Over the past 15 years, accelerators emerged as a popular and distinct new form of intermediary organization, playing a key role in supporting entrepreneurial and innovation activities. To date, despite significant growth in accelerators research, there is still little understanding of how different forms of accelerators operate, and what outcomes they produce across different contexts. This paper reviews the existing scholarly research on accelerators using the Context-Intervention-Mechanism-Outcome framework and is based on the analysis of 98 research papers on accelerators published in the last 15 years. The analysis identifies four mechanisms which explain how accelerators operate and the role they play in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation: the validation of ideas and products; the provision of product development and models learning; the provision of support to increase startups' market access & growth; and the provision of support for innovation. The paper identifies the methodological and theoretical gaps in current research and provides avenues to support future research and industry practice.

Digital transformation affects all industries. This study targets how management consulting companies address this phenomenon. Based on a survey of 30 Romanian management consulting companies and a qualitative comparative analysis, we model the relationship between management consulting companies’ current context (customers’ industries, internal and external triggers for digital transformation), the current state of digital transformation, and expected digital transformation. By considering managerial expectations importance in future decisions, and contingency theory for explaining the links between context, current state and expected digital transformation, different paths concerning digital transformation are identified at Romanian management consulting companies. For some of them, the combination of internal and external triggers and the existence of previous digital transformation activities led to increases in the recognized importance of digital transformation in future business models and to newer business services (digital strategy). For others, which do not have powerful external triggers, digital transformation is associated with internal efficiency–related triggers, and it targets only improvements in existing business models due to technology adoption (technology strategy). A small number of management consulting companies do not expect digital transformation to have a large impact on their future business model, because of either the lack of external triggers to do so or the absence of previous digital transformation activities. This research demonstrates the contingency and evolutionary nature of the digital transformation process, in which specific combinations between internal and external triggers can explain the expectations of management consulting companies’ managers about digital transformation.

Nowadays, when there is much concern about the demographic decline of Europe and the stringent need for public policies that support intelligent, sustainable, and inclusive growth in times of population ageing, this study aims to validate several hypotheses regarding the post-graduation migration intentions of students in economics. To analyse these intentions in the context of Romanian yearly increases of out-migration flows to Western countries, the answers to the questionnaire used for this study were obtained from three important Romanian universities. Using georeferencing, neural networks-based data mining, and two types of regression analysis, the results represent a relevant contribution to the limited body of literature. They empirically show that motivations and attitudes towards a meritocratic environment for professional advancement, and individual freedom are positive key factors for students’ migration intentions after graduation. In addition, the paper emphasises the secondary role of religiosity and intergenerational transfer of parental migration experience. It also finds that, although the income level has some influence on these intentions, its role is far less important than the one emphasised in the specific literature, which leads us to the conclusion that non-economic motivations matter more than the economic ones for the potential decision to migrate after graduation.

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