Entrepreneurship as a twenty-first century skill: entrepreneurial alertness and intention in the transition to adulthood

Given the importance of entrepreneurial thinking and acting as a meta-skill in the future world of work, we focus on the emerging entrepreneurial mind-set in the transition to adulthood. We study the role of personality characteristics and age-appropriate entrepreneurial competencies (leadership, self-esteem, creativity, and proactivity motivation) in the prediction of entrepreneurial alertness and career intention. Using two-wave longitudinal data from high schools in Helsinki, Finland (N = 523), we tested a mediation model with competencies as mediators between personality and entrepreneurial alertness and intention. The findings suggest that entrepreneurial alertness and career intention (a) are rather independent career development constructs of the emerging entrepreneurial mind-set, (b) are both an expression of an entrepreneurial personality structure, and (c) are predicted by different underlying competencies: leadership and self-esteem mediated the personality—entrepreneurial intention link, and leadership, creativity, and proactivity motivation the personality—entrepreneurial alertness link. Consistent with the balanced skill approach to entrepreneurship, the intraindividual variety of these competencies was also a valid mediator; it did not show incremental predictive power though. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Towards a schematic theory of entrepreneurial alertness

This article is an investigation into Kirzner's concept of entrepreneurial alertness — its mechanism and its antecedents. By drawing from decision theory and schema theory, a model is developed to show how changes in the environment are mediated by entrepreneurial alertness and brought to the situated attention of entrepreneurs for evaluation. Entrepreneurial alertness is seen to be the application of unique schemata that allow the entrepreneur to impute meaning to environmental change that would not be imputed by other managers. It is argued that the alertness that allows entrepreneurs to see opportunity where others do not arises from differences in schematic richness, schematic association, and schematic priming. These three antecedents may therefore form a basis on which enhanced entrepreneurial alertness can be developed.     

Socio-cognitive traits and entrepreneurship: The moderating role of economic institutions

We examine how country-level institutional context moderates the relationship between three socio-cognitive traits—entrepreneurial self-efficacy, alertness to new business opportunities, and fear of failure—and opportunity entrepreneurship. To do this, we blend social cognitive theory (SCT) with institutional theory to develop a multi-level model of entrepreneurial entry. We merge data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys and the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index for 45 countries from 2002 to 2012. Our results, which are based on a multi-level fixed-effects model, suggest that entrepreneurs' self-efficacy and alertness to new opportunities promote opportunity entrepreneurship while fear of failure discourages it. However, the strength of these relationships depends on the institutional context, with entrepreneurial self-efficacy and alertness substantially more likely to lead to new opportunity-driven ventures in countries with higher levels of economic freedom. These results provide suggestive evidence that economic freedom not only channels individual effort to productive entrepreneurial activities, but also affects the extent to which individuals' socio-cognitive resources are likely to mobilized and lead to high-growth entrepreneurship.     

高管危机警觉性是如何影响组织创新的？一个双中介模型

文章基于信息加工理论以及“信息→认知→行动”框架，探索并验证了高管危机警觉性与组织二元创新策略间（渐进式创新和突变式创新）的内在机制与路径模型，即组织响应和组织自省的双中介效应。本研究基于218家企业调研数据，所采用的层次回归、结构方程建模和Bootstrapping等方法的检验结果显示，高管危机警觉性正向影响组织渐进式创新和突变式创新；高管危机警觉性通过组织响应影响渐进式创新，通过组织自省影响突变式创新。研究结论为企业在危机下实现绿色创新与可持续发展提供理论与实践启示。     

The Psychological Basis of Opportunity Identification: Entrepreneurial Alertness

Opportunity identification represents a unique entrepreneurial behavior yet its processes and dynamics remain mysterious. Entrepreneurial alertness, a distinctive set of perceptual and information-processing skills, has been advanced as the cognitive engine driving the opportunity identification process. To date, empirical support has been equivocal; however, these early studies suffer from fundamental mistakes in theory and method. These mistakes are examined and addressed. A research agenda for the systematic and conceptually sound study of entrepreneurial alertness and opportunity identification is outlined.     

Business motivation and informational needs in internationalization

We focus on an analysis of entrepreneurs’ motivation in business internationalization. Following on from the Regulatory Focus Theory, two differing approaches emerge: promotion (PMF) and prevention (PVF). PMF entrepreneurs approach internationalization spurred by their own motivation as opposed to PVF entrepreneurs who engage in internationalization motivated by the competitive environment. We propose that entrepreneurs’ motivational orientation depends on their prior international experience relating to business internationalization. Moreover, an internationalization strategy requires information regarding markets, barriers and support programmes. Entrepreneurs’ motivational orientation also impacts their informational concerns and alertness to informative stimuli. For the empirical application, we assess the opinions of entrepreneurs working in the Spanish natural stone sector. Findings reveal that entrepreneurs’ motivational orientation with regard to international opportunities changes as they gain experience, which at the same time alters their alertness and their informational concerns.     

Entrepreneurial alertness and asymmetric information in a spin-glass model

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relative role played by alertness and asymmetric information on entrepreneurial decisions. The article presents a model in which an individual decides whether to become an entrepreneur based on her alertness and on the information available in her environment. Spin-glass simulations are used to illustrate the dynamics of the decisional process. According to the results, more alert agents have higher probabilities of exhibiting entrepreneurial behavior. However, if information is evenly distributed, the number of entrepreneurs is shown to remain low even when agents are highly alert. If, on the other hand, information is not evenly distributed, entrepreneurship is shown to increase and concentrate geographically. These results are consistent with observed clustering of entrepreneurial activity. In addition, entrepreneurship is identified as a path-dependent phenomenon. As a result, the model suggests that certain political and institutional settings are more conducive to entrepreneurship than others and implies that short-term policies aimed at increasing the prevalence of entrepreneurship are likely to be ineffective.     

Calling Baumol: What telephones can tell us about the allocation of entrepreneurial talent in the face of radical institutional changes

In his seminal contribution, Baumol (1990) proposes that the direction of entrepreneurial effort towards its productive (e.g., start-up activity) or unproductive (e.g., rent-seeking) use in a society depends on institutions or the “rules of the game”. We focus on an important micro-foundation of Baumol's theory namely that certain individuals change the direction of entrepreneurial efforts with institutional change. Our research contrasts with previous work on the role of institutions, which mostly focuses on the aggregate macro-level, while not observing individual behavior. We analyze who decides to start a venture in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and find that many individuals who demonstrated commitment to the anti-entrepreneurial communist regime in the GDR were active in launching new ventures soon after German re-unification. We argue that commitment to communism among post-communist entrepreneurs reflects rent-seeking. Once institutions change radically, entrepreneurial efforts are directed towards start-up activity. We rely on the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) that includes information on whether East German respondents had a telephone before German re-unification, which was one of the most sought-after rewards for commitment to the regime. We find that telephone owners had a higher propensity of becoming successful firm founders. Telephone owners were also more likely to have an entrepreneurship-prone personality profile and value orientation. Our results confirm Baumol's theory and suggest that alertness to entrepreneurial arbitrage opportunities is guiding the redirection of entrepreneurial effort in the face of drastic institutional change.Executive summaryThere is a large body of literature on the effect of institutions on entrepreneurship. A good share of this literature is rooted in the seminal contribution by Baumol (1990) who argues that the shape of institutions determines whether people direct entrepreneurial effort to productive, unproductive or destructive entrepreneurial activities. Despite the fact that Baumol‘s main argument is at the individual micro-level, most of the literature focuses only on the macro-level implications of his theory. In contrast to most previous studies, we are not focusing on the aggregate level of entrepreneurship but explore the micro-foundations of Baumol's theory and analyze how (drastic) institutional change affects the entrepreneurial choice at the individual level.In our discussion of Baumol's work, we also introduce Kirzner's concept of individual alertness to arbitrage opportunities which he originally formulated for market economies. We extend Kirzner's insights on the role of alertness to other institutional contexts (e.g., socialism) and forms of arbitrage (e.g., engagement in socialist organizations) other than start-up activity, and highlight the role of institutional change in shaping processes of opportunity formation.It is important to understand how individuals allocate their entrepreneurial effort in times of major historical shocks and institutional changes for several reasons. First, since entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth and development, it is crucial to understand how institutional change affects entrepreneurial behavior at the individual level for designing policy measures targeted at increasing the entrepreneurial propensity of people. Second, the share of people with an entrepreneurial talent in a society is an enormous resource to cope with socio-economic change. Third, it is also important to understand the micro-foundations of Baumol's work as vast empirical evidence on the impact of institutions on entrepreneurial activities that is available at the macro-level relies on the validity of the micro-foundations.We find that people who demonstrated commitment to one of the most anti-entrepreneurial institutional regimes in history—communism—were more likely to start a firm after transition to a market economy. Our analysis is based on the case of East Germany that saw a sudden shift from an anti-entrepreneurial communist regime that did not reward start-up activities towards an entrepreneurship-facilitating market economy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Those people who were actively committed to the regime as evidenced by material rewards obtained in the GDR were more likely to become (successful) self-employed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We also observe that people with an entrepreneurship-prone personality profile and those who put a strong emphasis on entrepreneurial values were more likely to have obtained material rewards in communism that indicate a strong commitment to the system.We argue that applying and extending Baumol's and also Kirzner's ideas helps understanding this puzzling phenomenon. In essence, regime commitment can be seen as a form of rent-seeking activity, which is a classic example of unproductive entrepreneurial activity discussed by Baumol. Rent-seeking in the context of communism could be expressed, for example, in enthusiastic engagement in public organizations (e.g., party councils, youth organizations, state-owned enterprises) in exchange for specific material rewards. Their pronounced alertness to new arbitrage opportunities may have enabled these same individuals to switch to start-up activity once this option became available to them and if it was more profitable than rent-seeking.We contribute to the literature by supporting the idea that the institutional framework conditions determine the type of entrepreneurial activity to which entrepreneurially talented people devote their efforts. So far, this claim found support mainly in aggregated macro-level data. Another important insight from our analysis is that entrepreneurs are flexible and agile economic agents who are alert to arbitrage opportunities and able to promptly adapt themselves to even radical changes, such as the shock transition from a socialist command economy to a market economy. Alertness to opportunities in a market economy context could hardly be learned in an anti-entrepreneurial context. Hence, an immediate re-allocation of entrepreneurial efforts indicates that alertness to arbitrage opportunities emerging in a market economy does not necessarily require experience in a market economy context.Our assessment also suggests that institutional change is shaping subjective processes of opportunity formation. Hence, the debate on whether opportunities are ‘out there’ or they have to be created should take into consideration how institutions and institutional change set the boundaries for opportunities. In particular, identifying and pursuing new opportunities brought about by institutional change could represent a specific form of “entrepreneurship talent.”     

“Right Time,Right Place,and Right People” and Chinese Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of Taiwan’s Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

In examining corporate success, many scholars overlook an important contributing factor, namely entrepreneurship. However, Chinese wisdom believes that the “right time, right place, and right people” (Three R’s) are crucial for business success. This study utilizes theories of entrepreneurship from the Austrian School of Economics to reinterpret the three factors for business success. This new interpretation is then applied to explain the success of a famous dumpling house in Taiwan, Din Tai Fung. This study argues that although favorable timing is critical to business success, it requires an entrepreneur to grasp the opportunity when it comes. The seizure of a golden chance requires alertness and preparation. More importantly, this study argues that even during an adverse period, a crisis can be turned into a profit opportunity. Whereas a favorable location is also regarded as a key factor, this study goes beyond sheer spatial dimensions. Location also encompasses culture, social customs, norms and traditional folklores. This paper argues that an entrepreneur transplants culture and social customs from one location to another, thus, gaining pure entrepreneurial profit. Finally, the “right people” in an entrepreneurial sense involves a harmonious social network and good personal relationship (Guanxi). By maintaining a harmonious relationship with staff members, partners, customers, and suppliers, entrepreneurs can “get things done.” This case study provides a new insight into Chinese entrepreneurship in East Asia.     

外资在流通业超速扩张值得高度警觉

伴随流通业影响力提升而出现的"影响力滥用"这一国际化新情况、新动向值得关注。外资在中国流通业"事实上不设防"的奇特状况,在全世界独一无二、绝无仅有;外资在最具成长性的主流业态的超速扩张,正在从量变转化为质变,已经产生或可能产生的不良后果,值得高度警觉。改革开放的基本国策应当毫不动摇,只是需要给出与时俱进的新判断和新对策。     

企业社会诚信问题的经济学分析

市场经济的实质是诚信经济。从经济学视角分析,企业社会诚信问题主要源于交易双方信息不对称;信用制度不完善等方面因素。加强企业诚信建设,应构建和谐、有效的诚信环境,努力构建"诚信政府",为企业诚信树立良好的形象;要加强制度建设,提高对不诚信行为的威慑力;选拔诚信素质的领导者创造讲诚信的自身环境,并构建企业主动讲诚信的社会环境。     

International business-government relations: The risk management strategies of MNEs in emerging economies

In emerging economies where the institutional environment is weak, the level of risk faced by MNEs remains high. Extant literature recognizes the forms of risks faced by MNEs, but only a few studies have attempted to explain how firms identify and mitigate these risks. This study addressed the commercial risk management strategies of MNEs operating in Vietnam. We found that the government remained the key stakeholder and maintaining active relations with them aided MNEs’ operational success. The risk mitigation strategies employed by MNEs included managing alertness, portraying good behavior, navigating through the state of comfort, and active mediation.     

Growth Aspirations and Cultural Support for Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Post-Socialist Countries

Based on GEM data this paper explores whether significantly different growth aspirations of early stage entrepreneurs in Slovenia, compared to those in Hungary and Croatia, are also accompanied by significantly different opportunity recognition, cultural support for entrepreneurship and self-efficacy. Our results suggest that a higher degree of alertness to unexploited perceived opportunities, and cultural support for entrepreneurial motivation may be the cause of higher growth aspirations of Slovenian early stage entrepreneurs, while self-efficacy with regard to entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and experience was not found to be crucial.      

Entrepreneurial Discovery as Constrained,Sytematic Search

This research uses a randomized, two-sample, post-test experiment to pit the alertness perspective against a new approach for searching systematically for venture ideas to create new wealth. The new approach uses self-selected consideration sets to constrain an entrepreneur’s search domain, which makes it possible to maximize the search results. The constrained domain conforms to the behavior of repeat entrepreneurs who do not search the whole world for venture ideas. Subjects in the treatment group were successful 60% of the time compared with 6.25% success rate for the control group. Fourteen percent of control group emulated the treatment group without receiving instructions to do so.      

Regulatory Modes and Entrepreneurship: The Mediational Role of Alertness in Small Business Success

Previous studies suggest that entrepreneurs play a key role in the success of their ventures. But relatively little is currently known about how they produce such effects. The present research provides data suggesting that two modes of entrepeneurs’ self‐regulation—locomotion and assessment—enhance a firm's success through their effects on the components of alertness. This mediational model was tested and supported with data from 120 entrepreneurs. Locomotion was positively related to the scanning and search component, while assessment was positively related to the association and evaluation components. These findings are discussed in terms of the role of founders’ self‐regulation in the performance of their companies.     

The relationship between prior and subsequent new venture creation in the United States: A county level analysis

Minniti [Minniti, M., 2004. Entrepreneurial alertness and asymmetric information in a spin-glass model. Journal of Business Venturing 19 (5), 637-658; Minniti, M., 2005. Entrepreneurship and network externalities. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 57 (1), 1-27] argues that new venture creation decisions are interdependent and that the non-pecuniary network externalities and path dependencies of such decisions influence the geographic concentration of venturing activities. We apply her framework at the county level to study the association between prior and subsequent new venture creation in the U.S. Our findings indicate that there is a non-linear relationship between prior new venture creation and subsequent new venture creation, with venturing activities increasing at an increasing rate based on the amount of prior new venture creation.     

Innovation at the workplace: Do professional competencies matter?

This paper analyzes individuals' propensity to innovate in professional environments, by focusing on the specific competency profile of individuals who play a role in the incorporation of product, technological, and knowledge innovations at work. The analysis draws on economic and managerial literature on innovation, innovative behavior, and competencies to gain a better understanding of the relationships between the process of competency development and innovative behavior in working environments. Using data from REFLEX, a European survey on the transition from higher education to labor markets, the empirical component of this study estimates discrete response models to explain the propensity of individuals to innovate at work. The models take the responses to a set of 19 questionnaire items as the basis for determining individuals' competency profiles, while also incorporating firm, working environment, and personal characteristics. The estimation results provide evidence of significant marginal effects of specific competencies on the probability that individuals act as innovators at the workplace. Competencies such as alertness to new opportunities, ability to present products, ideas or reports, ability to mobilize the capacities of others, ability to come up with new ideas and solutions, and ability to use computers and the Internet appear to have stronger marginal effects on the likelihood of innovating and, consequently, emerge as key competencies in explaining the propensity of individuals to become innovators in their working environments.     

Bond yields in emerging economies: It matters what state you are in

While many studies have looked into the determinants of yields on externally issued sovereign bonds of emerging economies, analysis of domestically issued bonds has hitherto been limited, despite their growing relevance. This paper finds that the extent to which fiscal variables affect domestic bond yields in emerging economies depends on the level of global risk aversion. During tranquil times in global markets, fiscal variables do not seem to be a significant determinant of domestic bond yields in emerging economies. However, when market participants are on edge, they pay more attention to country-specific fiscal fundamentals, revealing greater alertness about default risk.     

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Supply Chain Agility: Conceptualization and Scale Development

Although agility has been identified as one of the most important issues of contemporary supply chain management, the theoretical basis for understanding supply chain agility is fragmented. This research addresses the gap related to the ambiguity surrounding the dimensions and definitions of firm supply chain agility by employing a multidisciplinary literature review to gain an in‐depth understanding of agility. In addition, a comprehensive measurement instrument that draws on the foundations of social and life science theory is developed and empirically validated. The results of the research indicate that firm supply chain agility is composed of five distinct dimensions including alertness, accessibility, decisiveness, swiftness, and flexibility. Based on these elements, a comprehensive definition of firm supply chain agility is developed for further theoretical testing of the concept.     

Opportunity‐Based Strategic Orientation,Knowledge Acquisition,and Entrepreneurial Alertness: The Perspective of the Global Sourcing Suppliers in China

Taking the perspective of global sourcing suppliers in China, this paper investigates how the supplier firms acquire market and technical knowledge from the outsourcing partnerships differently based on their strategic orientations regarding the exploitation of opportunities versus resources. We find that suppliers whose strategy formulation is driven by the aggressive pursuit of valuable opportunities tend to be able to learn more from the outsourcing partners. Our results also show that market and technical knowledge acquisition of the supplier firms has a positive effect on employees’ alertness to opportunities. In addition, organizational innovativeness plays an important role in determining how effectively knowledge can be utilized by employees to identify novel opportunities.