Entrepreneurs’ age, institutions, and social value creation goals: a multi-country study

This study explores the relationship between an entrepreneur's age and his/her social value creation goals. Building on the lifespan developmental psychology literature and institutional theory, we hypothesize a U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurs’ age and their choice to create social value through their ventures, such that younger and older entrepreneurs create more social value with their businesses while middle age entrepreneurs are relatively more economically and less socially oriented with their ventures. We further hypothesize that the quality of a country’s formal institutions in terms of economic, social, and political freedom steepen the U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurs’ age and their choice to pursue social value creation as supportive institutional environments allow entrepreneurs to follow their age-based preferences. We confirm our predictions using multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions on a sample of over 15,000 entrepreneurs (aged between 18 and 64 years) in 45 countries from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data. The findings are robust to several alternative specifications. Based on our findings, we discuss implications for theory and practice, and we propose future research directions

From video-conferencing to holoportation and haptics:How emerging technologies can enhance presence in online education

Video-conferencing, if used effectively, can support learning and teaching in online and distance learning serving the human need to communicate, and to learn by watching, and interacting with teachers and learners from anywhere. The demand for a more human approach to online education drives technologists and software developers to investigate new ways of being present online while connected with others, thereby making the experience as real-life as possible. This chapter discusses the implications of using emerging synchronous technologies in online education and explains why educators need to develop their teaching practice and understand the role of presence in online teaching in Higher Education. Drawing on the Tele-Community of Inquiry model, embodied cognition and research into ‘honest signals’ we examine the potential of emerging technologies such as holoportation, holograms, and haptic devices used in augmented learning environments. Innovative examples from Higher Education are presented to illustrate creative ways in which emerging technologies are beginning to be used in teaching practice. Technological advances continue to increase the potential for how synchronous communication technologies can support and improve presence online and enhance virtual and real-time interactions in online education. As these technologies are still emerging there is a great need for further educational research and some directions are highlighted

Communication via warm haptic interfaces does not increase social warmth

Affective haptic interfaces are designed to influence one’s emotional and physiological state via the sense of touch, and may be applied as communicationmedia to increase the sense of closeness. Recent research suggests that stimulation with physical warmth can enhance this interpersonal closeness: a physical-social warmth link. It is often suggested that this link may be particularly suitable for application in affective haptic interfaces, but the scientific evidence is inconclusive. In this work we investigated whether adding physical warmth to a communication medium—an interactive teddy bear —could increase social connectedness between remotely located interactants and could provide physiological comfort during stressful circumstances. Moreover, we investigated whether the warmth could best be presented to the users as a mere physical attribute of the medium or as mediated body heat; thereby manipulating the attribution of the warmth to either a non-social or social source. The results of two studies in which participants ostensibly received a message from an unknown other (Study 1, N = 65) or comforting messages from their own partner (Study 2, N = 62), and meta-analyses did not provide support for the hypotheses that warmth, purely physical or attributed to one’s partner, can positively influence one’s social and physiological state. Although future research should corroborate our findings, they indicate that the physical-social warmth link may not be as applicable in affective mediated communication as suggested