Business Commons^™

Meeting The Sustainability Challenges: An Assessment Of Entrepreneurial Education, Anna Zherdeva, Intesar Madi, Abrar Alzankawi, Lucia Morales Dr, L. Pop, A. Soler-Dominguez, J.C. Saez

Conference papers

The importance of sustainability and entrepreneurship education is highlighted in this study. The world economies are facing significant challenges as they try to enable the transition towards more sustainable economic and business models. Therefore, at the centre of the transition process, it is critical to consider the role that business education can play and, more specifically, the role of business schools in integrating and supporting the development of skills and competencies that align with our contemporary society's needs. In this paper, we initially assess the need to connect entrepreneurial and sustainability education by exploring the educational offerings at Technological University …

Leadership For The Future: Towards The Challenge Of Understanding Leadership In The Aec Sector, Roisin Murphy Dr, Rory Concannon, Oluwasegun Seriki Dr

Conference papers

The Irish Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector faces ongoing challenges relating to low productivity, digital adoption, sustainability, and innovation. Effective leadership is required to transform the sector to address these challenges and meet the future needs of society. However, there remains a lack of empirical evidence relating to leadership requirements, assessment, and development, in the context of the Irish AEC sector. As part of an ongoing study with the aim of developing resources to support leadership development, this research, conducted through a review of literature, examines how leadership is being assessed and explored in the AEC sector. The findings …

Exploring Factors That Influence Web Technology Adoption In A Time Of Crisis: A Ukraine Sme Perspective, Olena Kublitska, Róisín Vize Dr, Isobel O'Reilly Dr

Conference papers

This paper aims to investigate factors that influence web technologies adoption among small and medium enterprises in Ukraine and understand how volatile conditions influence managerial decisions about the operation of small retailers' businesses. This research takes a case study approach and uses qualitative semi-structured interviews. This study contributes to the existing literature on web technologies adoption among SMEs in developing countries, improves the understanding of the role of web technologies within SMEs operating in volatile conditions, and explores key-decision makers’ attitudes towards web technologies adoption within SMEs. The proposed framework based on Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) is enriched with individual decision maker …

An Examination Of Destination And Business Place Identity Along The Wild Atlantic Way (Ireland) Tourism Route, Ziene Mottiar, Theresa Ryan

Conference papers

An examination of the layers of business place identities resulting from the creation of a road tourism route: an exploration of the Wild Atlantic Way

Proposal and originality (500 characters)

This paper is focussed on the Wild Atlantic Way (WAW) in Ireland and explores the concept of entrepreneurial place identity in terms of tourism routes. Place identity has been shown to be important for tourism entrepreneurs as it affects their self- efficacy (Haller, Assaker and Lee, 2013) and their strategies (Mottiar, 2016). This paper seeks to explore how tourism businesses have altered their identity as a result of the WAW. …

Conceptualising Digital Entrepreneurship: Artifacts, Platforms And Infrastructures, Anthony Paul Buckley, Kisito Futonge Nzembayie

Conference papers

In this paper we explore how, in the digital age, the micro-level activities of digital entrepreneurs in new venture creation continue to digitally transform and disrupt economic systems at the macro-level. As digital entrepreneurship and other typologies of entrepreneurship in the digital age become increasingly fuzzy, this paper sets out to define the digital entrepreneurship domain – what it is, what is it not and why it is disruptive and distinct. By unbundling the roles of the differing digital technologies at play, we bring much needed clarity to a domain currently noted for its conceptual fuzziness. Our framework, developed from …

Insurance Reserve Prediction: Opportunities And Challenges, Ayman Taha Farahat, Bernard Cosgrave Dr., Wael Rashwan, Susan Mckeever Dr.

Conference papers

Predicting claims’ reserve is a critical challenge for insurers and has dramatic consequences on their managerial, financial and underwriting decisions. The insurers’ capital and their underwriting capacity of further business are impacted by inaccurate reserve estimates. Increasing premium rates and adjusting the underwriting policy decisions may balance the impact of unexpected claims, but will have a negative impact on their business opportunities. To address this, several papers focusing on the prediction of insurance reserve have been published in the literature. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the research on the insurance reserve prediction techniques in economics and …

Reflections On Co-Creating, Developing And Evaluating Virtual Reality Fieldtrips (Vrf): The Student’S Perspective, Catherine Gorman, Jennifer Stewart, Louise Bellew

Conference papers

To ensure graduates have the skill to work within the tourism industry, and spurred on by the paradigm shift in teaching due to Covid 19, this research focused on developing innovative solutions using technology. Using virtual assessment techniques, industry co-created evaluation, and integrated assessment, it explored how virtual field-trips can be developed as part of remote teaching methods. To provide context to the topic of sustainable tourism and technology, a student-led virtual seminar with industry was undertaken linking with TU Dublin Green Week 2021. In place of a fieldtrip using Google Earth and Screen-casto-matic, students created videos incorporating the sustainability …

Social Media Influencers (Smis) In Context: A Literature Review, Charles Alves De Castro, Isobel O'Reilly, Aiden Carthy

Conference papers

This review focused on three main areas, “Social Media Influencers (SMIs) in Context, The Impact of SMIs on Adolescents, and Consumer Behaviour in a Digital Era – Generation Z in Perspective.” This article aims to further the overall understanding of SMIs and outlines the impact of SMIs on adolescents’ lives. Thus, the main objective of this literature review is to raise awareness within the marketing field about the influence of social media influencers on adolescents and how brands promote their products and content through social media influencers. The review comprised a deep search using electronic journal databases and secondary data …

Tdabc Capabilities For Performance Measurement: A Case Study In A Manufacturing Context, Siham Rahoui, Abubakar Ali, John Crowe, Amr Mahfouz

Conference papers

Supply chain costing presents a sophisticated alternative to traditional costing allowing an accurate cost estimation and effective decision making. In exploring different techniques, TDABC was not explored extensively compared to its peers. In addition to the infancy of the technique, there is an on-going debate about the capability of the TDABC specifically in manufacturing context. The present study contributes to the debate by applying TDABC at the logistics function of a manufacturing site and assesses it capability to measure performance in the stated context.

Simulation-Based Scenario Mapping Model To Investigate Post-Brexit Implications On The Irish Beef Export Sector: A Case Study, Amr Mahfouz, Rishi Choudhary

Conference papers

Purpose Brexit introduced a range of new tariffs and non-tariff barriers that will significantly disrupt Irish beef exports, particularly to the UK market. Firms should be able to accurately anticipate the adverse effects of Brexit trade barriers on the flow of their products and change their practices accordingly. This research introduces a scenario planning solution based on a process simulation technology to investigate the implication of Brexit risks on Irish beef export performance. Scenarios implications on the transportation time and shelf-life of Irish meat exports to the UK market are investigated.

Research Approach An agent-based and discrete event simulation model …

Embedding Sustainability Literacy In Business School Curricula Through Reflective Pedagogy: An Exploratory Study Of Student Reflections Of The Sulitest, Ciara Nolan Dr, Cormac H. Macmahon, Olivia Freeman, Alacoque Mcalpine, Lucia Walsh, Deirdre Duffy Dr

Conference papers

Purpose

Sustainability has emerged as a megatrend affecting all aspects of management practice. SDG 4.7 has mandated business schools to provide education for responsible leadership and to integrate sustainability principles in their curricula. Faculty are challenged to mainstream sustainability through engaging pedagogy that inspires and offers concrete tools. Yet, pedagogy has been viewed as a key challenge to embedding sustainability in management education.

Design / Methodology / Approach

We highlight the role of reflection in promoting the enhancement of sustainability literacy in business school curricula, supporting our proposition that management education for sustainability must have a reflective dimension that engages …

Using Mixed Methods To Evaluate The Role And Contribution Of Disciplined Innovation Processes (Dips) For Start-Up Growth And Development., Saad Ahmed, Anthony Paul Buckley, Francis Behan

Conference papers

According to Ohr and Frank-Mattes (2017), there appears to be limited knowledge or appreciation of disciplined innovation frameworks, tools or techniques for the scale-up phase of commercialisation, especially from those with technical backgrounds.

The research questions in this study therefore asks: Can a more disciplined approach to the innovation process make a positive contribution to improved commercialisation outcomes for start-ups and corporate venturing? Additionally, it asks if this disciplined process can be configured into a reliable and repeatable process across multiple contexts?

For complex research questions such as this, quantitative or qualitative research approaches alone cannot adequately address these questions. …

Using Sequential Mixed Methods To Evaluate The Contribution Of Absorptive Capacity (Acap), Anthony Paul Buckley, Francis Martin Behan

Conference papers

How might Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) (Cohen & Levinthal 1990,,Song et al. 2018) contribute to indigenous firm innovation and growth and how might the effects of this construct be evaluated at both firm and policy level? This paper demonstrates how a mixed methods research design and data analysis strategy can address the research question outlined above. Within the ‘mixed methods’ research genre, the design approach argued for here is for a ‘sequential mixed methods research’ approach. This is where one methodology is followed sequentially by another to add robustness to the overall findings from a study. The approach can also be …

Engaged Scholarship: How To Improve University Engagement Within Academic-Industry Relationships, Conor Horan

Conference papers

Since the notion of engaged scholarship was articulated and debated (Van de Ven, 2007, McKelvey, 2006, Van De Ven and Johnson, 2006b, Van De Ven and Johnson, 2006a) it has received increased scholarly attention, informed debates questioning the role of the university in society, and how universities produce relevant knowledge for and with society. While questions are raised about how an engaged scholarship lens might meaningfully improve academic-industry relationships, less attention has focused on the characteristics of engagement that can illustrate why one form of relationship in practice is more “engaged” compared to another. The engaged scholarship lens distances itself …

Investigating Brexit Implications On The Irish Agri-Food Exports: A Simulation-Based Scenario Mapping Model, Amr Mahfouz, John Crowe, Rishi Choudhary, Wael Rashwan, Aly Owida

Conference papers

The Irish economy is highly dependent on the UK market with a total export value surpassing e 14 billion. Several reports have warned of severe bottlenecks at the Irish and British ports if new customs checks are reintroduced. A significant disruption is also expected to the traffic flow between Ireland and Britain because of the lack of proper checking infrastructure at some ports. This situation will cause devastating impact on the competitive advantage of various Irish exports to the UK market, particularly limited-shelf-life products. Hence, a simulation model has been developed to investigate three Brexit scenarios: 1) applying non-tariff barriers …

Combining Bert With Contextual Linguistic Features For Identification Of Propaganda Spans In News Articles, Arjumand Younus, Muhammad Atif Qureshi

Conference papers

Recent endeavours at detection of propaganda in news articles treat this as a fine-grained problem of detecting it within fragments; and hence, transformer based embeddings perform decently in such detection. We build our propaganda detection framework on top of a transformer model simultaneously enriching it with contextual linguistic information of surrounding part-of-speech tags and LIWC categories the word itself belongs to. The evaluation outcomes being encouraging indicate a huge potential for this line of reasoning in natural language processing of news text.

Engaging With The Local: Shift In Visitor Profile At [World] Heritage Sites, Catherine Gorman

Conference papers

Engaging with the local: a shift in visitor profile at Heritage Sites

The island of Ireland has three World Heritage Sites (WHS). Two of these sites are located in the Republic of Ireland and are operated by the Office of Public Works (OPW): Skellig Micheal (inscribed 1996), and Bru Na Boinne, the Bend in the Boyne complex of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth and wider area (inscribed 1993). In 2018, Skellig Michael attracted 16,792, and the Bru Na Boinne, 321,193. Both sites have been under pressure from visitor numbers over the last number of years with Skellig Micheal, exceeding the annual …

Sme Ict Marketing Impact: A New Conceptual Model, Justina Setkute, Simone Kurtzke

Conference papers

This paper presents a conceptual model for SME ICT marketing impact. The conceptualization integrates approaches from technology-in-practice scholarship, which argues that the use of information and communications technology (ICT) among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is highly context specific, and applies it within marketing practice. The resulting model is relational, iterative and context-sensitive, and considers marketing impact from the use of ICT as emerging over time. This article extends existing research by considering the role that attitudes towards ICT may play in their successful use. It also provides three propositions to guide future research towards generating an empirically based understanding …

Ideological Presuppositions In Media Coverage Of Corporation Tax Policy In The Uk And Ireland: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Ciara Graham, Brendan K. O'Rourke

Conference papers

The focus of this paper is to understand how the crisis of tax avoidance strategies is discursively treated, by looking at the representation of corporation tax in two mediated public discourses in the UK and Ireland. Specifically, it examines the coverage of two prominent, agenda-setting morning radio programmes: BBC’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme and RTE’s ‘Morning Ireland’. It does so by performing a Critical Discourse Analysis of the coverage of tax controversies of two high-profile global corporations, Google and Apple Inc, in order to demonstrate the embeddedness of ideology within mediated public discourses of the subject. Both of the tax …

Breaking Down Silos Through Authentic Assessment: A Live Case Analysis, Olivia Freeman, Rosie Hand, Aileen Kennedy

Conference papers

One of the aims of Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) is to create graduates who problem solve as socially responsible global citizens.We wanted to provide an opportunity for our students toaddress relevant, marketing and consumption challenges in new and innovative ways,and to develop analytical competences and professional skills and comportment in a real-life context.This paper describes the design,implementation and outcome of an inter-disciplinary and cross-programme ‘authentic assessment’ method which we have termed a ‘live case analysis’.The assessment comprised fieldwork, wider industry engagement, formative assessment components and a summative presentation.The method is discussed against the backdrop of a Curriculum Framework project …

University Interactions: Forms, Peculiarities And Tensions, Nkechinyem Omeife, Conor Horan

Conference papers

Interactions between university and industry or society mainly occur in the form of transfer and/or collaborations. However, both forms have mostly been discussed as transfer thus, the underpinnings of both forms are not often discussed. As a result, the tensions (contradictions, dialectics and paradoxes) embedded in the interactions are also overlooked (not explored). This paper proposes to explore the underpinnings of the both forms of interaction and the tensions therein. Transfer is often linked with incubation and acceleration with concerns around absorption and diffusion of knowledge and through channels such as publications, conferences, teaching and pedagogy, joint research and knowledge …

Supporting Academic Synergies Through Co-Evolution Of Teaching And Research Excellence From Evidence-Based Practice., Roisin Donnelly, Deirdre Mcquillan

Conference papers

Ireland’s first Technological University(TU) came into existence in January2019, mergingthree existinghigher education institutions. This work is set in the context of thisnew TU, and explores how teaching, learning and educational research can co-evolve to generate synergies supported by evidence-based practice of the core activity sets of the lecturer. In thedisciplinarydomain ofBusiness Education, theHead of Learning Development and Head ofResearch haveidentified thebenefits of aligningaspects oftheir work in supporting academic staff to plan and undertake structured inquiry into their teaching. This is predicated on our belief that the range of work involved in supporting teaching and research are not mutually exclusive. Having …

Active Learning In Accounting And The Impact On Student Engagement, Daniel King

Conference papers

This paper reports on a range of active learning and online strategies that were introduced into an introductory accounting module. Up until recently the traditional lecture format, where students sit passively and the lecturer delivers the lecture, has been the dominant format in higher education. However, research has shown that formats which provide students with a more active and engaged learning environment result in deeper learning The active learning strategies discussed in this paper were based around an "Active Learning Exercise" where students worked in a cooperative group environment. Before, during and after the "Active Learning Exercise" an additional range …

Design As Entrepreneurship: Towards A Design-Specific Entrepreneurship Framework, Con Kennedy

Conference papers

Current thinking on entrepreneurship states there is no specific link between the entrepreneur and their enterprise. Design is an individual creative act; therefore, the practitioner is not separate from their idiosyncratic process. The Designer is the product offering. Designers form Design Enterprises, meaning that with this aspect of inseparability, the Design Entrepreneur is a different kind of entrepreneur than currently discussed. The literature on the topic discusses design as a creative output, not as entrepreneurship output. Like any enterprise, Design Enterprises must be profitable. There are many entrepreneurship processes, none of which seem to address the needs of the Design …

Infusing Critical Thinking Into Business Programmes. Video Case Studies:, Roisin Donnelly

Conference papers

Thinking critically about media content and contexts, Be an entrepreneur for a day: Market Trader Project.

The Persistence Of Omniscience In Knowledge Management: Implications Or Future Research, Conor Horan, Conor P. Horan, John Finch

Conference papers

Abstract: This paper demonstrates the persistence of omniscience in Knowledge Management (KM) research. Omniscience as a concept has two dimensions ubiquity and utility. This idea of ubiquity is more prevalent when the management goal focuses on processing or transferring pre-existing knowledge efficiently to those who can make use of it. Ubiquity assumes that knowledge is freely available within the firm i.e. is omnipresent, waiting for it to be processed or transferred. The idea of utility assumes that knowledge and its relevance is fully understood by the firm. The firms and its managers are assumed to know the value and quality …

Competitive Strategies In Small And Medium Sized Enterprises (Sme's): A Cross- Case Analysis Of Irish Construction Professional Service Firms, Oluwasegun O. Seriki, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

Strategy formulation aims to attain strategic fit between an organisation and its business environment in pursuit of competitive advantage. Although competitive strategy research is long established within industries such as manufacturing, financial services and IT, strategy within construction is still under-investigated by comparison. For construction professional service firms (CPSFs), the dearth of academic inquiry is even more apparent, partly due to the intangible nature of their service offerings, highly customised nature of their services and reliance on intellectual capital. The Irish construction sector is experiencing stable growth since following a prolonged recession, thus understanding the strategy process within professional service …

The Strategy Process Of Irish Quantity Surveying Firms Operating Within A Turbulent Business Environment, Michael Adesi, Roisin Murphy, Dermot Kehily

Conference papers

Rapid technological changes and market fluctuations create a turbulent business environment that poses significant challenges to the strategy process of Quantity Surveying (QS) firms. A turbulent environment refers to the existence of high levels of uncertainty, unpredictability, volatile demand and changing growth conditions within an industry. The strategy process is complex and becomes more problematic in the face of a turbulent business environment. To date, studies focusing on QS practices seldom investigate the impact of a rapidly changing environment on the strategy process within these firms. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the impact of environmental turbulence …

Austerity For All Seasons: Communicating On The Economy In Ireland, Brendan O'Rourke, John Hogan, Joseph K. Fitzgerald

Conference papers

What is clear is that in Ireland it has been a good crisis for economists, in the sense that the status and power of the profession has increased, especially in public discourse and state bureaucracy. This is not to deny that the academic critique and public questioning of the status of economics, that has followed the failure of the profession internationally prior to the crisis. It would be interesting to see if the rise of economists status has taken place in other countries and if there is a pattern to the profession’s fortunes in its different fields across, for example …

Visions Of The Future In Budgetary Discourse, Ewan Macdonald, Brendan O'Rourke, John Hogan

Conference papers

Whilst there is ample precedent to argue against the common-sense notion that the ideological leanings of political parties are congruent with their implementation of fiscal policy (Boix, 2000; Garrett & Lange, 1991; Hibbs, 1977; Liargovas & Manolas, 2007), there is a relative dearth of research on the role of discourse in shaping fiscal policy with one notable exception by Maatsch (2014). With this in mind, we approach the issue of examining fiscal policy through a fixed, contested and subverted within particular texts” (Howarth, 2005, p. 341). This paper examines how the future is constructed in Irish budget speeches delivered between …