Existing research highlights the confident, heroic founder figure as a gendered norm in entrepreneurship. Moreover, confident behaviours and powerful speeches have been presented as key factors in delivering successful pitches. This study applies a dramaturgical approach to explore how pitch-training sessions as a backstage context reinforce the ge…

Public support for enterprises contributes to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. The impact evaluation is a relevant and complex topic that still receives relatively limited scholarly attention. The study consists of an integrative review of a systematic selection of 60 articles published between 1998 and 2023 on public financial and non-fi…

This study uses a narrative approach to explore how role modelling unfolds throughout the start-up process. Drawing on the experiences of 25 nascent and novice entrepreneurs, we illustrate how attributes of role models, role modelling outcomes, and related mechanisms change for entrepreneurs over time. Our emerging theoretical model highlights thre…

Collaborative spaces such as fab labs, incubators, and coworking spaces have become a worldwide phenomenon based on their promise of fostering creativity and entrepreneurship. Mature, large organizations have also tried to benefit from this by creating such spaces in-house. This paper studies a failed attempt to create one such space in a large bur…

The importance of home and hometown for entrepreneurs has significant implications for entrepreneurial identities, venture success, and broader contextual dynamics. Traditionally, the concept of home in entrepreneurship literature is viewed instrumentally, largely focusing on the unit of dwelling (i.e. premises/house/apartment), the implications of…

This study investigates the interplay among parental support, familial legitimacy, and next-generation succession intentions in family businesses in different societal contexts. Building on attachment theory and insights from family business literature, the study underscores the influence of family at both the parental and societal levels in creati…

ntrepreneurship is growing in popularity as a tool to combat the challenges of unemployment and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. A host of training programme offerings have emerged to mitigate the challenges of starting and sustaining a business in this context. Non-formal trainings (educational activities outside formal places of learni…

Culture plays an important role for the study of entrepreneurship. However, whereas cross-cultural research in management (CCM) has strongly evolved in the last three decades and identified different paradigms, paradigmatically diversified research is still lacking in cross-cultural entrepreneurship. To fill this gap, this study suggests an integra…

This study contributes to the debate on family business environmental sustainability by investigating the environmental orientation of family versus nonfamily firms. We study whether family business status affects (i) the extent of environmental orientation, i.e. the number of incentives set for environmental sustainability activities, contingent u…

Positioned within the context of active ageing, this research investigates the relationship between entrepreneurship and physical and psychological health, and examines whether health outcomes for entrepreneurs vary across different contextual dimensions. To achieve this, a systematic review was conducted including 78 empirical papers from 1993 to …

Little is still known about the approach and rationale of family members’ entrepreneurial behaviours for sustainability that occur at different interconnected levels. Our study helps to fill this void by examining a multilevel web that links a family firm, a cooperative and a rural community. We rely on an inductive semi-grounded approach guided by…

This study conceptualizes graduate entrepreneurship as a spatial phenomenon. Specifically, we explore how combinations of university-related (knowledge exchange intensity and entrepreneurship support) as well as regional conditions (economic prosperity and entrepreneurial culture) might explain the presence or absence of high graduate entrepreneurs…

Prior research on crisis management focuses on crisis strategies used by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), predominately without considering their initial state of preparedness – how these SMEs stepped into the crisis in the first place. This study examines the effects of financial, organizational and cultural crisis preparedness on the s…

In this study, we analyse savings and credit groups (SCGs) to investigate whether belonging to these groups contributes favourably to entrepreneurship. SCGs are community-based groups that represent a form of informal finance in developing countries. For the analysis, we adopt the social embeddedness theory, and test our hypotheses on a unique samp…

Research suggests that business families may favour family members’ ability to act entrepreneurially and convey an entrepreneurial legacy to successors to ensure the continuity of family businesses. Nonetheless, families’ entrepreneurial imprinting can extend beyond successors, as non-successors can also pursue an entrepreneurial path. Little is kn…

Entrepreneurship research rarely explores and explains how people approach ambiguity differently as they combine knowledge during the entrepreneurial journey. In this paper we introduce curiosity as a source of intrinsic motivation that addresses this shortcoming. We find that the full range of curiosity-driven entrepreneurial behaviour is not well…

My research focuses on enabling, accelerating, and funding the entrepreneurial journey, from initial idea to viable venture, in independent, corporate, and social settings. An evolving entrepreneurial opportunity is central in this process: obvious in retrospect, but uncertain, nebulous, and ambiguous in prospect. I am interested in how potential e…

This paper explores how a future – as something that can only be imagined but can inspire entrepreneurial action – can attract economic capital. We integrate Dor’s (2015) model of language as a communication technology for the instruction of imagination with Bourdieu’s theory of practice to account for how an entrepreneur’s words can hold sway...…

Entrepreneurship is an elusive phenomenon and its meaning has been vigorously debated. This study seeks to contribute to critical perspectives on entrepreneurship by investigating how entrepreneuring participates and intervenes in the dominant discourse, and thus, in the practices that constitute meaning. To explore this crucial question, I use the…

Mark Freel is the Royal Bank of Canada Professor for the Commercialisation of Innovations at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. He also holds an appointment as a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Lancaster University Management School, UK, and is a research fellow at the Lazaridis Institute, Wilfrid Laurier Univers…

We apply the sociological lens of linked lives to show how household contexts channel transitions to self-employment in ways strongly differentiated by gender. We investigate the impact of demographic transitions to marriage, cohabitation and having children on the transition to self-employment using fixed-effects models on 10 waves of the UK’s nat…

In the field of international entrepreneurship, there are increasing calls for the study of cognition in its social context. In this regard, this article draws on social representations theory to explore and better understand the cognition of entrepreneurs. The objective of the present study is to explore the social representation of legitimacy amo…

Entrepreneurship is often about the individual drive for innovation and the exploitation of opportunities; however, in an increasingly connected world, entrepreneurial ecosystems have gained considerable research interest. In many developed countries, entrepreneurial ecosystems emerge from organic collaborations between businesses and investors, wi…

Using a phenomenological approach, we analyse the voices of entrepreneurs living in the peripheral ecosystems of Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK), Palermo (Italy) and Perth (Australia). These ecosystems are defined by the considerable physical distance between their geographical location and the location of a larger, more established ‘core’ ecosystem in th…

Entrepreneurs usually have several means at their disposal to deal with and overcome adverse circumstances, ranging from simple non-resourceful coping strategies to more elaborate resourceful behaviours. However, entrepreneurs who find themselves in conditions of prolonged adversity and disadvantage have few effective possibilities to withstand sud…

The aim of this research is to undertake explorative research and present propositions that would identify the drivers of regional emergency networks, i.e. regional technological collaborative agreements under extreme conditions. Based on previous studies on emergency management, we empirically evaluate how 49 organizations built 53 technological c…

Answering the call for more process-oriented research into the inception and development of companies, this paper analyses the funding acquisition process of nascent ventures. Based on optimal matching techniques combined with multinomial logistic regression, we identify how the most typical funding acquisition processes of nascent ventures evolve …

Craft-based ventures draw on associations with tradition, place and quality to differentiate their products from mass-produced counterparts. However, ‘place’ in the context of craft entrepreneurship is both underexamined and undertheorized, with extant research predominantly focused on the positive impact of place. We argue that this perspective ig…

The study examines the influence of inspiring role model (IRM), social entrepreneurship (SE) compassion, and the SE education and their interactions and consequences for nascent SE behaviour. Utilizing a quantitative survey approach, the study acquired a total of 136 valid responses from nascent social entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. The data analys…

In this paper, we explore the micro-interactions through which a regenerative enterprise engages with proximate natural ecosystems in its attempt to repair and protect them. Through an ethnographic study of a regenerative farming enterprise in rural Southern Patagonia – Fundo Panguilemu – we discover a reciprocal relationship between the enterprise…

Studies of social incubators illustrate the importance of these organizations in promoting social innovations and entrepreneurship at regional level. However, little is known about the main categories of contingency factors that influence the organizational design and fit of social incubators. We apply a comparative case study methodology to analys…

This article analyses the influence of gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship by jointly studying the effect of gender-role orientation (GRO) and sex (women vs. men) on the entrepreneurial intentions (EI) and actions of individuals. Entrepreneurship is associated with the typical male stereotype in most societies, leading to a lower rate of women e…

Drawing on a qualitative study of Syrian refugees in constrained immigration contexts in the North of England, this article explores refugees’ perceptions of integration and social exclusion through entrepreneurship. By exploring refugee experiences as they engage in entrepreneurship programmes or business start-ups, our findings highlight a divide…

This study explores the dynamics of online community entrepreneurship, using a rural grocery store as a case study. I examine the role of social media in community entrepreneurship, revealing insights into the interplay between social interactions, spatial factors, and the entrepreneurial process. The case account outlines a process where online co…

n this paper, we apply a feminist interpretation and an extension of Bourdieu’s theory of practice to explore the gap in our understanding between gender gap issues – the institutionalized and structural inequalities that underpin the differential access to resources by women and men – and women business owners. Drawing on an interpretivist analysi…

Our study develops a contextually embedded institution-theoretic model of the major influences precipitating entrepreneurial founders’ leadership succession. Drawing on a unique sample of 184 listed firms from 10 national securities markets across the Caribbean region, we find that both business group (BG) and private equity (PE) ownership are asso…

We investigated the relationship between employment growth and profitability and propose that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) hire employees, they experience an increase in profitability due to their acquisition of additional human capital. These benefits, however, are limited by the firm’s ability to efficiently integrate the newly recru…

Entrepreneurship Education (EE) programmes world-wide serve a highly standardized menu of activities for student consumption, such as pitching exercises, competitions and mini-companies. This situation has been called the McDonaldization of EE, where standard activities are adopted globally. In this paper we study the influence of Junior Achievemen…

Realizing cultural diversity’s impact on regional entrepreneurial activity has become crucial for scholars and policymakers. As a step in this direction, this study integrates insights from creative cognitive psychology and the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to examine this effect and the boundary conditions explaining it. Based on …

Entrepreneurial identities have a significant influence on new venture emergence. Yet, an entrepreneur’s (meaning-constructing) interpretive engagement with situations such as entrepreneurial opportunities remain relatively unexplained. This paper explores how entrepreneurs’ personal identities influence their interpretive engagement with entrepren…

Family is the most important, yet under researched, dimension in family business research. Following recent calls in Entrepreneurship-as-Practice, we bring a practice-based approach to family business research to understand next generation engagement over extended periods in family life. Drawing on a culinary family business’s three published cookb…

Despite contributing to host country economies, there is limited examination of self-employed female immigrants in the literature. While human, social, and financial capital are important for entrepreneurship in general, given immigrant women’s intersectional identities, the potential exists for these factors to affect them differently. This study …

The Gulf States have dedicated much attention and many resources to entrepreneurship, particularly in supporting women entrepreneurship. These efforts are reflected in the increase in research focused on women entrepreneurs in the Gulf States. The vast majority of relevant studies have explored the reasons for the low engagement of women in the eco…

The emergence of digital technologies is transforming entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. This creates a plethora of research questions at the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship. A key question is if existing entrepreneurial models are applicable to understanding digital entrepreneurship. In this study we provide novel in…

The barefoot entrepreneurship literature rarely acknowledges the role of space in the development of informal economic activities. However, the concept of liminal space, defined as a place of transition and largely discussed in geography, can provide a new conceptual lens through which the trajectories of barefoot entrepreneurs can be viewed. This …

In times of crisis, SME entrepreneurs refresh and replace corporate resources and capabilities in the strategic renewal processes to sustain organizational resilience. Appearing in the form of internal development and external sourcing, the strategic renewal outcomes are explained by the synergy of individual, organizational and environmental-level…

Family background matters for entrepreneurship, but why do siblings differ in their propensity to become entrepreneurs and the type of ventures they pursue? I draw on family socialization and resource allocation theories to develop hypotheses about the differential effects of family structure – comprising birth order, family size, and sibling gende…

We explore how digitalization impacts young firms’ growth. A longitudinal panel analysis of the EU’s new ventures during 2010–2018 reveals that digital sectoral capabilities affect young firms’ growth autonomously and via interaction with other sectoral capabilities. Digital sectoral capabilities play an important complementary role in facilitating…

Research has shown that social enterprises must constantly balance conflicting demands between their social and economic goals. However, little is known about the factors that shape managers’ strategic choices in response to the tensions associated with social enterprises’ hybrid nature. To address this issue, we conducted a case study analysis of …

We conducted a field experiment in Burkina Faso to investigate the impact of informal sharing obligations within kin networks on entrepreneurial effort. Tailors were incentivized to produce bags and our treatment intervention was to subtly inform tailors’ families about this income opportunity. We expected that informing the family should lead to a…