The vulnerable subject:beyond rationalism in international relations

International Relations remains faithful to its rationalist roots focusing on instrumental forms of power and authority to address global problems and, in the process, fail to acknowledge a sense of vulnerability permeating the global community. This book challenges such assumptions establishing an account of international politics that draws on the ethical assumptions of agonism. it highlights the inherent struggle associated with individual and community based engagement to address this struggle. While it does not offer one single mode of engagement to overcome vulnerability per se, it hopes to elicit a series of reactions, on the part of the reader, provoking grater reflection on the nature of such shared vulnerabilities thereby challenging the dominance of rationalist assumptions.

Dynamic learning as entrepreneurial action in the context of open innovation:an instrumental case from a communities-of-practice perspective

Recent scholarly discussion on open innovation put forward the notion that an organisation's ability to internalise external knowledge and learn from various sources in undertaking new product development is crucial to its competitive performance. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to how growth-oriented small firms identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities (i.e. take entrepreneurial action) related to such development, in an open innovation context, from a social learning perspective. This chapter, based on an instrumental case-firm, demonstrates analytically how learning as entrepreneurial action takes place, drawing on situated learning theory. It is argued that such learning is dynamic in nature and is founded on specific organising principles that foster both inter- and intracommunal learning. © 2012, IGI Global.

The influence of socio-cultural environments on the performance of nascent entrepreneurs:an instrumental variable approach

The importance of informal institutions and in particular culture for entrepreneurship is a subject of ongoing interest. Past research has mostly concentrated on cross-national comparisons, cultural values, and the direct effects of culture on entrepreneurial behavior, but in the main found inconsistent results. The present research adds a fresh perspective to this research stream by turning attention to community-level culture and cultural norms. We hypothesize indirect effects of cultural norms on venture emergence. Specifically that community-level cultural norms (performance-based culture and socially-supportive institutional norms) impact important supply-side variables (entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial motivation) which in turn influence nascent entrepreneurs’ success in creating operational ventures (venture emergence). We test our predictions on a unique longitudinal data set (PSED II) tracking nascent entrepreneurs venture creation efforts over a 5 year time span and find evidence supporting them. Our research contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of how culture, in particular perceptions of community cultural norms, influences venture emergence. This research highlights the embeddedness of entrepreneurial behavior and its immediate antecedent beliefs in the local, community context.