Conceptualizing entrepreneurial capital in the context of institutional change

This paper explores the building of entrepreneurial capital from an entrepreneurship and contextual/institutional position. In taking this position, it is possible to understand “entrepreneurial capital” as the content of the process that unfolds when individuals are exposed to certain characteristics of the environment. Drawing on findings from an ethnographically inspired longitudinal case study, the paper identifies the various actions attributed to entrepreneuring actors. Using the context of Poland as an illustrative case, the paper traces a variety of entrepreneuring accounts which appear to define entrepreneurial capital. This in turn provides a preliminary theoretical framework for the nature and the key elements of entrepreneurial capital. The study indicates that entrepreneurial capital is relationally and contextually constituted. The findings draw attention to the value of entrepreneurial capital in the context of an organizational and institutional change process that (1) involves the active creation Lachmann (Organization Studies 31: 219–244, 1986) of entrepreneuring actors within an organizational and societal context, (2) creates beneficial and supportive conditions that incorporate internal (organizational, personality) and external (environmental) resources for entrepreneuring, and (3) is facilitated by the entrepreneuring process. Finally, implications for entrepreneurship inquiry are drawn.     

Evaluating the impacts of government policy through the long view of life history

The research reported in this paper uses life history analyses of Indigenous entrepreneurs to address the following question: How do individuals engaged in entrepreneuring incorporate their experience of government policy into their self-narratives, and what affects are apparent on attitudes towards, and the objectives of, their entrepreneurial activity? Subsequently, the paper makes two contributions to conceptual debates within entrepreneurship and small business studies. Firstly, the paper shows the value of life history methodology narratives in providing insights into entrepreneuring processes over time, particularly in understanding how to evaluate the impact of enterprise animation policies. Secondly, the particular focus upon Indigenous entrepreneurs affords some purchase on recent debates relating to the purpose and potential of enterprise policies aimed at those defined as socially and economically excluded [Blackburn, R., and M. Ram. 2006. Fix of fixation? The contributions and limitations of entrepreneurship and small firms to combating social exclusion. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 18, no. 1: 73–89]. The paper's findings show that life history analysis has an important role to play in developing our understanding of entrepreneurship as a process. Moreover, evaluations of enterprise policy should pay more attention to temporally extensive impacts on individuals over their life course, and not limit evaluative efforts to programme specific factors.     

Entrepreneurial action and the Euro-American social science tradition: pragmatism,realism and looking beyond ‘the entrepreneur’

Entrepreneurship studies are dominated by the disciplines of economics and psychology and work within a limiting methodological frame of reference; a ‘scientistic’ and individualistic framework that dominates the US-led mainstream of research. To achieve a more balanced scholarship, it is helpful to look at an alternative style of research and analysis which has deep and intertwined European and American roots. This looks to other social sciences such as sociology, as well as to history and the philosophy of science. Its adoption would encourage to shift the focus away from ‘entrepreneurs’ and onto the much broader phenomenon of entrepreneurial action or ‘entrepreneuring’ in its societal and institutional contexts. Such a shift would open up a greatly expanded range of research questions and enable a better balance to be achieved between attention to individual entrepreneurial actors and their organizational, societal and institutional contexts. A pragmatist and realist frame of reference, which recognizes both the importance of processes of social construction and the existence of a ‘real world’, has considerable potential to enrich and expand the scope of entrepreneurship scholarship.     

Entrepreneurship and mutuality: social capital in processes and practices

Social capital, which offers the broader theoretical construct to which networks and networking relate, is now recognized as an important influence in entrepreneurship. Broadly understood as resources embedded in networks and accessed through social connections, research has mainly focused on measuring structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of the concept. While useful, these measurements tell us little about how social capital, as a relational artefact and connecting mechanism, actually works in practice. As a social phenomenon which exists between individuals and contextualized through social networks and groups, we draw upon established social theory to offer an enhanced practical understanding of social capital – what it does and how it operates. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Robert Putnam, we contribute to understanding entrepreneurship as a socially situated and influenced practice. From this perspective, our unit of analysis is the context within which entrepreneurs are embedded. We explored the situated narratives and practices of a group of 15 entrepreneurs from ‘Inisgrianan’, a small town in the northwest of Ireland. We adopted a qualitative approach, utilizing an interpretive naturalistic philosophy. Findings show how social capital can enable, and how the mutuality of shared interests allows, encourages and engages entrepreneurs in sharing entrepreneurial expertise.     

User innovation and entrepreneurship in the virtual world: A study of Second Life residents

While prior studies have investigated factors, processes and pathways traversed in user innovation and user entrepreneurship within the real world, there is scant attention for user innovation and user entrepreneurship that take place within the virtual world. We report on an exploratory study of a select group of user innovators-entrepreneurs in Second Life, using virtual participant observation and in-depth interviews. Results suggest that the paths traversed by user innovators and user entrepreneurs in the virtual life broadly resemble those in the real life as reported in the literature. Interestingly, our study also suggests that Second Life as a virtual world breeds opportunities leading to entrepreneurial acts in the ‘real’ world as well as further opportunities in the Second Life. The virtual world itself, as a technological platform, also generates a range of opportunities. We formulate testable propositions and further link our insights to existing research on the drivers and pathways of user innovation and entrepreneurship in the ‘real’ world (i.e., the role of prior knowledge and networks), Austrian economics theory of entrepreneurial discovery, and creative collective theory.     

辅导员促进大学生创业教育的策略探析

作为高校大学生素质能力培养和思想政治教育的重要力量,辅导员必将在促进大学生创业教育中起到不可忽视的作用。辅导员应该利用在大学生教育培养工作中的各种优势,通过发掘优秀大学生创业者,提高创业教育师资水平,营造良好的创业教育环境,建立优质的创业实践平台等策略,扎实提高大学生创业教育的质量。     

Opportunity identification for sustainable entrepreneurship: Exploring the interplay of individual and context level factors in India

Sustainable entrepreneurship is becoming an increasingly established topic within the entrepreneurship literature. The phenomenon of businesses incorporating social and environmental agendas within their core activities has gathered an increasing academic interest. However, few empirical studies have explored the stage of opportunity identification in the sustainable entrepreneurship process in a more systematic manner, even more so in non-Western contexts such as India. We structure our analysis using a framework situated in the conventional entrepreneurship literature and the literature on National Business Systems (NBS). We conduct a qualitative study to explore the motivations of Indian sustainable entrepreneurs in two sectors: sustainable energy and ethical clothing. While we find that the conventional entrepreneurship based framework provides crucial insights to understand opportunity identification within sustainable entrepreneurship, we also observe a number of features unique to sustainable entrepreneurship in the Indian context—including the personal backgrounds of the participants as well as prioritization of motivational factors. Importantly, we find notable within-country variation in the contextual factors that appear to shape motivational dynamics. In the words of one participant, “there are many Indias” rather than one monolithic approach to sustainable entrepreneurship in India.     

Influences on students attitudes toward entrepreneurship: A multi-country study

Entrepreneurship has been emphasized in many countries as a way of boosting economic growth and job creation. As entrepreneurship is becoming popular around the world, its education should be customized according to each country’s unique cultural context. The purpose of this paper is to identify differences among the selected nations in terms of factors that are important to enhance the pedagogical effect of entrepreneurship education. This is an empirical study based on the data collected from university students in the US, Korea, China and Fiji representing nations with significantly different cultural contexts. The results imply that customized approaches based on unique cultural context are needed for effective entrepreneurship education in each country.     

基于ERP沙盘实训的管理类专业学生创业能力培养研究

大学生创业能力不足是造成创业成功率低的主要原因。ERP沙盘实训作为一种"体验式"的教学方式,能够满足培养大学生创业所需多种能力的需要,是管理类专业学生创业能力培养的有效的实训平台。     

International entrepreneurship and the small business

The topic of ‘international entrepreneurship’ is becoming increasingly popular with researchers concerned with examining how international and entrepreneurial activities intersect when people in organizations engage in pro-active brokering and risk-taking behaviour in cross-border contexts. Some caution is needed in over-generalizing the meaning and significance of international entrepreneurship – especially in relation to small businesses. Not all entrepreneurial risk-taking, brokering and opportunity-seeking activities lead to internationalization (as the statistics on small business international activities indicate). This might suggest then that the only truly internationally entrepreneurial firms are those that are ‘born global’. However, their entrepreneurial activities are more ‘spatial’, concerned with what can be constructed again in relation to global markets rather than in relation to the local/regional context in which the business is located. For small firms that internationalize a few years after start-up (late starters), processes of international entrepreneurship are different. For ‘later starters’, international entrepreneurship is distinctive in that it is characterized by extending and modifying entrepreneurial understandings and practices that have been socially constructed in relation to the local and regional context in which the small firm is located.     

Explaining influences on career ‘choice’: the case of MBA students in comparative perspective

This study explores the micro-individual, meso-institutional and relational and macro-structural level influences on career choices of MBA students from three countries, questioning the apparent dominance of ‘free choice’ in the context of persistent forms of structural constraints in career markets. The paper takes a critical perspective on career ‘choice’, acknowledging the contested nature of ‘choice’ and identifying career as a socially and historically situated phenomenon. The central hypothesis of the study is that ‘it is more likely for the MBA students to report micro-agentic or meso-instutional and relational rather than macro-structural conditions as key influences on their career choices’. The study draws on the findings of a cross-national survey on careers involving Britain, Israel and Turkey. Findings show that MBA students consider the impact of structural conditions as less significant on their career choices than their own human capital and capacity to make free choices. The study provides an understanding of the main cross-national similarities and differences in reporting of influences on career ‘choice’, and brings to bare interesting theoretical and methodological insights.     

Emotional competencies and cognitive antecedents in shaping student’s entrepreneurial intention: the moderating role of entrepreneurship education

This paper focuses on the analytic thinking of emotional competencies and their influence, in particular, in shaping university students’ entrepreneurial intentions, backed by an extended model of Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, and analyses the moderating role of entrepreneurial education among the variables under study. The results, derived from an ex-ante and ex-post questionnaire addressed to Spanish university students engaged in a compulsory entrepreneurship course, were subjected to structural equation modelling analysis. Our findings show that entrepreneurship by university students is favoured by the development of their emotional competencies, due to the direct influence of the latter in shaping entrepreneurial intention and its positive impact on their cognitive antecedents (entrepreneurial attitudes and perceived self-efficacy), and suggest that students with a higher degree of emotional competencies who receive entrepreneurship education will have a more positive attitude towards entrepreneurship and will perceive themselves more capable of becoming entrepreneurs. The primary contribution of this paper is to spotlight the use of emotional competencies in encouraging entrepreneurship, and to heighten awareness of the positive effect of education on emotionally-competent students, a factor that should be taken into account to improve entrepreneurship education programmes.

     

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 determinants of business start-ups in tertiary education: evidence for Greece through a panel data approach

Up to now there is no consensus in the relevant literature on the exact factors that lead a student to entrepreneurship. In addition, evidence on differences in the entrepreneurial activity among regions and, even more, in the entrepreneurial education provided by individual universities, within the same region, call for context-specific longitudinal studies. The primary objective of this paper is to provide evidence on the determinants that influence the propensity of young students of a Greek University to establish a new business venture. The methodological approach employed is based on a questionnaire survey collecting data from 1,500 students, spanning the period 2005–2010. Data has been processed through the use of a panel cointegration and panel causality methodology. The empirical findings entail useful insights on students’ attitudes and perceptions of entrepreneurship.     

“I am kind of a nomad where I have to go places and places”… Understanding mobility,place and identity in global software work from India

Mobilities, encompassing the movements and ‘flows’ of people, objects, capital, images technologies and information across the world have been strongly implicated in the context of contemporary globalization processes. Globally distributed software development work across boundaries of time, space and place undertaken by global software organizations (GSOs), can be seen as a microcosm of such processes, reflecting a multiplicity of mobilities, while situated in a particular context. An in-depth interpretative case study of a GSO located in Mumbai, India, was used in order to understand the nature and kinds of mobilities and their interactions with place, space, selves, and identities of Information Technology (IT) workers within the firm. Three kinds of interrelated mobilities – geographical, social and existential – were identified through an interpretive analysis of the empirical material. The construct of mobility–identity is proposed for analyzing the dynamic interplay between mobilities, place, selves, and identities of the workers. An understanding of mobility–identity is seen to have both theoretical and practical implications, and contributes more broadly to the development of our understanding of a “sociology of mobilities”.     

Exploring the determinants of digital entrepreneurship using fuzzy cognitive maps

In an increasingly digital world, almost anything can now be done through a computer or smartphone. Digital entrepreneurship is capitalizing on this trend, which brings numerous advantages to firms and society at large. However, the determinants of digital entrepreneurship’s success are still unclear, as well as how they relate to each other. This study sought to develop a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) to identify and analyze the determinants of digital entrepreneurship. Two group sessions were held with a panel of decision makers who deal with the digital entrepreneurship phenomenon every day. Based on their shared experience and knowledge, an FCM was developed and validated for this research context. Static and dynamic analyses facilitated a deeper understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between the determinants of digital entrepreneurship, resulting in a well-informed framework that was validated by the panel members. This methodological procedure enabled an objective analysis of the dynamics behind digital entrepreneurship. The advantages and limitations of our constructivist framework are also discussed.

     

Financial social innovation to engage the economically marginalized: insights from an Indian case study

Abstract

New sources of finance within the label of ‘impact investing’ have emerged as mechanisms to promote entrepreneurship within marginalized communities. Different vehicles for impact investment have emerged over the years; however, our understanding around their emergence, configuration and adoption is limited. Hence, the main purpose in this research is to study the role of the contextual drivers and conditions that gave rise to a unique form of impact investment in India, a financial social innovation – developmental venture capital (DVC). Through the lens of capital theories, insights from the case of India’s largest and oldest DVC firm along with three of its most prominent investees are presented. Findings highlight that the social entrepreneurs behind the case DVC wholly re-conceptualized silicon valley-style venture capital financing to suit small brick and mortar investments in rural India, developed mechanisms for deploying funding frugally, and created partnerships of equals between themselves and their investees. Investee founders leveraged human and social capital throughout the social innovation process via deep immersion in the socio-cultural milieu of India.     

将创业教育引入大学生思想政治教育的探讨

本文首先分析了将创业教育引入思想政治教育的意义和理念,在此基础上,探讨了创业教育引入思想政治教育的内容和保障机制,力求为创业教育和大学生思想政治教育相结合提供参考。     

Within and Beyond Communities of Practice: Making Sense of Learning Through Participation,Identity and Practice*

abstract Situated learning theory offers a radical critique of cognitivist theories of learning, emphasizing the relational aspects of learning within communities of practice in contrast to the individualist assumptions of conventional theories. However, although many researchers have embraced the theoretical strength of situated learning theory, conceptual issues remain undeveloped in the literature. Roberts, for example, argues in this issue that the notion of ‘communities of practice’– a core concept in situated learning theory – is itself problematic. To complement her discussion, this paper explores the communities of practice concept from several perspectives. Firstly, we consider the perspective of the individual learner, and examine the processes which constitute ‘situated learning’. Secondly, we consider the broader socio‐cultural context in which communities of practice are embedded. We argue that the cultural richness of this broader context generates a fluidity and heterogeneity within and beyond communities. Finally, we argue that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish conceptually between the terms ‘participation’ and ‘practice’ because of occasional duplication of meaning. We propose, instead, a refinement of the definition to allow for greater conceptual clarity.