Toward a Validated Competence Framework for Sustainable Entrepreneurship.

Knowledge, skills, and attitudes to manage sustainable development have become significant components of different career paths. Previous research has explored which competencies are needed for future change agents in the field of sustainable development. Sustainable entrepreneurship can be seen as a promising work context in which these competencies are truly at the forefront and enacted. Several researchers have compiled frameworks of key competencies. However, their work is exploratory in nature and a more in-depth analysis of these frameworks is called for. In this study, an existing competence framework for sustainable entrepreneurship was tested in terms of construct validity, among 402 would-be entrepreneurs. The results suggest the inclusion of six competencies, which constitute a competence framework with a good model fit. Furthermore, a new combination of two existing competencies is proposed. This study has important implications for the debate on which competencies for sustainable entrepreneurship are essential on theoretical and empirical grounds.

Alignment between chain quality management and chain governance in EU pork supply chains: a Transaction-Cost-Economics perspective.

Although inter-firm coordination of quality management is increasingly important for meeting end-customer demand in agri-food chains, few researchers focus on the relation between inter-firm quality management systems (QMS) and inter-firm governance structures (GS). However, failure to align QMSs and GSs may lead to inefficiencies in quality management because of high transaction-costs. In addition, misalignment is likely to reduce the quality of end-customer products. This paper addresses this gap in research by empirically examining the relation between QMSs and GSs in pork meat supply chains. Transaction-Cost-Economic theory is used to develop propositions about the relation between three aspects of QMSs--ownership, vertical scope and scale of adoption--and the use of different types of GSs in pork meat supply chains. To validate the propositions, seven cases are examined from four different countries. The results show that the different aspects of QMSs largely relate to specific GSs used in chains in the manner predicted by the propositions. This supports the view that alignment between QMSs and GSs is important for the efficient coordination of quality management in (pork meat) supply chains.