Sustainability and leanness are organizational approach concepts for more efficient activities and increased competitiveness. This paper presents a study and an application of the concepts of sustainability and lean, with the purpose to capitalize on the benefits of the two concepts’ tools when used together in an industry and education activity. A literature review was carried out to evaluate qualitatively and empirically the concepts of sustainability, lean, and enterprise games, and the possibility to integrate the first two concepts into a new tool applied into an enterprise game. An online survey was done to identify which tools are used within companies in the region, how and what training methods they used, and what the reported benefits are. The survey results were used to design a new tool integrated in a new enterprise game (SLIM) developed by the authors. The game was tested and validated in educational laboratory with students and actual employees from companies. The game follows the frame of an enterprise game, considering the simulation of enterprise classical functions. The game’s purpose is to improve the activity in successive rounds. A scorecard is used to fill in and compute the key performance indicators (KPIs), and a new indicator is proposed (SLIMx). Applications of the instrument/game include: students’ training in an educational laboratory; lifelong learning; professional training in companies; and professional perfection/reconversion of potential employees and the unemployed. The SLIM game was simulated in a team of 15 players over three rounds, with teachers playing the role of the supervisor. A number of possible improvements have been identified. The next step is testing it in enterprises with various fields of activity. SLIM has proven to be an effective solution to improve organizational efficiency and motivate players to gain new knowledge.
This paper investigates the long-run relationship between the entrepreneurial activity, tax evasion and corruption in 15 European countries. We posit that tax evasion and corruption have a negative influence on entrepreneurship, but some endogeneity issues appear when investigating this relationship. Therefore, we use a panel cointegration analysis and we find that there is a long-run link between our variables, and that tax evasion and corruption negatively affect the total entrepreneurial activity. In addition, this paper shows that the impact is smaller if we consider the necessity-driven entrepreneurs only, due to the fact that this category of entrepreneurs is forced to start a business having no other revenue sources and is less sensitive to institutional weaknesses. More precisely, while corruption still influences the activity of necessity-driven entrepreneurs, no effect is documented in the case of tax evasion. This result proves that necessity-driven entrepreneurs do not carefully take into account the external traits when they start a business. Consequently, if the entrepreneurship is associated with one of the main drivers of economic growth, the authorities shall handle the institutional weaknesses in order to favor the entrepreneurial activity.
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