Normative and cognitive influences on female entrepreneurial reluctance at the base of the pyramid - an explorative study of cleaning ladies in Istanbul

Previous research has considered entrepreneurship as a way out of poverty and as a chance to foster economic growth. Moreover, specifically start-ups headed by women have played an important role in the economic development and it has been argued that gender-related issues, amongst others, play a significant role for the performance of a country or region. Against this background, this qualitative study explores desires, reluctances and constraints toward entrepreneurial activities of a comparably homogenous group of potential (poor) entrepreneurs in an emerging economy—cleaning ladies in Istanbul. We focus on this particular context as still rather little is known on reasons why women do not start a business (in Turkey). We believe exploring the reasons why certain individuals choose not to become entrepreneurs is at least as telling as investigating why they do so. We draw upon the social dimensions of entrepreneurship by Shapero and Sokol (1982) alongside Institutional Theory and posit that normative and cognitive forces may shape individual decisions on entrepreneurship. We identified two basic clusters of women and discuss possible hindrance factors undermining entrepreneurial desires and limitations for entrepreneurship as well as possible avenues for policy makers (and MNCs) to foster entrepreneurship in the given community.

Accuracy of outcome anticipation, but not gaze behavior, differs against left- and right-handed penalties in team-handball goalkeeping

Low perceptual familiarity with relatively rarer left-handed as opposed to more common right-handed individuals may result in athletes' poorer ability to anticipate the former's action intentions. Part of such left-right asymmetry in visual anticipation could be due to an inefficient gaze strategy during confrontation with left-handed individuals. To exemplify, observers may not mirror their gaze when viewing left- vs. right-handed actions but preferentially fixate on an opponent's right body side, irrespective of an opponent's handedness, owing to the predominant exposure to right-handed actions. So far empirical verification of such assumption, however, is lacking. Here we report on an experiment where team-handball goalkeepers' and non-goalkeepers' gaze behavior was recorded while they predicted throw direction of left- and right-handed 7-m penalties shown as videos on a computer monitor. As expected, goalkeepers were considerably more accurate than non-goalkeepers and prediction was better against right- than left-handed penalties. However, there was no indication of differences in gaze measures (i.e., number of fixations, overall and final fixation duration, time-course of horizontal or vertical fixation deviation) as a function of skill group or the penalty-takers' handedness. Findings suggest that inferior anticipation of left-handed compared to right-handed individuals' action intentions may not be associated with misalignment in gaze behavior. Rather, albeit looking similarly, accuracy differences could be due to observers' differential ability of picking up and interpreting the visual information provided by left- vs. right-handed movements.

Summary of Research Conducted by the Manufacturing Systems Team 1994-2002

The Manufacturing Systems team was one of the research teams within the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) whose goal was to document, analyze and communicate the design attributes and relationships that lead to significant performance improvements in manufacturing systems in the defense aerospace industry. This report will provide an integrated record of this research using the Production Operations Transition to Lean Roadmap as its organizing framework.

Versión breve en español del Team Climate Inventory (TCI-14) : desarrollo y propiedades psicométricas.

Resumen tomado de la publicación

Entrepreneurship education : Relationship between education and entrepreneurial activity

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Does positive team mood mediate the relationship between team climate and team performance?

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Teams make it work : How team work engagement mediates between social resources and performance in teams

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Leadership in entrepreneurial organizations : Context and motives

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

1. EdShare team at work

Photograph taken 18 January 2008, in Demo Room, Bldg 32, University of Southampton - ver. 1 EdShare.

2. EdShare team at work

Photograph taken 18 January 2008, in Demo Room, Bldg 32, University of Southampton. ver. 1 EdShare.

3. EdShare team at work

Photograph taken 18 January 2008, in Demo Room, Bldg 32, University of Southampton. ver. 1 EdShare.

4. EdShare team at work

Photograph taken 18 January 2008, in Demo Room, Bldg 32, University of Southampton. ver. 1 EdShare.

5. EdShare team at work

EdSpace team discussing beta version of EdShare interface. Photograph taken 18 January 2008, in Demo Room, Bldg 32, University of Southampton. Taken and posted on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/dff1978/2208953684/ by David Flanders (JISC)

Test upload for team

Test upload for team

Team Working and Profiling Handout

Exercise and Handout for use in conjunction with Lecture on team working and profiling. Refers to Belbin model of team development. If you have missed the class, you should work through the activity, ideally find some other students to work with. It consists of a number of parts in addition to a self-evaluation checklist 1) A personal reflection activity (for use as the class settles) 2) A brief group activity to use during the lecture 3) A follow up activity, to complete an evaluation online from the belbin website 4) A follow up activity to work through the videos which have been produced by the LearnHigher Project