Paradigms and entrepreneurial networks–some methodological challenges

The use of network approaches to gain an understanding of business behaviour in general, and entrepreneurial action in particular, has increased. Research into entrepreneurial networking, however, varies considerably depending upon paradigmatic assumptions. In deterministic contexts networks mainly represent restrictions while in voluntaristic settings the network is the very instrument by which new ventures are realized. A subjectivist approach thus seems to be most able to exploit the potentials of the network metaphor in entrepreneurship research since venturing means organizing through personal networking. Yet both quantitative and qualitative tools may be adopted when mapping and interpreting the characteristics of entrepreneurial networks.     

Assessing the impact of individual and context factors on the entrepreneurial process. A cross-country multilevel approach

This paper attempts to fill the gap on the existing entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing the influence of two groups of individual-level factors (socio-economic, demographic and perceptual characteristics) and two groups of country-level factors (both formal and informal institutional measures and macroeconomic variables) on three stages of the entrepreneurial process. We analyze the interplay between individual and context factors in nascent, young and established entrepreneurs across 49 different countries, mixing data from different sources and applying multilevel binary logistic regression models. Our results show that entrepreneurial activities are male headed, irrespectively of the entrepreneurial stage of their activities, and that highly-educated entrepreneurs are more oriented to start up new ventures. The existence of a wider network of people involved in entrepreneurship contributes to updating information on new markets and opportunities, leading to a more accurate entrepreneurial decision. The level of development of a country constitutes an important determinant of entrepreneurship but also moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutional factors. In more developed countries, individual characteristics may be still determinant factors shaping the decision to become an entrepreneur, although their magnitude may depend on the stage of the entrepreneurial process. Finally, the key to entrepreneurship for both more and less developed countries seems to be their fiscal systems: a fair tax system that actively fights tax evasion and corruption seems to be essential to reducing the economic pressure associated with the creation and survival of ventures.

     

Does entrepreneurial activity matter for economic growth in developing countries? The role of the institutional environment

The discussion on which institutions determine entrepreneurial activity – and the role of institutions in the aggregated output for developing countries – is as yet unresolved. The extant literature about entrepreneurship recognizes new ventures as potential mechanisms for long-term development. Yet, there is a consensus on the lack of evidence, particularly for these countries. Drawing on institutional economics, this article explores the interrelationships among institutional environment, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth. To this end, we use simultaneous-equation panel data models for a sample of 14 developing countries (78 observations) over the period of 2004–2012. The main findings suggest a causal chain running from institutions to opportunity entrepreneurship, which is linked to the economic growth of emerging economies. In particular, we find that institutional factors – such as the number of procedures to start a new business, private credit coverage ,, and access to communication– influence entrepreneurial activity driven by opportunity. Policy implications for developing countries could be derived in order to enhance their economic performance through entrepreneurial activity.

     

Mapping the strategic factor market for sport entrepreneurship

Previous scholarship in entrepreneurship and sport management has highlighted their symbiotic nature. The degree to which sport is embedded in society makes it an ideal platform from which to launch economically-motivated entrepreneurial endeavors that may also be leveraged to generate socially transformative causes. Despite this important realization, efforts to understand sport entrepreneurship have been limited in their ability to describe the broad trends affecting sport entrepreneurs. This study uses a sample of 967 sport-related transactions by private equity and venture capital firms between 1988 and 2016 to chart some of these trends. In doing so, we hope to provide a solid foundation on which future sport entrepreneurship research can build. The results accentuate some interesting paradoxes in how private equity and venture capitalist firms invest in and divest from sport-related entrepreneurial ventures.     

Resources and bridging: the role of spatial context in rural entrepreneurship

This article contributes to the emerging discussion on the role of context in entrepreneurship as well as the development of theorizing on rural entrepreneurship. It does so by exploring the role of spatial context for rural entrepreneurs. Through a case study of 28 ventures, two modes of spatializing rural entrepreneurial activities are identified in the form of resource endowments and spatial bridging. Additionally, we develop a typology of rural entrepreneurs, which captures hitherto unexplored heterogeneity within this group of entrepreneurs. Spatial context is found to be of considerable significance to the rural entrepreneurial process and hence this study contributes to a micro-level understanding of place-specific entrepreneurial practices and the non-local circulation of value that can enrich local economies.     

‘Embrace the masculine; attenuate the feminine’ – gender,identity work and entrepreneurial legitimation in the nascent context

This article critically analyses how gender bias impacts upon women’s efforts to legitimate nascent ventures. Given the importance of founder identity as a proxy for entrepreneurial legitimacy at nascency, we explore the identity work women undertake when seeking to claim legitimacy for their emerging ventures in a prevailing context of masculinity. In so doing, we challenge taken for granted norms pertaining to legitimacy and question the basis upon which that knowledge is claimed. In effect, debates regarding entrepreneurial legitimacy are presented as gender neutral yet, entrepreneurship is a gender biased activity. Thus, we argue it is essential to recognize how gendered assumptions impinge upon the quest for legitimacy. To illustrate our analysis, we use retrospective and real time empirical evidence evaluating legitimating strategies as they unfold, our findings reveal tensions between feminine identities such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ and those of the prototypical entrepreneur. This dissonance prompted women to undertake specific forms of identity work to bridge the gap between femininity, legitimacy and entrepreneurship. We conclude by arguing that the pursuit of entrepreneurial legitimacy during nascency is a gendered process which disadvantages women and has the potential to negatively impact upon the future prospects of their fledgling ventures.     

The relationship between resources,entrepreneurial orientation and performance in farm-based ventures

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firm-specific resources and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of the firm may influence performance in small farm-based ventures. It builds upon theoretical strands from the resource-based and entrepreneurship perspectives. Research within these fields indicates that these relationships might be dependent on the context within which the firm operates. Hypotheses are developed to test the possible effect of entrepreneurial efforts and resources (financial position, farm size, location, network and unique competence) on short- and long-term performance. Data gathered in 2003 and 2006 from farms engaged in innovative ventures were used to test the hypotheses. The results show that financial capacity, unique competence and entrepreneurial efforts influence performance in the investigated firms. This suggests that firms do get paid back in the long run for engaging in entrepreneurial efforts. Thus, entrepreneurial activities and attitudes represent an important factor enabling firms to create, reconsider and apply their resources in more efficient ways.     

Leveraging entrepreneurial ecosystems as human resource systems: A theory of meta-organizational human resource management

Entrepreneurs require human resources to establish and scale their ventures; however, constraints often prevent entrepreneurs from investing in formal human resource systems. How entrepreneurs overcome human resource challenges by leveraging their entrepreneurial ecosystems as informal inter-organizational talent management systems has been overlooked by scholars. We propose a model of entrepreneurial ecosystem human resource management, theorizing that ecosystem participants collectively perform the human resource management function for entrepreneurship communities. Drawing from economic rents theory, we explain how entrepreneurial ecosystems encourage a form of meta-organizational human resource management that allows ecosystem participants to coordinate talent acquisition, learning and development, performance management and rewards, and retention. Coordinated entrepreneurial ecosystems improve entrepreneurial performance by sourcing talent, onboarding selected members, enculturating ecosystem values, developing entrepreneurial skills, and retaining human resources, which in turn generates rents. We discuss how our theory catalyzes research at the HR and entrepreneurial ecosystems interface and reveals insights for practitioners.     

The effects of ambiguity on entrepreneurship

We incorporate ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) into a classic model of entrepreneurship to analyze, among other things, its effects on the optimal level of business startups, the relation between total assets and the size of the entrepreneurial investment, the effects of increasing ambiguity on developing new ventures, and the decision to self‐select into entrepreneurship for an indifferent decision maker. We first show that, under the monotone‐likelihood ratio property, the introduction of ambiguity negatively affects the optimal entrepreneurial investment, something that is consistent with most experimental evidence about entrepreneurial choice under ambiguity. Then, we show that the classical explanations for the positive correlation between total assets and business startups based on decreasing absolute risk aversion preferences and prudent behavior can be challenged when ambiguity is incorporated into the analysis, and we provide the conditions that guarantee that the traditional comparative static result under risk is replicated under ambiguity. We also show that increases in ambiguity aversion reduce entrepreneurial activities. Finally, we discuss our results under alternative ways of modeling ambiguity.     

2008创业案例研讨会及学术观点综述

2008年9月20～21日,以通过案例研究创业为主题的2008年创业案例研讨会在南开大学商学院召开。大会在创业精神、创业者与创业机会制度、创业学习、领导与新企业成长草根创业新企业价值创造与管理教学型案例等方面取得了丰富的成果。作为中国首届创业案例研讨会,大会对于推动中国创业研究、促进创业教育具有重要的意义。     

Innovative outcomes from migrant entrepreneurship: a matter of whether you think you can,or think you can’t

The entrepreneurship literature has exposed some of the most influential antecedents of innovative entrepreneurship. Prior research has also identified crucial features of migrant entrepreneurship. This article employs lessons from these two areas and draws on social cognitive theory to explore the main drivers of innovative ventures among migrants. We center the attention on entrepreneurs, differentiating them between two management strategies: imitation or innovation; and we study the role of perceived self-efficacy, prior entrepreneurial experience, and social capital into the likelihood of acting innovative. For our empirical analysis, we primarily use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for three years covering 2016–2018 and gathering 5713 observations of early-stage entrepreneurs from Chile. Our estimations show that being a migrant is in itself an insufficient condition to influence seeking substantial differentiation from what is traditionally offered in the local market; instead, we confirm that a migrant who feels capable of successfully starting a business will be likely to conduct innovative entrepreneurship. Contributions of these findings for theoretical and practical advances of the field are discussed.

     

Social capital and entrepreneurial process

The paper examines the relationship between social capital and entrepreneurial engagement of individuals in 35 nations from Europe and Asia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical research that attempts to investigate the influence of three-dimensional social capital concept – trust, networks and norms – on three stages of entrepreneurial process – preference, trial and success – using such large and comprehensive cross-sectional micro data. In general, we find that all three dimensions of social capital matter in the entrepreneurship context, albeit differently. They become beneficial in different ways and at different stages of entrepreneurial involvement. For example, among trust variables, institutional trust in general, and trust in business-oriented and business-supporting actors in particular, exert significant positive effect on entrepreneurial process. Individuals with formal membership in professional associations are more likely to perceive entrepreneurial opportunities, while some close or strong-tie networks might prevent them from progressing in the entrepreneurship ladder. Finally, individual level civic norms appear to be negatively associated with early-stage entrepreneurship, while the success in becoming an entrepreneur is not found to be bound by people’s civic norms.     

The salient role of institutions in Women’s entrepreneurship: a critical review and agenda for future research

Institutions play an important role in women’s and men’s entrepreneurial behaviors. This article provides a systematic review of institutions and women’s entrepreneurship literature through an institutional lens, with a particular focus on informal and formal institutions. The article sets out to explore institutions for women’s entrepreneurship, illustrating why having an institutional perspective of women’s entrepreneurship contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. To reach this aim, we analyze and classify the scholarship by explanatory factors and type of informal and formal institutions. The article suggests that gender roles, as an informal institution, influence the creation of both informal and formal institutions, and in turn, the women’s entrepreneurial behaviors is based on gender roles. Finally, a theoretical model is developed, which allocates women’s entrepreneurship in the center and shows the role of institutional environment in their decision to start new ventures. Implications for future research are finally discussed.     

Entrepreneurial global franchise ventures: US and European franchisee failure strategic and empirical perspectives

Rapid United States and European franchise growth offers potential benefits for stakeholders and host counties, as well as the potential for failure. Franchisee failure research is a complex area confounded by varying failure definitions, approaches, an event-focus, and single-year data. This paper includes a strategic franchisee failure perspective that views franchisee failure as a multi-stage process rather than an event; new longitudinal data from the United States for over 780 franchise systems and 292,000 franchise units and United Kingdom franchisee failure data for over 700 franchise systems and 31,000 franchisee units; and estimates of current European business-format franchise market size, including selected Central and Eastern European countries. Understanding and mitigating franchisee failure provide potential lessons for franchisors and franchisees. Franchisee failure and the strategic implications for franchise entrepreneurial ventures is a significant research area that merits further study and analysis.     

Telling their own stories: Māori entrepreneurship in the mainstream screen industry

We examined how factors from Indigenous entrepreneurship research (social capital, cultural capital, self-efficacy) help explain the high level of Māori entrepreneurial performance in the mainstream screen industry. Results, based on ten case studies and a one-year series of structured interviews, extend prior research by showing that these Indigenous entrepreneurs benefit jointly from two forms of capital: cultural and social. We found high levels of both forms to increase the desire for emancipation of cultural and community identity – not just individual identity – through entrepreneurship. Self-efficacy and storytelling helped ameliorate discontinuities across Indigenous and mainstream contexts. Our research sheds new light on how Indigenous ventures can pursue mainstream entrepreneurship while maintaining cultural identity. It also makes several distinct contributions to the Indigenous entrepreneurship literature. First, it provides an integrative theoretic review. Second, it illustrates a culturally appropriate methodology for researching Māori entrepreneurs with implications for other Indigenous communities. Third, it proposes cultural capital and social capital as a two-part framework for explaining Indigenous entrepreneurial action. Fourth, it shows how entrepreneurship can be empowering for Indigenous communities. Finally, our paper demonstrates that entrepreneurship is a promising mechanism for preserving and promoting the cultures of Māori and other Indigenous peoples.     

Open standards,vertical disintegration and entrepreneurial opportunities: How vertically-specialized firms entered the U.S. semiconductor industry

This paper shows how the emergence of open standards has created large numbers of entrepreneurial opportunities in the semiconductor industry by enabling vertical specialization. Integrating data on firms and technology evolution, we find a gradual increase in the percentage of firms represented by newly-founded “de novo” entrepreneurial startups, instead of “de alio” ones, as open standards emerged in semiconductor products and processes over the life of the industry. This standardization reduced transaction costs and fostered specialization, thus facilitating the entry of vertically-specialized new ventures. Vise versa, the rise of such new ventures further pushed the adoption of open standards, and the vertical disintegration of the industry. Our theory on how standardization creates opportunities for new ventures and our analysis of the semiconductor industry contribute to the technology entrepreneurship literature, as well as the industry architecture literature that has primarily focused on the impact of standardization on the disintegration of vertically-integrated incumbents.     

Quantifying the relationship between entrepreneurship and competitiveness development stages in Latin America

This research aims to quantify the importance of a country??s entrepreneurship level in terms of its competitiveness rates. Our hypothesis is that those countries entrepreneurship growth rates increase their competitiveness indicators and that this entrepreneurial improvement could be a key factor in reaching the next stage of development. We establish this relationship using a longitudinal database of Latin American countries that participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and the Global Competitiveness Reports of the World Economic Forum (WEF) from 2001 to 2006. GEM and WEF construct aggregated indexes using several variables to rate each country??s entrepreneurship activity and competitiveness development. We use a discriminant analysis to identify various countries?? competitiveness subgroups and show how each country??s entrepreneurship rates have weight in different stages of competitiveness, placing a special emphasis on Latin America. Our results suggest that Latin American countries need to gain entrepreneurial dynamics and economic (and competitiveness) development by transforming their typical self-employment or low value-added new ventures for local markets into strong, innovative networked firms competing globally. Some management and policy implications are also discussed.     

Gendered cognitions: a socio-cognitive model of how gender affects entrepreneurial preferences

ABSTRACT

This research explores the social-cognitive factors which lead both women and men to pursue ventures consistent with their gendered social identity, therefore, reinforcing the gender gap in entrepreneurship. We measured the self-assessments of individuals presented with experimentally manipulated entrepreneurial opportunities that were either consistent or inconsistent with their self-reported gender. A theoretical model derived from Social Role Theory is presented and tested. It posits that a gender match (mismatch) with the entrepreneurial opportunity results in higher (lower) reported self-efficacy, anticipated social resources, and venture desirability and lower (higher) venture risk perceptions. The experimental data are tested in a sequential mediation SEM model. We find evidence that self-efficacy and anticipated social resources mediate the effect of gender congruency on perceived risk and venture desirability. The results provide insight into the insidious barriers that play a role in reproducing a gender gap in entrepreneurial outcomes by ‘nudging’ women into lower-return ventures in less lucrative industries.     

CHALLENGES TO THEORY DEVELOPMENT IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH*

Why do some new ventures succeed while others fail? What is the essence of entrepreneurship? Who is most likely to become a successful entrepreneur and why? How do entrepreneurs make decisions? What market, regulatory, and organizational environments foster the most successful entrepreneurial activities? Entrepreneurship research is plagued by these and other fundamental unanswered questions, for which there does not exist a cohesive explanatory, predictive, or normative theory. In this article we identify major challenges for entrepreneurship theory development, and offer insights into promising directions for future research. Our conclusion suggests that it may be too ambitious to expect a complete and robust theory due to the interdisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship. However, we show that by integrating perspectives and by applying analytic, empirical and experimental tools from a range of fields, some of the fundamental questions can be answered.