Good Judgment,Good Luck: Frank Fetter’s Neglected Theory of Entrepreneurship

Frank Fetter’s contributions to entrepreneurship and the theory of the firm are usually overlooked although his original treatments are relevant to both the history of economic thought and contemporary entrepreneurship research. This article highlights three ways in which Fetter’s work adds to our understanding of the entrepreneurial process. First, entrepreneurs direct their enterprises through the careful delegation of authority to managers, thereby maintaining residual control over the firm; similar views were pioneered by Frank Knight and the Austrian economists who continue to study cognate problems like judgmental decision making and proxy-entrepreneurship. Second, Fetter foreshadows Knight’s influential distinction between risk and uncertainty by arguing that entrepreneurs bear uncertainty through their investment decisions. However, Fetter extends Knight’s work by explicitly considering the role that chance and luck play in entrepreneurial success, a problem still debated in entrepreneurship studies. Third, Fetter argues that scarcity implies the active investment of resources, and thus the need for entrepreneurship. This view hints at current research on entrepreneurial bricolage as well as work emphasizing investment rather than opportunity as the defining concept of entrepreneurship. It also provides the microfoundations for strategic entrepreneurship research.     

Entrepreneurship and limited access: rethinking business–state relations in Russia

Predominant theories of the Russian political economy explain the vulnerability of independent business to the state, but they do not adequately explain why businesses survive and some thrive. Recent empirical studies of business conditions have not helped in this regard because most focus on ascertaining entrepreneurs’ attitudes rather than observing their behaviour. During ethnographic fieldwork within a Siberian business, the author found that informants were pessimistic about business conditions, but that they did not expect any improvement and had developed pragmatic approaches to securing their position in the local market and competencies required to generate a profit. Their relations with dominant elites were, moreover, cordial rather than antagonistic. To account for these findings, the author draws on Douglass C. North et al.’s Limited Access Order theory and Aleksei Yurchak’s concept of ‘entrepreneurial governmentality’, and seeks to reconceptualise the relationship between business and the state.     

The social profitability of business incubators: a measurement proposal

Abstract

Public business incubators are services placed at the disposal of original, generally newly-created projects, to which physical accompaniment, supervision and location are offered at prices below market value. They have as their aim to help set in motion and consolidate these firms during the stages in which they are weaker. The ultimate goal consists in favouring the generation of innovative firms, inducers of high-quality jobs, which can diversify the local business fabric, thus becoming a key tool in local development. The present paper provides a methodology to study the economic – but above all social – impact of business incubators, based on the examination of 40 from the 42 incubators existing in the Valencian Community (a Spanish autonomous region with five million inhabitants). Data analysis allows us to state that, although business incubators are not economically profitable since they need financial aids and public investment to start operating, they do have social profitability, insofar as the activity developed by entrepreneurs permits to provide public administrations – via taxes – with returns exceeding what was invested in these incubators. It has been determined that 2.8 euros (which can be applied to a variety of social areas) are collected via taxes for each euro spent to start them up.     

Craft-art in the Danish countryside: reconciling a lifestyle,livelihood and artistic career through rural tourism

To contribute new insight related to the entrepreneurial strategies adopted by local actors involved in rural tourism, this article explores the array of dynamics and complexities faced by the members of the Arts and Crafts Association Bornholm, Denmark. Besides juggling a livelihood with a desired lifestyle, artists pursue the ambition of professional success, which adds a new and interesting dimension to the conceptualization of individual and collective strategies related to lifestyle entrepreneurship, rural identities, the commercialization of rural symbols and products, and new modes of production in the countryside. In their search for customers and spectators, these craft-artists have created a professional brand and work individually on various entrepreneurial strategies, allowing them to benefit from the short but intensive tourist season on their rural island. These strategies blur the line not only between their lifestyle aspirations, career ambitions and livelihood necessities, but also between the commercial, professional and rural nature of the space they present to tourists. This qualitative study was primarily conducted through open-ended interviews with members of the association. It is discussed lastly that these artists consequently create for themselves a hybrid space, strategized and redefined in relation to the complexities of residing in a countryside integrated within a global system.     

女性创业进入决策的影响因素及创业合法性的调节作用——基于GEM(2013)数据

基于女性主义理论和观点,用社会层次的女性创业者合法性表征一国的社会文化和经济因素,结合常用的个人层次变量,重新解构女性创业进入决策的影响因素。基于2013年GEM发布的跨国数据的实证结果显示:社会总体的女性创业者合法性显著正向调节个体层次的变量与女性创业进入决策的关系。     

Challenges for civil society involvement in civic entrepreneurship: a case study of local enterprise partnerships

Civic entrepreneurship involves engagement between the state, business and civil society to produce economic growth for the public good. In the UK context a key initiative to encourage such engagement has been the creation of local enterprise partnerships (LEPs); these structures are intended to be a key delivery driver of regional economic growth. This paper draws on insights from semi-structured interviews with actors involved in the development of a LEP in the north of England. Findings draw attention to concerns from civil society over losing its distinctiveness through these partnerships, and in the process losing its ethos as a guardian of the public good.     

Roots radical – place,power and practice in punk entrepreneurship

The significance continues to grow of scholarship that embraces critical and contextualized entrepreneurship, seeking rich explorations of diverse entrepreneurship contexts. Following these influences, this study explores the potentialized context of punk entrepreneurship. The Punk Rock band Rancid has a 20-year history of successfully creating independent musical and related creative enterprises from the margins of the music industry. The study draws on artefacts, interviews and videos created by and around Rancid to identify and analyse this example of marginal, alternative entrepreneurship. A three-part analytic frame was applied to analysing these artefacts. Place is critical to Rancid's enterprise, grounding the band socially, culturally, geographically and politically. Practice also plays an important role with Rancid's activities encompassing labour, making music, movement and human interactions. The third, and most prevalent, dimension of alterity is that of power which includes data related to dominance, subordination, exclusion, control and liberation. Rancid's entrepreneurial story is depicted as cycles, not just a linear journey, but following more complicated paths – from periphery to centre, and back again; returning to roots, whilst trying to move forwards too; grounded in tradition but also radically focused on dramatic change. Paradox, hybridized practices, and the significance of marginal place as a rich resource also emerged from the study.     

Development of academic entrepreneurship in a non-mature context: the role of the university as a hub-organisation

This paper focuses on how the evolving roles of a university and its Technology Transfer Office (TTO) are stimulating academic entrepreneurship in a non-mature entrepreneurial ecosystem. A more mature entrepreneurial ecosystem was built gradually by these actors through their progressive creation of innovation intermediaries and coordination among the local players involved in the creation of start-ups. We analyse how the university became a hub organisation. We use the case of the University of Strasbourg to show that the university contributed to the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by acting as a boundary spanner and by building and orchestrating the network of the stakeholders in the local system of innovation. This ‘hub’ university became a leading regional organisation at the political level. The TTO played a central role in supporting academic entrepreneurship at the operational level based on its evolution from a revenue maximising model to a model that takes account of social and economic regional development. The progressive adoption of a more selective model of start-up creation requires good coordination among the local actors. Over time, the TTO’s boundary spanning function increased to encompass the development of operational network building and orchestrating functions.     

Outside vs. Inside Entrepreneurs: When Institutions Bind and Favors Blind

In some societies, entrepreneurs coming from outside of a community (i.e., outside entrepreneurs) are more active than entrepreneurs from within the community (i.e., inside entrepreneurs). Institutions and relationships that entrepreneurs entertain may hamper insiders from starting or succeeding. Institutional economics and anthropology suggest that, rather than outside entrepreneurs having more resources, the case may be that inside entrepreneurs could be hampered by existing institutions that blind and social relations that bind. Outsiders, however, may be less inclined to generate societal value in a community.