ICT Platform-Enabled Socio-Economic Ecosystem in Himalayan Villages of India: The Case of a Forest Protection and Renewable Energy Production Project

Part 1: Information Technology and Disaster ManagementInternational audienceThere is a growing focus on developing ICT-based business ecosystems to provide an innovative and socially-embedded solution that is aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals. However, general approaches being used to build the ICT-based business ecosystems face significant challenges in achieving sustainability, participation, and self-organization on their own. In this research, we pursue the new conceptualization of emergent digital designing to understand these challenges and leverage the concepts of multi-sided platforms to design and transform an ICT-based socio-economic ecosystem that enables co-creation of value. Specifically, we use the activity theory perspective to analyze the required features in the development of an ICT-based socio-economic ecosystem for forest protection and renewable energy production. Based on our case analysis, we construct a typology of various features that an ICT-based socio-economic ecosystem should imbibe to facilitate value co-creation by various actors of the ecosystem. This research contributes to the theory of the solution genre by presenting a feature set related to different aspects of the socio-economic ecosystems. We also highlight the needed minimalistic view of ICTs in the digital transformations of societal and environmental initiatives

An empirical analysis of the factors affecting social entrepreneurial intentions

Abstract The present study aims at identifying the social entrepreneurial intention among undergraduate students in Indian context by using the theory of planned behaviour as the research framework. A 72 item questionnaire was responded by 390 students of premier technical universities of India. A method of sampling used was systematized random sampling. 69% (N = 269) of the respondents were male and 31% (N = 121) were female and the average age of the respondents was approximately 20 years. The questionnaire measured emotional intelligence, creativity, and moral obligation, attitude toward becoming a social entrepreneur, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. The result shows that the proposed model in the present study explains 47% of the variance, explaining the social entrepreneurship intention. Creativity showed a strongest positive relationship followed by emotional intelligence. This research study contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature by introducing emotional intelligence and creativity as new antecedents that also explains social entrepreneurial intention formation

Multinationals, international business, and poverty: A cross-disciplinary research overview and conceptual framework

This article examines the role of multinationals and international business in poverty alleviation, based on an analysis of articles in the top journals in business, economics, and policy. We develop a conceptual cross-disciplinary framework that maps and disentangles the impact of different types of international business activities on five dimensions of poverty, moderated by country and industry effects. While our study suggests that the impact of all the types of business activities on poverty is still unclear overall, we contribute to research and policy debates by identifying key insights from and main gaps in this cross-disciplinary stream of literature. A distinction is made between firm effects as part of both ‘mainstream’ and ‘responsible’ globalization, and firm-specific activities with and without the explicit goal of poverty alleviation, considering investment and trade. We propose areas for further research based on the framework, including the importance of interaction effects and contextual factors