Volume 12, Issue 1

The study empirically contributes to the discussion on the effects of start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals as a part of the active labour market policy. The article provides insights into the survival and performance of the subsidized businesses in the Czech Republic. The study follows up cohorts of self-employed individuals that were supported during years 2009–2017. The obtained findings show that a vast majority of the supported businesses were still officially active 2 years after the allocation of the start-up subsidy, and even later. The firm-level data further relieve that most of the individuals starting a business out of unemployment stay solo (only less than four per cent of self-employed individuals employ besides themselves at least one employee) and the economic outcomes of the subsidized businesses, measured as annual turnover, are rather modest. The empirical results further showed that higher intensity of public support is negatively associated with business closure and positively with employment and turnover categories. The study concludes that the start-up subsidy for unemployed succeeded in activating unemployed individuals to pursue an economic activity, although further research concerning other outcome variables such as personal income, job satisfaction and well-being is needed.

Situational factors may facilitate or frustrate the translation of entrepreneurial intentions into subsequent actions. In this study, we use data from two waves of a large-scale cross-country study of student entrepreneurship, the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey (GUESSS), conducted in 2011 and 2013/2014 (n = 1434 students from 142 universities in nine countries), in order to investigate the impact of country-level institutions (financial market institutions and legal institutions) on the link between entrepreneurial intentions and subsequent start-up activities. We find that the quality of legal institutions has a significant positive impact on the translation of intentions into actions, whereas the quality of the national financial system does not influence the intentions-actions link. Theoretical and public policy implications are discussed.

Entrepreneurs, as initiators of entrepreneurial activities, have long been one of important research objects in the field of entrepreneurship research and, however, there has been no study reported on how entrepreneurial traits influence venture performance from a perspective of entrepreneurial orientation. This study explored the relationship between entrepreneurial traits and venture performance by focusing on the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation and the moderating role of entrepreneurial environment perception. Using time-lagged data from 321 private enterprises in China, the results reveal that entrepreneurial traits are positively related to venture performance, and this link is mediated by entrepreneurial orientation. Additionally, moderated path analysis indicates that entrepreneurial environment perception strengthens the direct effect of the entrepreneurial traits on entrepreneurial orientation and its indirect effect on venture performance. This study extends the scope of entrepreneurial traits research, and provides evidence for arguments that entrepreneurship in the context of China.

A framework of the venture capital (VC) process, encompassing the (1) pre-investment phase, (2) management phase, (3) exit phase, and the interrelationships between them was developed into a cycle using the exit phase in a feedback loop. The review of 166 articles from top-tier, Grade 4, journals suggests that most prominent Entrepreneurial & Management (E&M) literature assesses the VC operating environment, and the managerial expertise and skills of both VC firms and entrepreneurs independently. Finance Literature, however, centers its independent analysis on contracts, risk, returns and VC governance. A network analysis follows comparing E&M and Finance literature VC research agendas by country, author, institution, and journal. Finally, the manuscript identifies trends and future areas for VC cycle research by comparing and exploring the current state and progress of the VC cycle in Entrepreneurial literature.

In fragile communities where a high proportion of residents have limited opportunities for economic and social mobility, self-employment and entrepreneurship are possible pathways to economic and social mobility. If, for example, individuals perceive policing and offender sentencing as racially discriminatory and/or untrustworthy, criminal justice in fragile communities could potentially be a barrier to an individual’s decision to start a business, as such a decision can be sensitive to whether the legal system will protect individual property rights. This paper considers how, in fragile communities, individual fairness assessments and perceptions of the criminal justice system condition nascent entrepreneurship abandonment—individuals who considered starting a business but did not. With data from the Center for Advancing Opportunity Fragile Community Survey on over 5,000 individuals in the United States, we estimate latent variable specifications of abandoned individual aspirations to start a business as a function of several measures of their fairness assessment/perception of the criminal justice system. Parameter estimates reveal that the likelihood of abandoned nascent entrepreneurship increases with respect to increases in an individual’s assessment/perception that the criminal justice system is unfair in their community. Our results suggest that the criminal justice system is a barrier to entrepreneurship for residents of fragile communities, and that criminal justice reforms that promote fairness in policing and the courts could enhance economic and social mobility in fragile communities by increasing the likelihood of individuals starting businesses.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the managerial background of Korean venture capitalists on investment decision strategies and explore how the organizational characteristics of the venture capitals where they work influence the relationship between their managerial background and investment decision strategies. For this purpose, this study used the database of investments and returns of venture funds where Korea Venture Investment Corporation has participated. In additon, this study performed a hierarchical regression analysis based on the research model with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software, version 24.0. In the results of this study, first, venture capitalists with output or greater investment experience tend to pursue a strategy of investing in the early-stage venture companies or investing in specialized industries. Second, the more investment resources their venture capitals have, the weaker these relationships are.