Towards a theory of entrepreneurial teams

This article examines the role of entrepreneurial teams in processes of entrepreneurial discovery. It addresses two main questions. The first investigates the implications of economic theory for the possibility of team entrepreneurship. Because leading economic theories focus almost exclusively upon individual decision-makers, we propose a broader notion of entrepreneurship that includes enterprising teams as well as individuals. We define entrepreneurship as a profit-seeking problem-solving process that takes place under conditions of structural uncertainty.The second question examines the conditions that are conducive to joint entrepreneurial action and the formation of entrepreneurial teams. We suggest that bounded structural uncertainty and perceived strong interdependence arising from common interest can jointly “prime” team entrepreneurship.     

Navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurial identity threats to persist: The countervailing force of a relational identity with God

While an economic paradigm has been productive for entrepreneurship, religion has been proposed as an alternative rationality to advance research in our field. To extend a theological turn in entrepreneurship and identity research, our study inductively develops a conceptual model that explains how individuals navigate entrepreneurial identity threats based on the interaction between a relational identity with God (RIG) and an entrepreneurial identity to persist in entrepreneurial action. Our study suggests this can happen when entrepreneurs engage in inter-identity work mechanisms - affirming and humbling - to mitigate these identity threats. Specifically, a relational identity with God acts as a countervailing force to an entrepreneurial identity during times of identity threats to generate inter-identity meaning change, resulting in interidentity stability and entrepreneurial persistence. Through our study, we advance knowledge on the theological turn in entrepreneurship and identity by inductively developing theory on a new religious identity construct (RIG), elaborating theory of inter-identity work by shifting the focus from structural to content changes, and extending theory on entrepreneurial action, persistence, and well-being based on theological rather than economic considerations.     

Business accomplishments,gender and entrepreneurial self-image

Drawing on Bem's psychological theory of self-perception, this paper presents and tests a model that examines the impact of business accomplishments and gender on entrepreneurial self-image and explores the definition of entrepreneurship according to Vesper's entrepreneurial typology. Regression techniques are used to identify those business accomplishments that university alumni associate with self-perceptions of entrepreneurship. Experience as a small business person (founding, running, and/or owning a small business) most clearly predicts entrepreneurial self-image. Results also support predictions of both direct and indirect effects of gender as well as direct effects of education and business degree. Results of a separate expert panel study are used to rank business accomplishments according to degree of entrepreneurship. Results of both studies reveal stark contrasts in the implied definition of entrepreneurship between entrepreneurship experts (academic and practitioner alike) and the general business community (as represented by the alumni). This raises questions about the meaning of the term “entrepreneurship”, what the word “entrepreneur”, in particular, conveys to the general public, and the implications for practice and future research.     

Toward a theory of transformative entrepreneuring: Poverty reduction and conflict resolution in Rwanda's entrepreneurial coffee sector

This study illustrates how entrepreneurship may catalyze prosperity as well as peace in entrenched poverty–conflict zones. We bring to life a conceptualization of transformative entrepreneuring by assessing interrelationships between poverty and conflict indicators from the perspective of rural dwellers in Rwanda's entrepreneurial coffee sector. Our findings suggest that individuals' perceptions of poverty alleviation and conflict reduction are sequentially linked, notably via increased quality of life. This enables us to advance theory on entrepreneuring by unpacking the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial processes may transform the lives of such ‘ordinary’ entrepreneurs in settings where economic and social value creation are desperately needed.     

A new perspective on entrepreneurial regions: linking cultural identity with latent and manifest entrepreneurship

What are the entrepreneurial places in the USA? Although seminal theorizing on the determinants of entrepreneurship gives culture a unique and important role, systematic empirical evidence linking the distinct cultural identity of regions to their local entrepreneurial spirit and vitality is still scarce. This study offers a first, systematic overview on the nexus between regional cultural identity and latent and manifest entrepreneurship across the USA. To directly assess regional cultural identity, we apply the American Nations and Patchwork Community Types approaches and explore in which way these distinct spatially based cultural regions are reflected by significant differences in entrepreneurial activity and underlying biologically based propensities. We combine annual entrepreneurship rates at the county level with personality data collected in a large-scale, Internet-based study of 3,457,270 US residents. The findings suggest that entrepreneurship culture reflects the dynamic interplay between the region’s cultural identity and its latent and manifest entrepreneurship.     

Intersectionality of Ethnic and Entrepreneurial Identities: A Study of Post‐War Polish Entrepreneurs in an English City

An understanding of ethnic and immigrant entrepreneurship is developed in this paper by exploring how ethnic and entrepreneurial identities intersect. Bourdieu's concept of habitus frames the analysis of narratives of five post‐war Polish entrepreneurs in Leicester. The narrative analysis illuminates the multilayered and nuanced nature of identities. The Polish origin of these entrepreneurs’ habitus was interpreted in light of individual and collective experiences gained growing up in the United Kingdom. While Polish identity was pertinent, it did not define the narrative of entrepreneurship. Our contribution is a theoretically informed, rich qualitative study of what ethnic identity means to individuals and how it intersects with entrepreneurial identity.     

Identity and entrepreneurship: do school peers shape entrepreneurial intentions?

We incorporate the concept of social identity into entrepreneurship and analyze the determinants of having entrepreneurial intentions. We argue that an entrepreneurial identity results from an individual’s socialization. This could be parental influence but, as argued in this paper, also peer influence. Based on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data in which students report their entrepreneurial intentions at the age of 15, we find that having an entrepreneurial peer group has a positive effect on an individual’s entrepreneurial intentions. We find that the strength of the peer effect in a country is moderated by prevailing values, namely individualism.     

A Model of Social Entrepreneurial Discovery

Social entrepreneurship activity continues to surge tremendously in market and economic systems around the world. Yet, social entrepreneurship theory and understanding lag far behind its practice. For instance, the nature of the entrepreneurial discovery phenomenon, a critical area of inquiry in general entrepreneurship theory, receives no attention in the specific context of social entrepreneurship. To address the gap, we conceptualize social entrepreneurial discovery based on an extension of corporate social responsibility into social entrepreneurship contexts. We develop a model that emphasizes mobilization and timing as underpinnings of social entrepreneurial discovery and offer distinct conceptual aspects and theoretic propositions instrumental to future social entrepreneurship research.     

Culture, entrepreneurial orientation, and global competitiveness

Based on Lumpkin and Dess’s conceptualization of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), this paper presents a cultural model of entrepreneurship. We propose that a society’s propensity to generate autonomous, risk-taking, innovative, competitively aggressive and proactive entrepreneurs and firms will depend on its cultural foundation. The role of economic, political/legal, and social factors as moderators of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) are also considered. Overall, it is proposed that only those countries with specific cultural tendencies will engender a strong EO, hence experiencing more entrepreneurship and global competitiveness. Specific country examples are discussed.     

Burst Bubbles or Build Steam? Entrepreneurship Education,Entrepreneurial Self‐Efficacy,and Entrepreneurial Intentions

This paper contextualizes the relationship between student's self‐efficacy beliefs and entrepreneurial intentions in the content and pedagogy of the entrepreneurship course. Using the logic of regulatory focus theory, we argue that the nature of the entrepreneurship course—whether theoretically or practically oriented—creates a distinct motivational frame for entrepreneurship in promotion or prevention terms. When coupled with students' self‐efficacy beliefs, this frame can strengthen or weaken their intentions for future entrepreneurial efforts. We test this hypothesis through a survey of 114 students enrolled in different entrepreneurship courses at a major British university. Our results show that higher self‐efficacy is associated with lower entrepreneurial intentions in the theoretically oriented courses and higher entrepreneurial intentions in the practically oriented courses. We draw a number of implications for the theory and practice of entrepreneurship education.     

Institutions,entrepreneurs, and communities: A special issue on entrepreneurship

This Special Issue's aim is to demonstrate that drawing on sociological research can further enrich entrepreneurship studies of institutions, entrepreneurs, and communities. We develop an organizing framework for our ten Special Issue papers that categorizes the pieces by community level and type, observed changes, form of entrepreneurial actor, institutional and entrepreneurial concepts and processes, and integrative methodologies. This set of categorizations helps us to identify components that scholars can use to build more mid-range theory around our special issue topics. The framework also helps us to isolate limitations in the Special Issue papers, thereby providing avenues for future research.     

Theory building in the entrepreneurship paradigm

Ever since Newton's Principia set mathematical models at the pinnacle of a scientific paradigm, scientists in all disciplines—not just the physical sciences—have striven to express their theories mathematically. In the social sciences, mathematical models are more often than not a little more than a Laplacian fantasy. Nevertheless, mathematics is being used more and more extensively by social scientists—none more so than economists and business researchers. This paper focuses on one area of social science, entrepreneurship, and examines the difficulties of trying to use mathematics to model entrepreneurship processes.The entrepreneurial process is a dynamic, discontinuous change of state. It involves numerous antecedent variables. It is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. To build an algorithm for a physical system with those characteristics would be daunting to the most gifted applied mathematician. But when you add the requirement that the entrepreneurial process is initiated by the volition of a unique human being, mathematical modeling may be impossible, because there is “an essential non-algorithmic aspect to conscious human action.” This article argues that today's most prominent mathematical representation of entrepreneurship, population ecology, falls far short of Penrose's specification for a “useful theory.”Some observers believe that the answer to entrepreneurship theory may be found in the chaos theory—a relatively new science that was popularized by Gleick in his book Chaos: Making a New Science. This article explores the chaotic zones of several algorithms that provide alluringly simple representations for the entrepreneurial process. One of them is the fundamental equation for population ecology theory. It shows how under some conditions that equation exhibits some wild, chaotic behavior that gives an observer the feel of entrepreneurship. But it is no more than a mathematical metaphor because the accuracy of the measurements that are needed to observe true scientific chaos in the entrepreneurial process are unattainable in practice.     

Do entrepreneurship programmes raise entrepreneurial intention of science and engineering students? The effect of learning,inspiration and resources

Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour, this study tests the effect of entrepreneurship programmes on the entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions of science and engineering students. This is necessary in order to confirm (or disconfirm) conventional wisdom that entrepreneurship education increases the intention to start a business. The results show that the programmes raise some attitudes and the overall entrepreneurial intention and that inspiration (a construct with an emotional element) is the programmes' most influential benefit. The findings contribute to the theories of planned behaviour and education and have wider implications for a theory of entrepreneurial emotions and also for the practice of teaching entrepreneurship.     

Reflective Judgement: Understanding Entrepreneurship as Ethical Practice

Recently, the ethical rather than just the economic resonance of entrepreneurship has attracted attention with researchers highlighting entrepreneurship and ethics as interwoven processes of value creation and management. Recognising that traditional normative perspectives on ethics are limited in application in entrepreneurial contexts, this stream of research has theorised entrepreneurship and ethics as the pragmatic production of useful effects through the alignment of public–private values. In this article, we critique this view and use Kant’s concept of reflective judgement as discussed in his Critique of the Power of Judgement to theorise ethical entrepreneurial practice as the capacity to routinely break free from current conventions through the imaginative creation and use of self-legislating maxims. Through an analysis of the narratives of 12 entrepreneurs, we suggest there are three dimensions to reflective judgement in entrepreneurial contexts: (1) Social Performance; (2) Public Challenge and; (3) Personal Autonomy. Whilst the entrepreneurs were alive to the importance of commercial return, their narratives demonstrated further concern for, and commitment to, standards that they rationally and imaginatively felt as being appropriate. In our discussion, we integrate the findings into existing theoretical categories from entrepreneurship studies to better appreciate ethics within the context of value creation.     

The entrepreneurial journey as an emergent hierarchical system of artifact-creating processes

Entrepreneurial ‘process’ perspectives explain the events of an entrepreneurial journey in terms of mechanisms, such as ‘effectual logic’, ‘bricolage’, ‘dynamic creation’, ‘opportunity tension’ and ‘enactment’. Process theorists, however, have not as yet developed an analytical framework that explains an entrepreneurial event in relation to the entrepreneurial journey as the unit of analysis. Building on Sarasvathy's (2003, 2008) and Venkataraman et al.'s (2012) conception of entrepreneurship inquiry as a ‘science of the artificial’ (Simon, 1996), we explain how this research gap can be addressed by conceptualizing the entrepreneurial journey as an ‘emergent hierarchical system of entrepreneurial artifact-creating processes’. From this perspective, entrepreneurial events can be explained in relation to the endogenous dynamics of prior patterns of artifact emergence. We discuss some research implications of focusing on artifact emergence as a key unit of analysis in process theory development.     

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.”     

Individual‐Level Ambidexterity and Entrepreneurial Entry

This study examines the organizational drivers of entrepreneurial entry through the lens of individual‐level ambidexterity. We theorize that employees that both explore and exploit new activities within organizations are more likely to become entrepreneurs outside the organization. Multilevel analysis results from a large sample of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey data support this hypothesis. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by highlighting the role of individuals' prior ambidexterity experiences in organizations as foundational building blocks of entrepreneurial entry. The study links entrepreneurship and ambidexterity theories with evidence that an individual's ambidexterity and entrepreneurial activities are related.     

Empathy-driven entrepreneurial action: Well-being outcomes for entrepreneurs and target beneficiaries

Empathy is a primary driver of social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial action. However, empathizing individuals can arrive at different conclusions about what targets need. This variance in entrepreneurs' empathy for targets is important because it will help explain the type of interventions they initiate to help targets and the production of a range of benefits and costs for the targets and the entrepreneur. This study builds on and extends the theory of empathic interpersonal emotion regulation to construct an empathy-driven entrepreneurial-action model of well-being. We explore how an entrepreneur's empathy orientation for entrepreneurial action—the patterned way entrepreneurs focus their attention on a target's problems and then seek to enact this position through entrepreneurial action to help the target—shapes the organizing of an entrepreneurial intervention and the likely outcomes. We theorize entrepreneurial orientation of entrepreneurial action manifests as a hedonic paternalistic, counterhedonic, paternalistic, hedonic cooperative, or counter-hedonic cooperative. This empathy-driven entrepreneurial-action model of well-being contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature and inter-personal theories of empathy.     

The Resource‐Based View in Entrepreneurship: A Content‐Analytical Comparison of Researchers' and Entrepreneurs' Views

The resource‐based view (RBV) is one of the most influential perspectives in the organizational sciences. Although entrepreneurship researchers are increasingly leveraging the RBV's tenets, it emerged in strategic management. Despite some important similarities between entrepreneurship and strategic management, there are also important differences, raising questions as to whether and to what extent the RBV needs to be adapted for the entrepreneurship field. As a first step toward answering these questions, this study focuses on resources as the fundamental building block of the RBV and presents a content‐analytical comparison of researchers' and practicing entrepreneurs' resource conceptualizations to derive similarities and differences between established theory and entrepreneurial practice. We find that although the two conceptualizations exhibit some overlap, there are also important differences in the emphasis on different dimensions of resources and ownership requirements, as well as in the understanding of how those resources shape outcomes. These results suggest important contextual conditions when applying the RBV's tenets within the field of entrepreneurship.     

Integrating psychological approaches to entrepreneurship: the Entrepreneurial Personality System (EPS)

Understanding the psychological nature and development of the individual entrepreneur is at the core of contemporary entrepreneurship research. Since the individual functions as a totality of his or her single characteristics (involving the interplay of biological, psychosocial, and context-related levels), a person-oriented approach focusing on intraindividual dynamics seems to be particularly fruitful to infer realistic implications for practice such as entrepreneurship education and promotion. Applying a person-oriented perspective, this paper integrates existing psychological approaches to entrepreneurship and presents a new, person-oriented model of entrepreneurship, the Entrepreneurial Personality System (EPS). In the empirical part, this model guided us to bridge two separate research streams dealing with entrepreneurial personality: research on broad traits like the Big Five and research on specific traits like risk-taking, self-efficacy, and internal locus of control. We examine a gravity effect of broad traits, as assumed in the EPS framework, by analyzing large personality data sets from three countries. The results reveal a consistent gravity effect of an intraindividual entrepreneurial Big Five profile on the more malleable psychological factors. Implications for entrepreneurship research and practice are discussed.