Entrepreneurial migrants from/in emerging economies: breaking taboos and stereotypes

Entrepreneurial migration from/in emerging economies, as grand societal and humanitarian challenges that we currently face, underscores the need for scholarly research. In our role as social science researchers, this special issue aimed to stimulate scholars from different social science fields to rethink more broadly about the opportunities for making an impact with our research focus on entrepreneurial migration from/in emerging economies. This article provides an overview of the theoretical, empirical, managerial, and policy implications of entrepreneurial migrants from/in emerging economies research. It puts forward key concepts and measures, explores the relations within the current broader literature on migration and entrepreneurship, and identifies several gaps that represent future research questions. We also introduce eight papers in a special section of this issue, which offer answers to critical gaps and questioning some taboos/stereotypes related entrepreneurial migrants. We conclude by outlining an agenda for engaging the academic community to extend research on entrepreneurial migrants from/in emerging economies. It is the perfect time to “make a difference” through our research, teaching, and interaction with multiple socioeconomic agents to constitute impacts that “endorse a real transformation” for supporting the migrants’ community.

     

Training trends: Macro,micro, and policy issues

The scope of the training enterprise is vast, the field is dynamic, and multi-level issues confront training researchers. After identifying three “mega trends” – globalization, technology, and demographic changes - this paper reviews training trends at the macro level, the micro level, and emerging policy issues and links each one to the mega trends. The macro-level trends - increasing demands for personal and professional development by job seekers and employees, the effects of digital technology on work, structural changes in labor markets, increasing training opportunities for non-standard workers, and training as an important aspect of an employer's brand - reflect broad trends in the economy. Micro-level trends - better understanding of requirements for effective learning; use of short, digital lessons; and options for optimizing learning and preventing skill and knowledge decay - each focus on improving the quality of training. Policy issues - training needs in small and medium-sized enterprises, the need for “middle skills”, and vocational education - raise vexing issues for all stakeholders. Together, macro, micro, and policy issues reflect ongoing challenges for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers everywhere.     

Beyond the “ivory tower”. Comparing academic and non-academic knowledge on social entrepreneurship

The increasing relevance of societal challenges has recently brought social entrepreneurship to the fore due to its capacity to leverage entrepreneurial processes to achieve social value while ensuring profits. In this study, we apply an experimental research method to analyse the concept of social entrepreneurship comprehensively. More specifically, we develop bibliometric analysis and web crawling techniques to gather information related to social entrepreneurship from Scopus and Wikipedia. We conduct a comparative network analysis of social entrepreneurship’s conceptual structure at academic and non-academic levels. This analysis has been performed considering scientific articles’ keywords and Wikipedia webpages’ co-occurrences, enabling us to identify four different thematic clusters in both cases. Moreover, plotting the centrality and density of each cluster on a bi-dimensional matrix, we have sketched a strategic diagram and provided the thematic evolution of this research topic, based on the level of interaction among clusters, and the degree of cohesion of keywords in each cluster. This paper represents one of the first attempts in the entrepreneurship literature to shed light on the conceptual boundaries of a research topic based on the analysis of both a scientific and an open-source knowledge database. Our results reveal similarities and discrepancies between those two different sources of knowledge, and outline avenues for future studies at the intersection between social entrepreneurship and the research domains of digital transformation, performance measurement, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and ethics. We also call for a further conceptualisation of social entrepreneurship in the face of the increasing complexity that characterises grand challenges.

     

Mapping Business Model Research: A Document Bibliometric Analysis

Today, the business model (BM) is one of the most studied concepts within managerial and innovation literature. Although scholars have shown a growing interest in understanding and analysing the BM, a theoretical conceptualization is still lacking. This paper provides a systematic review of the current state of BM research by mapping the research landscape to identify key research publications, journals that had relevance in developing the BM literature, and the main areas of research. Using the ISI Web of Knowledge “core collection”, this study conducts a document bibliometric analysis of 3,604 publications in the fields of management and business that were published between 1985 and 2017. The use of quantitative methods allowed us to overcome the shortcomings of the past subjective literature reviews. We clustered the selected articles on the basis of two distinct perspectives. First, we identified the founders of the discipline, creating a map of co-cited articles (co-citation analysis); this enabled us to identify five major research clusters, formed on the basis of similar co-citations, that characterize the historical evolution of the BM studies. Second, throughout the bibliographic coupling analysis, which aggregates articles sharing a similar bibliography, we captured the main emergent research sub-fields of the most recent BM literature.     

The state of #digitalentrepreneurship: a big data Leximancer analysis of social media activity

This paper examined online sentiment, key themes and patterns evident in social media activity about digital entrepreneurship. It provides a snapshot-in-time, visual-first perspective on social media user-generated-content (UGC) to better understand the topic of digital entrepreneurship. Global data consisting of 31,017 publicly available UGC which used the #digitalentrepreneurship (hashtag) and the keywords ‘digital entrepreneurship’ were collected. A computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), Leximancer, was used for an automated text-mining analysis. There is positive online sentiment surrounding digital entrepreneurship technology, ecosystem and industry, and one which promotes women transformation of digital entrepreneurship globally. Negative sentiment pointed out that future development and support of youth in digital entrepreneurship is needed. Digital entrepreneurs were identified as needing to focus on strategy, leadership, management, and social media platforms. A comprehensive perspective on the state of digital entrepreneurship in online UGC is provided. Insights into the challenges, issues, changes, success stories and key topics in digital entrepreneurship are highlighted. Future research is encouraged to adopt longitudinal and quantitative approaches, to provide further insights into the evolution of digital entrepreneurship. The paper contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by applying the Social Exchange Theory and the Social Media User Engagement Framework to better understand social media activity around digital entrepreneurship. The findings show that there are real challenges and issues to overcome but there are also changes occurring in digital entrepreneurship and social media users are keen to share and learn from digital entrepreneurship success stories.

     

Engaging consumers in esthetic offerings: conceptualizing and developing a measure for arts engagement

• As the arts face a number of challenges, including changing audience tastes and inconsistent ticket purchasing behavior, there have been calls for innovative approaches to marketing. Experts in the field have suggested that “engaging experiences” in the arts be cultivated to aid in audience development efforts. However, in the literature, little attention has been devoted to defining what encompasses an “engaging experience” in the arts. This research addresses this gap by exploring the concept of “engagement in the arts” and developing a measurement tool, which accesses overall “arts engagement.” It applies emerging theories from the customer engagement and brand experience literatures to conceptualize “arts engagement.” In four studies, an arts engagement scale is tested for its validity, reliability, and its relationship with important outcomes in the consumption experience. Implications are discussed for marketing the arts as well as other consumption contexts that incorporate performance and artistic‐based elements, including service delivery and experiential marketing.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Desperate entrepreneurs: no opportunities,no skills

Promoting entrepreneurship has become an important policy strategy in Europe in the hope to stimulate the crisis-shaken economy. In this paper, we caution against undue expectations. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for 17 European countries, we find that a considerable proportion of the new entrepreneurs have started a business despite a negative perception of business opportunities as well as lack of confidence in their own entrepreneurial skills. This proportion has increased during the economic crisis, especially in those countries which were particularly affected by economic downturn and rising unemployment. We extend existing entrepreneurship theories to account for this phenomenon, which we call “nons-entrepreneurship”. Testing the hypotheses derived from our model, we find that the primary motivation for these people to turn to entrepreneurship is the lack of other options to enter the labour market during the economic crisis. Still, this sort of “desperate” entrepreneurship does not equal necessity based entrepreneurship, warranting further research.     

Negative Spillovers Across Partnerships for Responsible Innovation: Evidence from the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

Humanity faces ongoing and contemporaneous grand challenges. Occasionally, abrupt shocks escalate a grand challenge’s salience over others. Prior research has advocated forming partnerships to address grand challenges via responsible innovation. Yet, it remains unclear how temporal changes in the salience of a grand challenge impact innovation performances of partnerships. We address this research gap by bridging the literature on issue salience, responsible innovation and interorganizational relationships. We argue that shocks either aid or harm the performance of partnerships for responsible innovation depending on whether their domains are directly or indirectly affected. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 sets the empirical context to test our theory. We find that while the innovation performance of Ebola partnerships formed after the outbreak rose eleven-fold, the performance of partnerships treating Influenza fell by 84.9 per cent. Our theory and findings have immediate implications for today’s COVID-19 outbreak, cautioning against salience shifts among concurrent grand challenges.     

Theoretical foundations of Swedish entrepreneurship and small-business research

Our main purpose is to test the proposition that Swedish entrepreneurship and small-business research has established a theoretical platform of its own over the last quarter of a century. In order to cope with that challenge we have to provide answers to some basic questions, for example: (i) What theoretical basic elements can be identified in Swedish entrepreneurship and small-business research? (ii) Can we detect shifts in the theoretical basis over time? (iii) To what extent does the research accumulate to form a unified body of knowledge? References used in doctoral theses within this field of research between 1970 and 1995 constitute the basis for the analysis. The results of the study show that the research field is deeply rooted in the sphere of business administration, primarily in organisation and decision theory, and in a strong qualitative research tradition. The field is still very fragmented — it is difficult to identify any “core literature” and the number of different journals used in the research is large. However, during the last decade some interesting changes have taken place: (i) interest has grown among researchers in the field to seek the roots of the subject, which means that more references are made to the “classical works” in the research field, (ii) the academisation of the field has increased, as manifested in the growing use of scientific journals, as against official publications and “grey research literature”, and (iii) theoretical linkages to other fields of research (apart from business administration) have grown stronger. The results indicate greater specialisation and more attention paid to nuances in the research due to clearer definitions of important concepts and the generation of a vocabulary and models specific to the field. Also, the field is in the process of distancing itself from a purely technical approach to knowledge. However, we will still reject the initial proposition that the research field has developed a robust theoretical platform. The citation analysis provides an emergent pattern in the development of entrepreneurship and small-business research. In the seventies the research was empirically orientated, with a view to describing the phenomenon and making it visible in different contexts. The eighties were characterised by the positioning of entrepreneurship and small-business research within business administration, whereas the nineties have been marked by an attempt to create a separate identity as a distinct academic field of study. This is reflected in a growing interest in the origins of this field of research and a broadening of the research beyond the frame set by business administration. We believe that a favourable platform for a future specialisation of research challenges and integration of lines of thought is thereby created, which in turn will help the research field to mature and to develop its own theories and methodologies.     

Antecedents of the small firm effect: the role of knowledge spillover and blocked mobility for employee entrepreneurial intentions

Small firms are said to produce more entrepreneurs than larger ones (“small firm effect”). Applying existing theories, we analyze how different management positions influence employee entrepreneurship in small firms. Based on a panel study of 4832 cases, we provide evidence for the fact that small firms indeed produce more entrepreneurs. Moreover, we show that lower management positions of small firm employees are responsible for this small firm effect. We conclude that small firms seem to create an environment in which employees on low management positions strongly benefit from knowledge spillover effects as they are educated necessary skills, knowledge and expertise, and are able to build up networks conducive to entrepreneurship (“knowledge spillover effect”), while not having the multifaceted advancement opportunities as in large companies (“blocked mobility effect”).     

Management theories linking individual and organizational level analysis in entrepreneurship research

This paper carries out a bibliographical review of the evolution of the individual level research, the new individual approaches and analyzes possible methods for the extension of entrepreneurship research to the organizational level. We also discuss about the suitability of the resource based view and network approaches. We review the management theories and paradigms which are capable of incorporating and linking individual and organizational level studies to the external context where entrepreneurs compete and seek opportunities. In this sense we refer to the resource based view and the network theory as they have been deemed the most adequate to incorporate micro level theories through a convergence of concepts, rather than by a combination or confrontation of ideas. The linking concepts of the individual and firm level theories are presented as an evolution of entrepreneurship research in a specific direction, showing the common ideas shared in the convergent point.     

Challenges for spatially oriented entrepreneurship research

During the past two decades, interdisciplinary oriented entrepreneurship research focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurial activities and support policies. This paper takes stock of central themes in entrepreneurship research at and across different geographic scales, the preferred sources of data and information as well as methodological approaches. It sets out to discuss the shifting interest of research over time and to sketch out theoretical and methodological challenges for further research. This paper is based on a review of 18 international journals in small business and entrepreneurship research, economic geography, regional economics and neighbouring sciences for the period 1990–2007. Altogether, 348 relevant articles were identified, read and classified. The analysis reveals that the entrepreneur's socio-spatial contexts in which they operate on a daily basis are still absent from much of the entrepreneurship debate. We suggest intensifying research efforts on the linkage between entrepreneurial activities and localities in order to reach a better understanding of the everydayness of entrepreneurship.     

Human resource management research and practice in Asia: Past,present and future

The continuing emergence of Asia as a critically important continent for the foreseeable future has renewed interest in understanding theory and practice in this region. This special issue was designed to shed light on human resource management (HRM) issues in this region, and to help guide future research in and on this region. In this introductory article, we first analyze the growth of HRM scholarship in Asia, by examining the research published over the last twenty-five years. We then describe the genesis of this special issue, and summarize the key themes emerging from the review articles in the issue. These include: psychological contract; work-life interface; corporate social responsibility; multinational corporations and their subsidiaries; the challenges of global talent management; convergence-divergence; state socialism to post-state socialism; and incorporating the context. We further offer suggestions for future research by proposing critical topics and emerging themes, including: employee voice; diversity and inclusion; employee well-being and resilience; preparing and responding to crises; and green human resource management. We conclude by offering theoretical perspectives and highlighting key recent developments which are likely to impact future practice, and should be addressed by scholars.     

A journey of social sustainability in organization during MDG & SDG period: A bibliometric analysis

Organizational sustainability is a multi-facet paradigm widely used to address perennial business challenges such as climate change, industrial waste, the economies of scale and social well-being, etc. In the last three decades, extensive research has been performed on ecological or economic sustainability, ignoring the third pillar of sustainability. Given the importance of humans and society-a center-stage of inclusive development-this paper aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis to examine the growth of organizational social sustainability (OSS) from 2000 to 2021 during MDG & SDG periods. A total of 1566 publications are analyzed using Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS) database. Citation networks, bibliographic coupling, and thematic mapping have explored influential work, intellectual structure, and research gaps. The study findings demonstrated that most publications are during the SDG period, with Sustainability as the most productive journal and the USA as the most contributing country. The top 10 active institutions are from Australia, France, and Spain. The top contributing authors are from France, but the USA is at the top in citations. Contributions are lacking from large portions of Africa. Keyword analysis showed that “social sustainability,” “sustainable development,” “environmental sustainability,” “sustainable supply change management,” “circular economy,” and “social life cycle assessment” are the main topics. Keyword analysis and thematic mapping show that despite increased publications in the field of organizational social sustainability, OSS research is still far from focusing on the stakeholders' benefits, satisfaction, and subjective well-being. Moreover, quantitative assessment of OSS based on sustainability standards such as Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and Value Reporting Foundation (VRF) standards was found scant in the given field. The present research concluded with scope and opportunity for future research in the area of OSS.     

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Is the HRM Process Important? Past,Current, and Future Challenges

Ten years ago, Bowen and Ostroff ( 2004 ) criticized the one‐sided focus on the content‐based approach, where researchers take into account the inherent virtues (or vices) associated with the content of HR practices to explain performance. They explicitly highlight the role of the psychological processes through which employees attach meaning to HRM. In this first article of the special section entitled “Is the HRM Process Important?” we present an overview of past, current, and future challenges. For past challenges, we attempt to categorize the various research streams that originated from the seminal piece. To outline current challenges, we present the results of a content analysis of the original 15 articles put forward for the special section. In addition, we provide the overview of a caucus focused on this theme that was held at the Academy of Management annual meeting in Boston in 2012. In conclusion, we discuss future challenges relating to the HRM process approach and review the contributions that have been selected—against a competitive field—for this special issue. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Pursuing sustainable development through green entrepreneurship: An institutional perspective

Pursuing sustainable development through green entrepreneurship has been advocated, conceptualized, and empirically examined in the recent environmental management and entrepreneurship literature. However, green entrepreneurs are embedded in institutional environments that may discourage them from embracing sustainable development because of the “paradox of embedded agency.” How can a firm overcome the liability of such an agency issue and escape what has become known as a “green prison”? This study proposes that, because international venturing exposes firms to foreign institutions, it provides them with opportunities for institutional learning. Thus, we examine how international venturing influences green entrepreneurship which, in turn, impacts firm performance. Specifically, based on institutional theory, this study develops a firm-level green entrepreneurship framework with three dimensions: green initiatives (a firm's active adoption of green practices), received government green support (benefits that a firm gains from the government by adapting to governmental incentives, programs, and policies related to green practices), and green political influence (a firm's attempts to influence legislation that enacts laws, rules, and regulations related to green practices). The results obtained by analyzing 152 firms that engage in international venturing activities and 151 firms that do not show that international venturing is positively associated with green initiatives and government green support while these two factors further directly enhance firm performance and mediate the effects of international venturing on performance.     

Common Good HRM: A paradigm shift in Sustainable HRM?

As organizations increasingly claim to have become more sustainable and to have contributed to global sustainable development, demands for Human Resource Management (HRM) to become sustainable intensify. In the past decade, the concept of Sustainable HRM received increasing attention in both practice and research. However, academics' views about what Sustainable HRM means are diverse, and the effectiveness of Sustainable HRM practices is uncertain. We reviewed key articles in the literature on Sustainable HRM and as a result highlight how the purpose of HRM has been transformed in the search for sustainability. We present four Sustainable HRM types and describe how HRM can effectively contribute to solving todays “grand” sustainability challenges by applying ideas from a common good economy perspective. We propose that a new type of Sustainable HRM – Common Good HRM – could be essential in driving progress toward addressing sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Sustainable HRM.     

Mixed methods studies in entrepreneurship research: Applications and contributions

Mixed methods research is becoming an increasingly popular approach in several fields. However, its application in the field of entrepreneurship has not been studied. The authors reviewed the use of mixed methods research in three entrepreneurship journals and two leading generalistic journals that publish entrepreneurship research, examining the main purposes and designs. A total of 955 articles were reviewed and 81 mixed methods studies were identified. The analysis of these articles revealed opportunities associated with the application of this approach. Mixed methods may help to improve entrepreneurship research addressing challenges emphasized in earlier studies. Suggestions on why and how to use mixed methods research are offered, and recommendations are provided to guide future mixed methods studies to advance our understanding of the entrepreneurial phenomenon.     

A paradigm for location and multidimensional problems in planning

Several theories, concepts, methods, or alternatively, “paradigms” have been suggested for the explanation and prediction of the location behavior of urban households. Increasingly, hwoever, “behavioral” approaches to the explanation of the dimensions of “choice” and/or exploration of alternative hypotheses have been cumbersome in the “mechanistic” paradigms of the social system and its related subsystems.An alternative paradigm of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is proposed to explore alternative structural specification hypotheses (sequential versus simultaneous) on the grouping and changing relative importance of “instrumental” and “non-instrumental” factors affecting location decision-making. AHP estimates of the “locational shares” of an urban (corridor) zonal population provide a paradigmatic basis for behavioral, vis-a-vis environmental, explanation of location decision-processes in a methodologically efficient, robust and theoretically inclusive framework of hierarchy systems.This paradigm is proposed for locational analysis requiring an effective integration of multilevel, environmental (contextual) and behavioral measures of relative importance, with limited data, and, for multidimensional problems in planning and policy-making, formidably requiring the integration of positive with normative analysis of systems.