orientation of hotels and travel services in China

China is unique both politically and economically. How this uniqueness impacts on firms'' adoption of market orientation and the impact of market orientation on business performance, however, remain unclear. This book reports a study by Dr Riliang Qu who aims to address the above knowledge void. The study employs a two-stage research strategy including interviews and a survey of 1000 hotels and travel services. The study found that government regulations restricting the firm rivalry and the shortage of competent managerial talents are among the most serious constraints to the firms'' development of market orientation along with such factors as inadequacy of government regulation on product quality and consumer protection. The findings suggest that in transitional like China, government actions could be a major force behind firms'' aspiration of being market-oriented. The study also found that the benefits of market orientation are multi-fold in that it not only improves company''s business performance but also has positive effects on customer satisfaction/retention, power in distribution channel, and corporate social responsibility.

Business and social entrepreneurs in the UK:gender, context and commitment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate what sort of people become social entrepreneurs, and in what way they differ from business entrepreneurs. More importantly, to investigate in what socio-economic context entrepreneurial individuals are more likely to become social than business entrepreneurs. These questions are important for policy because there has been a shift from direct to indirect delivery of many public services in the UK, requiring a professional approach to social enterprise. Design/methodology/approach – Evidence is presented from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) UK survey based upon a representative sample of around 21,000 adults aged between 16 and 64 years interviewed in 2009. The authors use logistic multivariate regression techniques to identify differences between business and social entrepreneurs in demographic characteristics, effort, aspiration, use of resources, industry choice, deprivation, and organisational structure. Findings – The results show that the odds of an early-stage entrepreneur being a social rather than a business entrepreneur are reduced if they are from an ethnic minority, if they work ten hours or more per week on the venture, and if they have a family business background; while they are increased if they have higher levels of education and if they are a settled in-migrant to their area. While women social entrepreneurs are more likely than business entrepreneurs to be women, this is due to gender-based differences in time commitment to the venture. In addition, the more deprived the community they live in, the more likely women entrepreneurs are to be social than business entrepreneurs. However, this does not hold in the most deprived areas where we argue civic society is weakest and therefore not conducive to support any form of entrepreneurial endeavour based on community engagement. Originality/value – The paper's findings suggest that women may be motivated to become social entrepreneurs by a desire to improve the socio-economic environment of the community in which they live and see social enterprise creation as an appropriate vehicle with which to address local problems.

Do institutions have a greater effect on female entrepreneurs?

This paper compares the impact of institutions on individual decisions to become entrepreneurs in the form of new business start ups by males and females across 44 developed and developing economies between 1998 and 2004. We test four hypotheses; that women are less likely to undertake entrepreneurial activity in countries where the rule of law is weaker; where the state sector is larger; where the informal financial sector is weaker and where the formal financial sector is weaker. We use data from the Global Enterprise Monitor survey (GEM) which covers at least 2,000 individuals annually in each of up to 44 countries, merged with country-level data, from the WB WDI and Heritage Foundation. We start with a spectrum of institutional variables and by utilizing factor analysis prior to regression estimation models, we are able to obtain results that are more robust and address multicollinearity between the institutional measures. We find that women are less likely to undertake entrepreneurial activity in countries where the state sector is larger, and demonstrate that this result applies to both high aspiration and low aspiration entrepreneurship. We also find that women benefit more from the larger informal financial sector.

Editorial overview:new protein production tools for structural biology

Full text: The idea of producing proteins from recombinant DNA hatched almost half a century ago. In his PhD thesis, Peter Lobban foresaw the prospect of inserting foreign DNA (from any source, including mammalian cells) into the genome of a λ phage in order to detect and recover protein products from Escherichia coli [ 1 and 2]. Only a few years later, in 1977, Herbert Boyer and his colleagues succeeded in the first ever expression of a peptide-coding gene in E. coli — they produced recombinant somatostatin [ 3] followed shortly after by human insulin. The field has advanced enormously since those early days and today recombinant proteins have become indispensable in advancing research and development in all fields of the life sciences. Structural biology, in particular, has benefitted tremendously from recombinant protein biotechnology, and an overwhelming proportion of the entries in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) are based on heterologously expressed proteins. Nonetheless, synthesizing, purifying and stabilizing recombinant proteins can still be thoroughly challenging. For example, the soluble proteome is organized to a large part into multicomponent complexes (in humans often comprising ten or more subunits), posing critical challenges for recombinant production. A third of all proteins in cells are located in the membrane, and pose special challenges that require a more bespoke approach. Recent advances may now mean that even these most recalcitrant of proteins could become tenable structural biology targets on a more routine basis. In this special issue, we examine progress in key areas that suggests this is indeed the case. Our first contribution examines the importance of understanding quality control in the host cell during recombinant protein production, and pays particular attention to the synthesis of recombinant membrane proteins. A major challenge faced by any host cell factory is the balance it must strike between its own requirements for growth and the fact that its cellular machinery has essentially been hijacked by an expression construct. In this context, Bill and von der Haar examine emerging insights into the role of the dependent pathways of translation and protein folding in defining high-yielding recombinant membrane protein production experiments for the common prokaryotic and eukaryotic expression hosts. Rather than acting as isolated entities, many membrane proteins form complexes to carry out their functions. To understand their biological mechanisms, it is essential to study the molecular structure of the intact membrane protein assemblies. Recombinant production of membrane protein complexes is still a formidable, at times insurmountable, challenge. In these cases, extraction from natural sources is the only option to prepare samples for structural and functional studies. Zorman and co-workers, in our second contribution, provide an overview of recent advances in the production of multi-subunit membrane protein complexes and highlight recent achievements in membrane protein structural research brought about by state-of-the-art near-atomic resolution cryo-electron microscopy techniques. E. coli has been the dominant host cell for recombinant protein production. Nonetheless, eukaryotic expression systems, including yeasts, insect cells and mammalian cells, are increasingly gaining prominence in the field. The yeast species Pichia pastoris, is a well-established recombinant expression system for a number of applications, including the production of a range of different membrane proteins. Byrne reviews high-resolution structures that have been determined using this methylotroph as an expression host. Although it is not yet clear why P. pastoris is suited to producing such a wide range of membrane proteins, its ease of use and the availability of diverse tools that can be readily implemented in standard bioscience laboratories mean that it is likely to become an increasingly popular option in structural biology pipelines. The contribution by Columbus concludes the membrane protein section of this volume. In her overview of post-expression strategies, Columbus surveys the four most common biochemical approaches for the structural investigation of membrane proteins. Limited proteolysis has successfully aided structure determination of membrane proteins in many cases. Deglycosylation of membrane proteins following production and purification analysis has also facilitated membrane protein structure analysis. Moreover, chemical modifications, such as lysine methylation and cysteine alkylation, have proven their worth to facilitate crystallization of membrane proteins, as well as NMR investigations of membrane protein conformational sampling. Together these approaches have greatly facilitated the structure determination of more than 40 membrane proteins to date. It may be an advantage to produce a target protein in mammalian cells, especially if authentic post-translational modifications such as glycosylation are required for proper activity. Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells and Human Embryonic Kidney (HEK) 293 cell lines have emerged as excellent hosts for heterologous production. The generation of stable cell-lines is often an aspiration for synthesizing proteins expressed in mammalian cells, in particular if high volumetric yields are to be achieved. In his report, Buessow surveys recent structures of proteins produced using stable mammalian cells and summarizes both well-established and novel approaches to facilitate stable cell-line generation for structural biology applications. The ambition of many biologists is to observe a protein's structure in the native environment of the cell itself. Until recently, this seemed to be more of a dream than a reality. Advances in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy techniques, however, have now made possible the observation of mechanistic events at the molecular level of protein structure. Smith and colleagues, in an exciting contribution, review emerging ‘in-cell NMR’ techniques that demonstrate the potential to monitor biological activities by NMR in real time in native physiological environments. A current drawback of NMR as a structure determination tool derives from size limitations of the molecule under investigation and the structures of large proteins and their complexes are therefore typically intractable by NMR. A solution to this challenge is the use of selective isotope labeling of the target protein, which results in a marked reduction of the complexity of NMR spectra and allows dynamic processes even in very large proteins and even ribosomes to be investigated. Kerfah and co-workers introduce methyl-specific isotopic labeling as a molecular tool-box, and review its applications to the solution NMR analysis of large proteins. Tyagi and Lemke next examine single-molecule FRET and crosslinking following the co-translational incorporation of non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs); the goal here is to move beyond static snap-shots of proteins and their complexes and to observe them as dynamic entities. The encoding of ncAAs through codon-suppression technology allows biomolecules to be investigated with diverse structural biology methods. In their article, Tyagi and Lemke discuss these approaches and speculate on the design of improved host organisms for ‘integrative structural biology research’. Our volume concludes with two contributions that resolve particular bottlenecks in the protein structure determination pipeline. The contribution by Crepin and co-workers introduces the concept of polyproteins in contemporary structural biology. Polyproteins are widespread in nature. They represent long polypeptide chains in which individual smaller proteins with different biological function are covalently linked together. Highly specific proteases then tailor the polyprotein into its constituent proteins. Many viruses use polyproteins as a means of organizing their proteome. The concept of polyproteins has now been exploited successfully to produce hitherto inaccessible recombinant protein complexes. For instance, by means of a self-processing synthetic polyprotein, the influenza polymerase, a high-value drug target that had remained elusive for decades, has been produced, and its high-resolution structure determined. In the contribution by Desmyter and co-workers, a further, often imposing, bottleneck in high-resolution protein structure determination is addressed: The requirement to form stable three-dimensional crystal lattices that diffract incident X-ray radiation to high resolution. Nanobodies have proven to be uniquely useful as crystallization chaperones, to coax challenging targets into suitable crystal lattices. Desmyter and co-workers review the generation of nanobodies by immunization, and highlight the application of this powerful technology to the crystallography of important protein specimens including G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Recombinant protein production has come a long way since Peter Lobban's hypothesis in the late 1960s, with recombinant proteins now a dominant force in structural biology. The contributions in this volume showcase an impressive array of inventive approaches that are being developed and implemented, ever increasing the scope of recombinant technology to facilitate the determination of elusive protein structures. Powerful new methods from synthetic biology are further accelerating progress. Structure determination is now reaching into the living cell with the ultimate goal of observing functional molecular architectures in action in their native physiological environment. We anticipate that even the most challenging protein assemblies will be tackled by recombinant technology in the near future.

Europeanization from below:the formation of gender equality policies in the Western Balkans

The article argues that, compared with the other countries in the Western Balkans, the Europeanization of gender equality policies in Bosnia and Herzegovina represents an interesting case of "Europeanization from below". It was not the EU, which called for the introduction of gender equality policies in the Stabilization and Association Process, but domestic policy entrepreneurs, who constructed a "shadow of membership conditionality". They framed their requests as element of the accession process tapping into the aspiration of policy-makers to joining the EU. The case illustrates that Europeanization matters in the Western Balkans, not only in terms of a direct influence of the EU but also because it provides opportunities for domestic policy entrepreneurs to further European objectives themselves.

Making it real of sustaining a fantasy? Personal budgets for older people

The restructuring of English social care services in the last three decades, as services are provided through a shifting collage of state, for-profit and non-profit organisations, exemplifies many of the themes of governance (Bevir, 2013). As well as institutional changes, there have been a new set of elite narratives about citizen behaviours and contributions, undergirded by modernist social science insights into the wellbeing benefits of ‘self-management’ (Mol, 2008). In this article, we particularly focus on the ways in which a narrative of personalisation has been deployed in older people’s social care services. Personalisation is based on an espoused aspiration of empowerment and autonomy through universal implementation to all users of social care (encapsulated in the Making it Real campaign [Think Local, Act Personal (TLAP), no date)], which leaves unproblematised the ever increasing residualisation of older adult social care and the abjection of the frail (Higgs and Gilleard, 2015). In this narrative of universal personalisation, older people are paradoxically positioned as ‘the unexceptional exception’; ‘unexceptional’ in the sense that, as the majority user group, they are rhetorically included in this promised transformation of adult social care; but ‘the exception’ in the sense that frail older adults are persistently placed beyond its reach. It is this paradoxical positioning of older adult social care users as the unexceptional exception and its ideological function that we seek to explain in this article.