This volume presents selected papers from the 19th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference held in Istanbul. Its primary emphasis is on showcasing the latest empirical research on social change, sustainable development and the management of public and private organizations in emerging economies. The respective articles also address more specialized and related topics such as financial risk tolerance, international strategic partnerships, female labor force participation, human capital dynamics, and economic integration, among others.

Local and regional development is an increasingly global issue. For localities and regions, the challenge of enhancing prosperity, improving wellbeing and increasing living standards has become acute for localities and regions formerly considered discrete parts of the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds. Amid concern over the definitions and sustainability of ‘development’, a spectre has emerged of deepened unevenness and sharpened inequalities in the development prospects for particular social groups and territories. Local and Regional Development engages and addresses the key questions: what are the principles and values that shape definitions and strategies of local and regional development? What are the conceptual and theoretical frameworks capable of understanding and interpreting local and regional development? What are the main policy interventions and instruments? How do localities and regions attempt to effect development in practice? What kinds of local and regional development should we be pursuing? This book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, frameworks of understanding, and instruments and policies. It outlines what a holistic, progressive and sustainable local and regional development might constitute before reflecting on its limits and political renewal. With the growing international importance of local and regional development, this book is an essential student purchase, illustrated throughout with maps, figures and case studies from Asia, Europe, and Central and North America.

'Charlie Karlsson, Börje Johansson and Roger R. Stough have collected a set of important articles on some of the most important factors determining the growth of contemporary regional economies. the focus of the book is on important growth determinants that are almost never mentioned in the standard analyses of economic growth. Entrepreneurship is discussed from theoretical as well as empirical points of view. the role of social capital as well as institutional governance are highlighted in chapters that ought to be read by all economists interested in the economic growth and development of regions.' – Åke E. Andersson, Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping, Sweden 'This is an exceptional work that is the result of an outstanding selection of the best papers on agglomeration and innovation given at the 10th anniversary of the Udevalla conference. It is the finest set of conference papers I have seen in the past 25 years. These are artfully woven together into three primary areas. the first focuses on the role of knowledge and innovation in entrepreneurship, the second incorporates the institutional environment, while the third looks at the international context. I recommend this collection to academics, students and all who are interested in the role of creativity and innovation in entrepreneurial development. Not only are these the very best researchers in the field, but the materials are presented in a clear and concise manner, making it an outstanding base for advanced courses in this area. This work combines some of the best writings by top-notch authors sharing the sharpest insight into the complex area of the role of human capital in structuring agglomerative advantages. I take my hat off to the fine editorial work represented in this volume.' – Kingsley E. Haynes, George Mason University, US 'The book provides a remarkable contribution on the role of human capital as major creator of knowledge, interpreted as abilities, capabilities, methods, creativity and persistency in identifying and solving problems by collecting, selecting, interpreting and applying existing knowledge and information. the laws of increasing returns to human capital – among which are urban agglomerations as magnets which attract persons who embody knowledge – are conceptually searched and empirically verified. the book answers questions such as: Why do highly educated people, i.e. the carriers of human capital, tend to concentrate in large agglomerations?; What are the agglomerative forces?; and How does this agglomeration of human capital impact different types of economic activities and in particular their location behaviour? Important normative implications are thus derived from such a collected effort.' – Roberta Capello, Politecnico di Milano, Italy 'The Regional Economics of Knowledge and Talent, edited by Charlie Karlsson, Börje Johansson and Roger R. Stough brings together a wide range of cutting-edge studies and research on the role of talent in regional development. It is an important addition to our understanding of how knowledge, human capital, and talent shape the development of cities and regions across the globe.' – Richard Florida, University of Toronto, Canada This original and instructive new book defines and explores the concept of knowledge as the talent, skills, know-how and understanding embodied in individuals. the distinguished contributors advance the current research frontier in three novel directions which focus on: the role of human capital and talent for creativity, entrepreneurship and regional development; the role of institutions for the behaviour of firms and entrepreneurs; and the influence of the global context on the location, export and innovation behaviour of firms in a knowledge economy. They also address critical questions that underpin the emerging knowledge economy: • Why does human capital and talent tend to agglomerate in large urban regions? • How does this agglomeration affect the location of different types of economic activities? • How does this agglomeration affect regional growth? Presenting the state of the art in the field of knowledge economics, this book will prove a stimulating and challenging read for scholars and researchers with an interest in economics, business and management, and regional and urban studies.

Trying to explain the sources of Poland’s economic success and decouple it from simple stylized facts on economic convergence anchored in the neoclassical growth models, the chapters show how the Polish economy rapidly moved away from the communist economic system, which had ended up in an economic collapse.

In this thematic issue of the Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, entitled Qualitative Research in Economics and Management Sciences, the authors used many quantitative methods and research models, e.g. SEM, PLS-SEM, or probit models (Table 1). Each of these approaches is characterized by methodological rigor and an assessment of the reliability and validity of the research instruments used. Pini and Tchorek (2022) analyze the determinants of exports in two European, culturally related countries, such as Italy and Poland, using an econometric and probit model, which implies a normal distribution of errors and is adapted to binary responses (excluding size and age variables). The authors investigate the influence of many independent variables (size, age, management by family members or external managers) on the dependent variable (export), controlling the research model by product and process innovation, location in a less developed region, operations in a high/medium-high technology-intensive sector or cooperation with many banks. The results confirm the authors' initial assumptions that the size of companies influences the exports of the surveyed countries; the age of companies exporting their goods is more important in Italy than in Poland, where no such impact has been recorded. In addition, management by an external manager increases the likelihood of exports for younger family businesses in Italy and smaller family businesses in Poland. The authors also showed that product innovation is the engine of exports in Italy and Poland, and geographic location affects the likelihood of exports in Italy, but not in Poland. In other studies, Paulino (2022) presents the growing business analytics and business intelligence in the Philippines, their impact on organizational performance, and marketing, financial, and business process performance indicators. Retail companies were selected for the study, focusing on advanced data management used in business operations. The author mainly used the well-known PLS-SEM model, and his research instrument was assessed in terms of content validity, construct validity, and reliability. The results of the measurement and structural model evaluation were also subject to verification. The results indicate the impact of business analytics capabilities (including the ability of the decision support system (DSS), business process improvement (BPM), data dashboard (DD), and financial analysis (FA) on the business intelligence level. In addition, it has been empirically verified that organizational performance influences marketing, financial, and business process performance. Overall, business intelligence is an essential predictor of a retail company's organizational performance. The assumption that the level of readiness to implement business analytics can be treated as a moderating factor between business analytics and organizational performance has not been confirmed. The next article by Klimontowicz and Majewska (2022) presents the positive impact of intellectual capital (IC), especially its three components, such as process capital, human capital and relational capital, on the competitiveness of banks and market efficiency. The authors used the following methods and tools: Principal Axis Factor Analysis, PLS-SEM, PAPI, and CAWI. As a result of their application, they emphasize that, in contrast to previous research, the process capital dominates the bank's potential to create a competitive advantage, not human capital, proving the vital role of technology and innovation. They found that competitive performance moderates the relationship between IC and market efficiency; the environment positively moderates the relationship between IC and competitor performance as well as the relationship between competitor performance and market efficiency. The size of the bank and the length of its market activity affect the market efficiency measured by the average rate of changes in ROA and ROE. The study expands the existing evidence, mainly from well-developed countries, on the intellectual capital of Polish banks, emphasizing the process capital to a much greater extent as a modern and so far little exposed component of IC in other research. The last two articles refer to human resource management. Hassan's study (2022) explores the impact of human resource management (HRM) practices on employee retention. In addition, he moderates the role of performance evaluation, training and development in the relationship between HRM practices and employee retention. Using SEM and questionnaires validated by other researchers, the author proves the originality of research in the retail sector in the Maldives on improving employee retention, a complementary approach to the impact of rewards and compensations, training and employee development, as well as assessing their results in human capital management, recommending practical solutions for the sector retail Maldives. In another study on workers’ adaptive performance, Tan and Antonio (2022) using PLS-SEM prove that the new form of remote work and the so-called e-leadership forced by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the way employers and employees interact. Organizational commitment, teleworking and a sense of purpose affect the adaptive performance of employees directly, while the perception of e-leadership indirectly. It is also one of the first studies to capture intrinsic motivation as the antecedent of employee adaptive performance, along with perceived e-leadership and teleworking results.

EASTER CONFERENCE - The 14th International Academic Conference in Prague 2019, Czech Republic (The 14th IAC in Prague 2019)