Food Business and Development - Conference Items
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Item Exploration of the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in regional entrepreneurial food ecosystems(Academic Conferences International Limited, 2020-09) Murphy, Anna; Bogue, Joe; O'Flaherty, BrianEntrepreneurship is a key driver of economies through the creation of new opportunities and business ventures. Immigrant entrepreneurs have enriched global economies, particularly in high tech industries (Fairlie, 2008) and face numerous challenges in their host country. For small to medium sized enterprises, strategic networking in entrepreneurial ecosystems, creating rich resources, is vital to minimise these challenges (McAdam and Soetanto, 2018). These entrepreneurial ecosystems consist of interdependent actors and other factors integrated in a way that enables entrepreneurship within a particular region (Stam and Spigel, 2018). The objective of this research is to analyse the factors that contribute to the existence of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Irish food industry and the types of networking immigrant food entrepreneurs participate in within these ecosystems. This methodology consisted of a quantitative empirical study using a questionnaire administered to immigrant food entrepreneurs in the Munster region of Ireland, selected through purposive sampling. The findings highlighted that these immigrant food entrepreneurs originated from 26 different countries, the majority founded their own business, with some businesses established over 40 years. The existence of different types of entrepreneurial food ecosystems and contrasting success factors are emerging in this research. The support of local farmer's markets and the community spirit with local producers leading to formal and informal networking for exchange knowledge and social engagement is vital for some immigrant food entrepreneurs, with support from entrepreneurial agencies driving the entrepreneurial ecosystem proving a greater importance for others. Entrepreneurial food ecosystems give immigrants, who do not have the same access to the employment market, an opportunity to make a living which was evident in this research where the immigrant food entrepreneurs demonstrated high levels of self-efficacy in terms of their contribution to local economies. Immigrants also enhance diversity in the food industry and give local consumers an opportunity to experience international and ethnic food experiences. This research provides a deeper understanding of immigrant entrepreneurs and their strategic networking and adds to research on how the model of entrepreneurial ecosystems can be utilised to measure the diversity and density of these networks.Item Structural and agentic analysis of supply-chains: a social network analysis approach(Centre for Concurrent Enterprise, Nottingham University Business School, 2011-07) Sloane, Alan; O'Reilly, Seamus; Pawar, Kulwant S.; Rogers, HelenThis research adds to a body of work exploring the role of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in the study of both relational and structural characteristics of supply chain networks. Two contrasting network cases (food enterprises and digital-based enterprises) are chosen in order to elicit structural differences in business networks subject to divergences in local embeddedness and the relative materiality of the goods and services produced. Our analysis and findings draw out differences in network structure as evidenced by metrics of network centralization and cohesion, the presence of components and other sub-groupings, and the position of central actors. We relate these structural features both to the nature of the networks and to the (qualitative) experiences of the actors themselves. We find, in particular, the role of customers as co-creators of knowledge (for the Food network), the central role of infrastructure and services (for the Digital network), the importance of ICT as a source of codified knowledge inputs, along with the continuing importance of geographical proximity for the development and transfer of tacit knowledge and for incremental learning.Item The emergence of supply chain eco-systems - a social network analysis(Centre for Concurrent Enterprise, Nottingham University Business School. UK, 2010-07) Sloane, Alan; O'Reilly, Seamus; Pawar, Kulwant S.; Lalwani, Chandra S.; European CommissionItem Empirical aspects of a mixed method approach to economic network analysis(2011-05-27) Sloane, AlanWe discuss the interactions among the various phases of network research design in the context of our current work using Mixed Methods and SNA on networks and rural economic development. We claim that there are very intricate inter-dependencies among the various phases of network research design - from theory and formulation of research questions right through to modes of analysis and interpretation. Through examples drawn from our work we illustrate how choices about methods for Sampling and Data Collection are influenced by these interdependencies.Item The object binary interface: C++ objects for evolvable shared class libraries(USENIX Association Berkeley, CA, USA, 1994-04) Goldstein, Theodore C.; Sloane, AlanObject-oriented design and object-oriented languages support the development of independent software components such as class libraries. When using such components, versioning becomes a key issue. While various ad-hoc techniques and coding idioms have been used to provide versioning, all of these techniques have deficiencies - ambiguity, the necessity of recompilation or re-coding, or the loss of binary compatibility of programs. Components from different software vendors are versioned at different times. Maintaining compatibility between versions must be consciously engineered. New technologies such as distributed objects further complicate libraries by requiring multiple implementations of a type simultaneously in a program. This paper describes a new C++ object model called the Shared Object Model for C++ users and a new implementation model called the Object Binary Interface for C++ implementors. These techniques provide a mechanism for allowing multiple implementations of an object in a program. Early analysis of this approach has shown it to have performance broadly comparable to conventional implementations.