Volume 10, Issue 3

Globally, business incubators and accelerators have been embraced as important mechanisms to support the growth and development of new ventures. Several typologies have been proposed as a means of classifying their alternate forms. Within these typologies university business incubators (UBIs) are often recognized as a separate, but homogeneous class. Yet taking an isomorphic approach fails to acknowledge that differences among UBIs have implications for how they function and how their performance should be evaluated. Performance evaluation is an important issue as universities come under increasing pressure to demonstrate that the public funding they receive in support of their incubation activities is being put to good use. This paper offers a new perspective for the study of UBIs that focuses on their heterogeneity. We develop a framework that posits two competing narratives for UBIs, commercial and educational, that represent extremes on a continuum where hybrid configurations are also possible. Our framework demonstrates that these narratives offer a systematic explanation of differences in UBIs, have implications for performance evaluation, and suggest directions for future research aimed at advancing our understanding of variation in the way UBIs are configured and managed.

The use of a gender-neutral approach to explore the contextual determinants of female entrepreneurship may preclude us from unraveling the complex institutions that tend to treat men and women asymmetrically, namely gendered institutions. This paper uses institutional theory to highlight different institutional patterns from a gendered perspective. In particular, drawing upon Scott’s well-known formulation of three institutional categories, we examine how three pillars of gendered institutions—regulative, normative and cognitive gendered institutions—shape both the absolute and the relative levels of female entrepreneurial activity, that is, female total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) rate and female/male TEA ratio. Using cross-sectional data for 63 countries in 2013, we employ exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear regression analysis and find that all three dimensions of gendered institutions have significant influences on the relative levels of female entrepreneurial activity, while only regulative and cognitive gendered institutions are significantly related to the absolute level of female entrepreneurship. Specifically, regulative gendered institutions have negative impacts, while cognitive gendered institutions have positive impacts. In addition, among the three distinct dimensions of gendered institutions, cognitive gendered institutions have the most important effect on both levels of female entrepreneurship. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

This study focused on crowdfunded ventures in the reward-based model and explored the relevance of their essential campaign and project implementation performance outcomes on the second round of resource acquisition. This research considered funding from accredited and unaccredited investors, additional crowd capital, and other forms of resources from other business investors. Results from sampled crowdfunded ventures on the Kickstarter and projects official websites revealed that the determinants of first round crowdfunding project campaign traction, reward delivery scheduled date, campaign duration, and reward delivery performance outcomes predict the second round of resource acquisition. Furthermore, the results suggest that project creators’ crowdfunding risk awareness is a relevant determinant of reward delivery performance outcome and access to the second round of resource. The findings are significant for the decision-making of entrepreneurs, investors, and crowdfunding platforms, as these parties benefit from the informational value of campaign and project implementation performance outcomes.

Despite the growing phenomenon of social entrepreneurship, the existing literature has limited quantitative findings on its determinants. This study examines the psychological origins of social entrepreneurial behavior based on the motivated information processing theory. Our structural equation modeling analysis of 179 nascent social entrepreneurs in South Korea indicates the indirect effects of prosocial motivation on social enterprise creation behavior through perceived meaningfulness and social entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Our findings empirically identify the cognitive mechanisms between prosocial motivation and social entrepreneurial behavior. Also, the results of this research complement the existing scholarly conversations that compare the motives of social entrepreneurs with those of commercial entrepreneurs.

Although a cumulative body of literature explains entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance, there remain differing views on the mechanisms underlying this relationship. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of EO on firm performance by considering the roles of dynamic capabilities (DC) and corporate entrepreneurship (CE). We propose that DC and CE mediate the relationship between EO and firm performance, and our empirical results support these propositions. This study fills a gap in the literature on the EO–performance relationship by considering the linkages among disposition, capabilities, and activities in the South Korean context.

Social ventures (SVs) based on social entrepreneurship are often labeled in the literature as hybrids because of their inherent different institutional logics between social and commercial thinking. As one potential consequence, it is further argued that these not-yet institutionalized organizational forms lack legitimacy. In this conceptual paper, we articulate our concerns with this trend in social entrepreneurship research. We propose configuration theory as an alternative approach to move forward and argue that from a configurational lens such SVs can be identified as distinct, yet coherent configurations driven by their intrinsic and idiosyncratic value bundles and related value creation goals. We demonstrate how this helps overcome the raised concerns and contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship and configuration theory.