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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain how the “objective” institutionalized barriers (of which social, human and financial capital are decisive factors) and the subjective performance of new migrant entrepreneurs jointly affect their business attitudes and observed behavior. Design/methodology/approach The paper’s analysis of individualized performance factors (dependent on how “objective” institutionalized barriers are subjectively construed) – in line with the theory of planned behavior – enables a response to recent calls to embrace complexity and pluralism in entrepreneurship through applying social constructivist lenses. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 Eritrean entrepreneurs, and the empirical data were subjected to grounded theory analytical procedures and interpretative phenomenological analysis theoretical coding. Findings Six core beliefs mitigated entrepreneurial attitudes independently from the objectivized institutionalized barriers: know-how needs to be acquired formally; available sources of financing are internal, and scarce; market expertise is in the books, rather than in the market; blending in the host country’s culture is uncalled for, and the resulting difficulty of operating in the “foreign” market is a price worth paying; risk is to be avoided at all cost; and strong intra-communal bonds need not entail support for their business activity, rendering external contacts hardly necessary or trustworthy. Originality/value The paper concludes with recommendations potentially informing policies and targeted interventions by highlighting that any policy intervention or an attempt at structural change of conditions in which new migrant entrepreneurship unfolds should consider entrepreneurs as “performing” individuals, as well as representatives of wider cultural, economic and social dynamics relating to these “objective” institutionalized barriers.

This technical note addresses optimal control and scheduling (controlled switching) of discrete-time switched linear systems. A receding-horizon control and scheduling (RHCS) problem is introduced and solved by dynamic programming, leading to a combinatorial optimization problem with exponential complexity. By relaxed dynamic programming, complexity is reduced while relaxing optimality within prespecified bounds. The resulting RHCS strategy is expressed explicitly as a piecewise linear state feedback control law defined over regions implied by quadratic forms. Closed-loop stability is not guaranteed inherently for the RHCS strategy. Therefore, a posteriori stability criteria based on piecewise quadratic Lyapunov functions are proposed. Finally, a region-reachability criterion is presented.Index Terms-Piecewise quadratic (PWQ) Lyapunov functions, reachability analysis, receding-horizon control (RHC), relaxed dynamic programming, stability analysis, switched systems.

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to enable the examination of sensemaking mechanisms, inherent in the discourse of organizational spirituality (OS), which embed meanings this discourse creates. In order to achieve this goal the paper explores the pivotal notion of “spirituality” in OS, examines the conditions of emergence of its main characteristics, and inquires into OS participants' mental processes which help to sustain it. Thus, the conceptual space is critically explored in which organizational actors make their commitments to attain goals by spiritual means and in which the alleged causal mechanisms operate.Design/methodology/approachThe approach taken is a critical analysis of literature and empirical material.FindingsThe logic of OS conceptual framework is vastly inconsistent with rationalism, which underpins typical functionalist assertions of OS proponents. The central OS notion – spirituality – lacks concrete and independent characteristics. It can be perceived as a mere classification tool which groups together certain “positive” phenomena, perspectives or outcomes. The legitimacy of this operation within the discourse is guaranteed by its episteme – the set of rules, which makes certain moves possible and excludes some others. It may easily enforce or preclude the particular interpretations of organizational reality or validity of certain initiatives. The latter hints at the political dimension of OS.Research limitations/implicationsPotential researchers should be sensitive to the issues of logical circularity of OS discourse and its degree of incoherence with rationalist assumptions. The design of research on OS should attempt to delve into meanings created by OS discourse profiting from proximity to research subjects ensured by careful application of qualitative methods. Research could focus more on the political dimension: issues of power relations; methods of exerting influence; gaining support, etc., instead of contemplating more vague territories which OS studies seem inclined to explore. These results refer to a limited number of participants and organizations and are not fully generalizable, which is inevitable in qualitative research. The geographical concentration of the research sample might have affected the results to some extent, however this fact is innocuous to the overall validity of this study.Originality/valueBeyond the scope of many recent papers that emphasize the positive role of organizational spirituality as a means of attaining particular objectives, the paper offers an alternative approach in which OS makes such calculations very difficult, and yet creates conditions which are conducive to advancing OS participants' political agendas.

As flexibility has become a sine qua non of the contemporary workplace, we performed a critical review of its different uses and understandings in business and management research. Analyzing the literature on workplace flexibility in the period 1970–2018, using a four‐part conceptual framework, and on the basis of subsequent content analysis of 262 most relevant publications, we identify two axes of tension embedding scholarly work on flexibility: the flexibility of vs. flexibility for organizations and employees, and a favorability‐criticality tension. We further explain how internal divisions are attributable to three different paradigms of flexibility (two of which dominate), resulting from divergent sets of assumptions regarding: its target, rationale, approach to it, as well as methodologies involved in studying it. We propose a research agenda indicating the ways in which paradigmatic underpinnings of flexibility research may be further clarified and divisions between the paradigms made sense of.