ENTREPRENEURIAL COMPETENCIES AND ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE: A STUDY ON THE STREET FOOD CART OWNERS IN KHULNA CITY OF BANGLADESH

Academicians and practitioners have unanimously accepted that the entrepreneurs infuse dynamism and growth in the economy by developing new ideas and realising the ideas by creating new ventures. However, there is limited understanding about whether or how the entrepreneur influences the firm's performance that he or she has created. The focus of this paper is to explore the influences of entrepreneurial competencies on a firms’ performance with the empirical data from the hospitality service sector micro-enterprises in Bangladesh. Partial least square (PLS) regression analyses results generated using the primary data from 73 small restaurants from Khulna, the third-largest city of Bangladesh with an estimated population of 1 million, reveal that the conceptual competence of the entrepreneurs is the most commonly contribute entrepreneurial competence in terms of producing business performances. This revelation of this research once again highlights the mental front of entrepreneurship as the front side performance driver. JEL: L10; L20 <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0822/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Contra intuições

This paper intends to offer a critical evaluation of the role played by intuitions in the mainstream methodology in traditional analytic epistemology. The criticism directed to what I call methodology of evaluation by intuitions shows that epistemologists often idealize the reliability of intuitions when assessing a theory against potential counterexamples, ignoring that the disposition to answer intuitively to a case of concept attribution is bounded to the familiar dimension in which the relevant conceptual competence emerges. Thus, the reliability of intuitions does not necessarily extend to far-fetched cases. Given that the assessment by our intuitions is not sufficient to decide for or against an epistemological theory, I offer a sketch for a pragmatic and naturalized conception of theoretical decision-making in epistemology.Key-words: Intuitions, Analytic epistemology, Conceptual abilities, Naturalism, Pragmatism.

The liar paradox in the predictive mind

Most discussions frame the Liar Paradox as a formal logical-linguistic puzzle. Attempts to resolve the paradox have focused very little so far on aspects of cognitive psychology and processing, because semantic and cognitive-psychological issues are generally assumed to be disjunct. I provide a motivation and carry out a cognitive-computational treatment of the liar paradox based on a cognitive-computational model of language and conceptual knowledge within the Predictive Processing (PP) framework. I suggest that the paradox arises as a failure of synchronization between two ways of generating the liar situation in two different (idealized) PP sub-models, one corresponding to language processing and the other to the processing of meaning and world-knowledge. In this way, I put forward the claim that the liar sentence is meaningless but has an air of meaningfulness. I address the possible objection that the proposal violates the Principle of Unrestricted Compositionality, which purportedly regulates the conceptual competence of thinkers.

Translation Teaching and Cognitive Linguistics

This paper is mainly concerned with the implications of cognitive linguistics for translation teaching and pedagogy. It sets out to succinctly chart some presumed shortcomings of replacement-based pedagogical methods that have long been centred around linear mechanical substitution of linguistic signs and patterns. Replacement approach, the paper argues, falls short of reinforcing what it takes to be the conceptual competence. In this connection, we account for our main assumption that translation teaching should be based on a sound theoretical footing that takes the conceptual system and the frames, or other structuring entities, populating it on board. Experimentally focusing on the conceptual system, cognitive linguistics’ framework, we contend building on some relevant literature, provides a wide range of far reaching procedural models conductive to the innovation of translation pedagogy and practice. The examples investigated in the paper reveal that translation teaching may be more prolific if it is equally based on such models, which inform our understanding of textual lexico-semantic units in terms of their surface functioning as prompts serving for dynamically constructing semantic-conceptual equivalence.

Knowledge and Truth in Plato

I defend four main theses: (1) Knowledge, in Plato’s vocabulary, is a kind of conceptual competence, involving ‘knowing what it is’ about something like virtue or justice; (2) There is a corresponding special meaning of the verb ‘is’ that occurs in the expression ‘knowing what it is’, which is key to understanding what Plato means by claiming that Forms have a superior kind of being; (3) When one knows ‘what it is’ about such concepts, one knows neither a proposition, nor set of propositions, nor an object, but something like a type. Plato’s term is eidos. Plato rightly notes that, in ordinary experience, we never encounter types, only tokens; (4) Although encountering such tokens does not constitute knowledge, it can provide a ladder whereby philosophers can attain a better grasp of the truths in question. Plato’s preferred philosophical method turns out to be an ‘iconic method’—consciously using images and particulars as stepping stones in the enquiry. Via case studies from the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus, I establish that these theses are not only compatible with the texts, but render some otherwise puzzling passages intelligible. I show that Plato diagnoses, and deliberately sidesteps, the impasse of Socrates’ fruitless quest for definitions, developing a new method inspired by geometry’s ability to deal pictorially with indefinable lengths. The book offers a novel picture of Plato as resisting and overcoming, not following, the Socratic obsession with definitions, and adopting, not resisting, the use of pictorial proofs and imagery.

Why conceptual competence won’t help the non-naturalist epistemologist

Non-naturalist normative realists face an epistemological objection: They must explain how their preferred route of justification ensures a non-accidental connection between justified moral beliefs and the normative truths. One strategy for meeting this challenge begins by pointing out that we are semantically or conceptually competent in our use of the normative terms, and then argues that this competence guarantees the non-accidental truth of some of our first-order normative beliefs. In this paper, I argue against this strategy by illustrating that this competence based strategy undermines the non-naturalist's ability to capture the robustly normative content of our moral beliefs.