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Traditionally, drinking water supply infrastructures have been designed to store as much water as possible and to do so during the energy cheap hours. This approach is unsustainable today. The use of digital systems capable of modeling the behavior of infrastructures and the creation of intelligent control systems can help to make drinking water supply systems more efficient and effective, while still meeting minimum service requirements. This work proposes the development of a control system, based on multi-agent systems (MAS), capable of generating an intelligent control over a drinking water infrastructure, based on the use of local interests of the agents and with an emergent behavior coherent with the needs. To validate the proposal, a simulator based on the infrastructures of a medium-sized Spanish city of 5000 inhabitants has been built and the control has been simulated using the MAS. The results show how the system can maintain the objectives set, handling unknown situations, and facilitating the development of future physical systems based on a just-in-time paradigm that guarantees sustainability, as it allows the generation of virtualizations of the infrastructures and their behavior, thus being able to study the best option for an infrastructure to resolve a supply situation.

This paper contributes to research on metacognitions which focuses on cognitive processes that enable entrepreneurs to create new ventures and to think beyond existing knowledge structures to become adaptable in an entrepreneurial context. Two streams of research, entrepreneurial intentions and metacognitions, jointly inform the hypotheses. Individuals with entrepreneurial intent apply some degree of conscious consideration to the possibility of starting a new business, where these intentions are the result of metacognitions. The empirical evidence ensuing from this study indicates that only the knowledge metacognitive dimension is a significant predictor of entrepreneurial intentions. The study makes a contribution in that the articulation and testing of metacognitive dimensions provides a meaningful categorization, where there are many opportunities for educators to develop skill building exercises that target metacognitions.

Applying Ajzen’s planned behavior theory, we study the impact of control beliefs (reflected by an internal locus of control) and normative beliefs (investigated via individualistic cultural orientation) on entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intentions of final year university students. We particularly explore the interactive effect of internal locus of control and culture when explaining entrepreneurial attitudes, which consequently shapes self-employment intentions. The data were collected at a German university and three universities in East Africa. We received 590 complete responses. We used PROCESS Macro to test our model and hypotheses. Our findings show that both internal locus of control and culture predict entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intention. The effects of international locus of control are mediated by entrepreneurial attitudes. Moreover, the indirect effect is further conditioned by culture. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

To capture the talents of the next generations in new venture creation and to maintain the levels of entrepreneurship in our society, a vibrant "pipeline" of potential entrepreneurs is required. Previous research has shown this pipeline may still be weak, especially for women entrepreneurs. This paper explores the relationships between gender, entrepreneurial education, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors using the data from different sample groups in three different stages of education and career development: middle and high school students, MBA students, and early career adults. The results of our analyses underscore the importance of entrepreneurial self-efficacy as a key component in understanding entrepreneurship interest and actual career choice. The positive influence of entrepreneurship education on self-efficacy proved stronger for women than for men. Implications for entrepreneurship educators as well as study limitations and areas for future research are discussed.

Learning what initially drives university students to be open to the thought of starting their own businesses has been of great interest to entrepreneurship researchers/educators. Past literature looks at a variety of important motivators that impact student intentions toward entrepreneurship but has tended to view entrepreneurial intentions as a homogeneous construct. This study uses Ajzen's theory of planned behavior to examine university students' intentions to start various types of ventures (small lifestyle, small high income and high growth). Results indicate that intentions to start small high income and high growth ventures share many commonalities and are significantly driven by behavioral beliefs and perceived behavioral control. Intentions to start small lifestyle ventures, on the other hand, are found to be independent from intentions to start either small, high income or high growth ventures and are not as well explained by the theory of planned behavior. Implications and ideas for future research and entrepreneurship education are discussed.

In many developed economies, the struggle to survive finds many small farms disappearing. Diversification is recognized as an important strategy for sustaining farms of this scale, addressing food security issues and creating a more resilient food system. This study aims to analyze farmers’ intentions to diversify into new business opportunities and how opportunity alertness and risk-taking propensity affect their intentions. These relationships are examined using data collected from 166 small and medium-sized farmers in five regions within Florida. The results indicate that for small and medium-sized farmers, opportunity alertness and risk-taking propensity have a positive effect on diversification intentions across seven different types of activities. Implications are drawn for theory and practice.

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal intentions can be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model, and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action