Culture and entrepreneurial orientation: a multi-country study

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has been proven as an essential attribute of high performing firms, and the role of culture has been highlighted for generating robust EO. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of culture by identifying differences among the selected nations in terms of EO dimensions. This is an empirical study based on the data collected from university students in the U.S., Korea, Fiji, India, and Malaysia representing nations with significantly different cultural contexts. The result showed significant differences among the nations in most EO dimensions. This implies that customized education approaches based on unique cultural context are needed for developing EO among college students.     

Gender and entrepreneurial orientation: a multi-country study

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate the role of gender and culture in entrepreneurial orientation (EO) among students in the selected nations. EO dimensions are important variables in the study of organizational performance. We adopted Lumpkin and Dess’ EO dimensions. We statistically analyzed the collected data from 389 university students in the US (96), Korea (114), Fiji (80), and Malaysia (99). The results showed significant differences in most EO dimensions between genders and among the nations. Thus, it is important that customized approaches based on gender and unique cultural context are needed for developing EO among college students.     

Entrepreneurial intentions, motivations and barriers: Differences among American, Asian and European students

Should entrepreneurship education be the same in every country or should it be adapted to each context? In addition to answering this question, it appears to be important to identify the concerns students have regarding their entrepreneurship education programs, so as to strengthen their perceptions of feasibility and desirability of an entrepreneurial career. In this article we examine whether differences exist among American, Asian and European students in terms of entrepreneurial intentions and dispositions, as well as motivations and perceived barriers for business startup. Results indicate that entrepreneurial disposition and intentions differ by country but that students across countries are motivated and/or discouraged by similar variables. However, our results indicate that the levels of sensitivity to each motivator and barrier differ by country. Our results support the argument made by past researches that cultural differences should be taken into consideration when developing entrepreneurship education programs.     

Entrepreneurship education: the role of local business

Entrepreneurship education is high on political agendas for its contributions to cultural change and economic growth. Scholars have suggested that the local context may influence the results of entrepreneurship education, and have recommended that educators strengthen their relationships with local businesses and help students learn from actual business settings. By combining policy analysis with empirical data, the present qualitative study explores two issues. First, we look at how the role of local business is expressed in entrepreneurship education policy documents. Second, we explore how local entrepreneurial activity and culture may influence how policies are understood and translated into practice at the local level. The findings indicate that collaboration between schools and business life may strengthen, rather than change, existing local development paths. The present paper contributes to the literature and understanding of the interplay between entrepreneurship education policy and the local context and proposes several policy recommendations emerging from the empirical study.     

Impact of Entrepreneurship Education: A Comparative Study of the U.S. and Korea

Over the last two decades, entrepreneurship has emerged as a mainstream business discipline in the United States. Even after the collapse of the dotcom phenomenon, the global explosion of e-business and new business opportunities created by advances in information and telecommunication technologies (ICT) have widely popularized entrepreneurship for new venture creation. But while entrepreneurship is becoming more prevalent throughout the world, its education by country differs according to cultural context. This paper presents the results of a study on the impact of entrepreneurship education in the U.S. and Korea.     

Online customer experience in e-retailing: implications for web entrepreneurship

Providing consumers with unique experiences and immersing them in original contexts are the goals of web entrepreneurs. Researchers and web entrepreneurs have expressed a particular interest in the online customer experience, agreeing on its importance in creating satisfaction, revisiting intention, e-trust and e-loyalty. This paper explores customer experience in the online retail context. The online customer experience is central in forming customers’ perceptions of expectations of online retailers because this experience is highly personal. However, empirical research on the online customer experience remains scarce. The objectives of this unique study are twofold. The first is to compare the effect of online customer experience on the responses of Romanian and Tunisian customers. The comparative analysis is based on two dimensions of the online customer experience assessment tool. These dimensions are cognitive experiential state (flow) and affective experiential state. The second objective is to examine the contribution of each of these two dimensions in explaining overall perceived value, e-satisfaction, e-trust and repurchase intention in the online context, as well as their effects on web entrepreneurial initiatives. The findings reveal the impact of cultural influences on the constructs embedded in the research framework. The implications for practice relate to the increasing importance of online customer experience in tailoring online marketing campaigns. The implications for web entrepreneurship are clearly emphasised by the pathways from online customer experience to entrepreneurial initiatives. These pathways capture the value of customer-generated content in designing innovative business models.

     

Hong Kong's entrepreneurship: behaviours and determinants

It is widely known that Hong Kong's economic success is to a large extent attributed to its dynamic entrepreneurs. However, economic studies on Hong Kong's style of entrepreneurship are few. This paper attempts to throw light on this issue. It argues that Hong Kong is an entrepreneurial society. A unique feature of Hong Kong's style of entrepreneurship lies in its ability to conduct ordinary, rather than extraordinary, discovery. Through the use of guerrilla business strategy, imitation and regional arbitrageurship, entrepreneurial firms in Hong Kong are able to exploit narrow profit margins and to survive global competition. Moreover, the cultural, economic and political environments of Hong Kong are found to be favourable in incubating adaptive entrepreneurship. This paper concludes that, although Hong Kong's style of entrepreneurship emerges out of its unique environments, Hong Kong's experience can be useful to other developing economies. The critical issue is whether latecomer countries can successfully develop adaptive entrepreneurship compatible with their backgrounds so as to exploit international market opportunities.     

中国(上海)创业实训基地培训模式研究

文章在简述创业及创业教育概念的基础上,提出目前我国有必要由政府建设创业实训基地。然后,在分析创业胜任力的内涵基础上,提出上海创业实训基地需要基于创业特性和创业胜任力的要求建立独特的培训模式,最后给出了这种"六位一体"的独特培训模式的具体内容。     

The construction of opportunity entrepreneurship function

This paper interprets opportunity entrepreneurship, within the framework of Solow—Romer model and the characteristics of society’s entrepreneurship capital, as it is expressed by cultural background, transaction characteristics and economic institutions, using the principal components and regression analysis. It extends the concepts of growth theory to the entrepreneurial determination framework, based on the assumption that growth is generated by entrepreneurship. Τhe paper accomplishes to organize an integrated model of the actual opportunity entrepreneurship determination where the cultural variables play a predominant role. From the variables used to express entrepreneurial economy and its effects on the levels of opportunity entrepreneurship, only the variables expressing cultural background seem to have an effect, and more specifically a promoting one. It is established that for the configuration of opportunity entrepreneurship, the effect of cultural background is more serious than that of the Solow-Romer factors. Furthermore, the institutions and the transactions characteristics are purely endogenous formations.     

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.     

Factors affecting entrepreneurial intention levels: a role for education

A considerable agreement exists about the importance of promoting entrepreneurship to stimulate economic development and employment generation. In particular, entrepreneurship education has been considered one of the key instruments to increase the entrepreneurial attitudes of both potential and nascent entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the factors that determine the individual’s decision to start a venture are still not completely clear. Cognitive approaches have attracted considerable interest recently. But the explaining capacity of personality traits or demographic characteristics is still considered. Therefore, there is a need to clarify which elements play the most influential role in shaping the personal decision to start a firm. This paper tries to contribute to filling this gap by providing empirically-based suggestions for the design of improved entrepreneurship education initiatives. The empirical analysis is based on two essential elements: firstly, an already validated instrument (EIQ); secondly, a statistical method (factor-regression procedure) which is not dependent on any theoretical approach. It uses all the information collected through the questionnaire items, selecting them solely based on their capacity to explain the dependent variable. Results will allow the design of more effective education initiatives. They suggest that personal attitude and perceived behavioural control are the most relevant factors explaining entrepreneurial intentions. Thus, based on these results, a number of considerations about the most effective role of education in promoting and developing attitudes and intentions towards entrepreneurship are considered. Besides, the EIQ could be used as an evaluation instrument for entrepreneurial education programmes.     

Public policy recommendations for promoting female entrepreneurship in Europe

From 2021 onwards, female entrepreneurship is expected to grow very substantially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The introduction of teleworking and staggered hours in many countries at national or workplace level will make possible the conciliation between labour and family life. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most influential explanatory factors in the behaviour of female entrepreneurship in Europe so as to subsequently propose efficient economic policy measures to promote it. The distinction between opportunity and necessity female entrepreneurs have been considered since both motivation and factors are different in each case. 15 econometric models using the panel data method for a sample of 20 previously selected European countries (grouped by their GDP level) during the period 2001 to 2018 have been estimated to determine which explanatory factors affect female entrepreneurship and necessity-based female entrepreneurship. The empirical analysis used demonstrates that more women enter into entrepreneurship due to necessity rather than in pursuit of opportunity for European countries both with higher levels of GDP and for countries with lower levels of GDP. In this context, the following policy measures should be implemented to promote female entrepreneurship in Europe: the optimization of government spending (training courses and mentoring, public procurement, stronger networks, support in reconciling business and family life, etc.), the government incentives for subsidizing high interest rates to support women in accessing financing, and the improvement of entrepreneurship education to increase the confidence of women in themselves in their own entrepreneurial capabilities.

     

Human Resource Management in Africa: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Africa is not a dream but in many ways, human resource management (HRM) in Africa could be a dreamlike experience. This appearance of managing in Africa as being surreal is particularly evident with many Western human resource managers. The sheer complexity and diversity found there can make the HRM process one of the more vexing decisions that management may have to undertake when doing business in Africa. In an effort to dramatize the complex nature of HRM decisions in African context, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland will be used as a metaphor throughout the paper. Just as Wonderland held many surprises for Alice during her adventure, Africa holds many surprises for Western HRM, not only in the form of the alien nature of the 'rules, regulations and laws' of many African nations but also in the extent to which many African organizations/employees ignore or bend the rules It is the intent of this paper to demonstrate a means to develop a classification scheme from which categories of African countries can evolve into more or less homogeneous groupings. These categories can then be used to develop customized HRM policies, strategies and tactics. The classification schema is based upon the European colonization of Africa, the history of leadership in African nations since decolonization, the economic/infrastructure development differences among African economies and the cultural differences among these same countries. It is envisioned that the African HRM decision matrix could provide the basis for making 'informed' HRM decisions by Western managers in an African context, although these Western managers must always be ever mindful of the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland nature of the HRM in Africa.     

Token entrepreneurs: a review of gender,capital, and context in technology entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the literature on gender and entrepreneurship in technology to explore individual and contextual factors maintaining the token status of women in this field. It examines how the intersection of gender and context influences participation rates in entrepreneurship, and suggests that the deeply embedded cultural and cognitive associations that frame both technology and entrepreneurship as masculine concepts create barriers for women when these contexts overlap. It offers a framework for research and practice that aids in the analysis of complex multi-level barriers that control access to the forms of capital necessary for initial and continued participation in technology entrepreneurship. Given calls for women to participate more fully in high-growth technology ventures, it highlights the need for research to incorporate broader analytical perspectives that simultaneously examine both the barriers faced by women in these contexts and the factors that systemically sustain them.     

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.     

On the contribution of public procurement to entrepreneurship and small business policy

Public procurement in industrialized nations accounts for a significant share of gross domestic product; hence it is imperative for local, regional and national economic development to utilize this potential. However, previous discussions of entrepreneurship and small business policy have by and large marginalized public sector procurement. As a contribution to giving greater salience to the linkages between regional development, entrepreneurship and public procurement, this paper presents empirical results of a qualitative study into local government authorities in the United Kingdom. In particular, it draws out a range of enablers and barriers for sourcing from small- and medium-sized enterprises that were perceived by procurement managers. The focus on public sector procurement furthermore leads to a more systematic theoretical elaboration of entrepreneurship policy as being based on legal authority or the market or network effects from geographic proximity.     

Science-based entrepreneurship education as a means for university-industry technology transfer

This paper explores the potential of university-industry technology transfer through science-based entrepreneurship education (SBEE). The scientific literature focuses mostly on enabling university-industry technology transfer via university-industry collaboration in research, and not so much in (science) education. The paper identifies four strands of relevant literature for further theorizing SBEE principles to research its contribution to industry-technology transfer: 1. Embedding entrepreneurship education in universities; 2. Balancing theory and practice of entrepreneurship education; 3. Cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset through entrepreneurship education; and 4. Creating spin-offs through entrepreneurship education. One of the main theoretical contributions of this paper is, that SBEE is different from regular entrepreneurship education in its need for being firmly embedded in a science, technology and R&D environment, both within and outside the university. This is important in order to give SBEE students the opportunity to gain experience with handling the hurdles for successful university-industry technology transfer. The main empirical finding is that elements in the program, related to for example the balance between teaching entrepreneurship through theory and experiential learning, are not systematically covered. It means that fundamental questions such as: Can entrepreneurship be indeed taught? Which elements of entrepreneurship can be taught through theory, and which ones must be experienced in practice? are currently left unanswered. Systematic coverage of these questions enables a better exploitation of the possibilities that SBEE offers for university-industry technology transfer.

     

The role of a firm's absorptive capacity and the technology transfer process in clusters: How effective are technology centres in low-tech clusters?

Due to its unique political institutions and good economic track record, Switzerland used to be called a special case. This paper investigates the start-up propensities in this country based on the individual data of the adult population survey of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The focus is on the factors that are distinctive for Switzerland: language differences and differences in taxes on corporate profit and personal income. There are substantial entrepreneurship disparities among the language areas of Switzerland. Still, I do not find evidence for a cultural influence. The different start-up propensities in the three language areas can be explained by structural characteristics of the regional economy. The same applies to differences in income and profit taxes. If other regional factors are taken into account, I do not find evidence for a direct influence of taxes on the entrepreneurial propensity of the inhabitants of Swiss regions. There is however some evidence for indirect effects. This paper adds to our understanding of the effects of culture and tax differences on entrepreneurship.     

EDUCATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP SELECTION AND PERFORMANCE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

Abstract This paper provides a review of empirical studies into the impact of formal schooling on entrepreneurship selection and performance in industrial countries. We describe the main effects found in the literature, we explain the variance in results across almost a hundred studies, and we put the empirical results in the context of related economic theory and the much further developed literature in labor economics (studying the rate of return to education among wage employees). Five main conclusions result from this meta‐analysis. First, the impact of education on selection into entrepreneurship is insignificant. Second, the effect of education on performance is positive and significant. Third, the return to a marginal year of schooling is 6.1% for an entrepreneur. Fourth, the effect of education on earnings is smaller for entrepreneurs than for employees in Europe, but larger in the USA. Fifth, the returns to schooling in entrepreneurship are higher in the USA than in Europe, higher for females than for males, and lower for non‐whites or immigrants. In conclusion, we offer a number of suggestions to move the research frontier in this area of inquiry. The entrepreneurship literature on education can benefit from the technical sophistication used to estimate the returns to schooling for employees.     

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.