Volume 12, Issue 4

The creation of new ventures involves a great deal of risk and uncertainty. However, research has been theoretically divergent and empirically inconclusive about the influence of individuals’ risk tolerance on entrepreneurial entry. In this paper, we argue that this relationship is contingent on the reference point of individuals, taking into account the human capital and the opportunity cost of individuals when they decide to start a venture. This approach allows us to clarify some of the previous mixed results in the literature. We use a sample of almost 600,000 individuals from 90 countries that have participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project between 2010 and 2014. Our results show that individuals with previous experience as entrepreneurs do not need to be so risk-tolerant to set up their own venture, while individuals with a job and/or a high educational level need to be especially risk-tolerant to become entrepreneurs.

Based on the value co-creation theory, this study proposed a theoretical model of the effects of value co-creation on the growth of social enterprises. Primary data was obtained using field surveys through a close-ended questionnaire from January to June 2019. The respondents were employees of social enterprises working in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used for quantitative data analysis and to verify the statistical significance of the direct link between value co-creation and social enterprise growth, and the negative moderating (substituting) effect of environmental dynamics on the relationship between value co-creation and social enterprise growth.

Scholars often cite an entrepreneur’s actions and their skills, know-how and entrepreneurial competencies (ECs) as the most influential factors related to the accomplishment of important venturing outcomes. Yet the joint impact of these factors on venturing accomplishments is yet to be explored. This paper aims to fill this void by empirically developing and testing a mediation model exploring three EC mechanisms by which entrepreneurial actions—specifically discovery and exploitation activities—led to the achievement of specific venturing accomplishments—namely the time to breakeven and turnover achieved. Data were collected from 1150 South African entrepreneurs using an online survey. Covariance-based structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model. Results show that entrepreneurial action (EA) significantly impacts on the efficiency and effectiveness of a venture through the development of three key ECs. Furthermore, the type of action taken by entrepreneurs during the entrepreneurial process differentially influences competency development and venturing accomplishments. More specifically, opportunity discovery and exploitation activities have a varying impact on EC development, as the engagement in these distinct venture-related activities provides unique feedback for the development of appropriate behavioral scripts for specific contexts which lead to distinct venturing accomplishments. This research offers novel insights into the newly emerging scholarly conviction that engagement in the entrepreneurial process itself may affect key entrepreneurial abilities and accomplishments. In so doing, this paper builds on, and has implications for, theories of competency development and venturing performance, as well as pedagogical interventions aimed at enhancing entrepreneurship.

This paper examines the effects of the quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems on new business formation and scale-up activity in China at the city-industry level. Accounting for only large and fast-growing firms, we focus on productive entrepreneurship which creates economic wealth. Based on a newly constructed panel dataset for 29 manufacturing industries and 286 prefecture-level cities of China during the period 1998–2009, we find that entrepreneurial ecosystem components, including access to finance, knowledge, marketization, local market demand, and entrepreneurial culture, are important determinants in explaining the differences in entrepreneurial activity across city-industry clusters and over time. Analysing a dynamic period in China’s industrialization with large regional variation in economic development, we show that the relative importance of the ecosystem components in shaping entrepreneurial activity changes over time when regions develop. In addition, we show that interaction between the ecosystem components – indicating system strength – has additional power in explaining new business formation and scale-up activity.

University Business Incubators (UBIs) are ideal spaces for supporting and developing novice entrepreneurs and their businesses. In the current study, we explore whether such incubators can also be considered an ideal space for building dyadic relationships between incubatees based on trust and knowledge exchange, and whether this can encourage commitment in the relationship. To this end, we propose that the perception of shared values from the academic world may foster such trust. Furthermore, perceiving there may be supplementary and complementary resources encourages the exchange of knowledge, the specific resource on which UBI businesses are based. At the same time, empathy between academic incubatees leads to relational commitment being reinforced.

This study seeks to disclose the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership on innovation performance in new ventures. Drawing on the upper echelons theory, we construct a mediation model to examine the mechanism through which entrepreneurial leadership affects innovation performance of new ventures via strategic flexibility. To obtain an in-depth understanding of the mediating mechanism, this study argues that environmental turbulence could be considered as the moderating variable. Our hypotheses are tested on a sample of 175 Chinese high-tech new ventures. The results show that strategic flexibility mediates the association between entrepreneurial leadership and innovation performance. However, the results only support the moderation of technological turbulence on the association between entrepreneurial leadership and strategic flexibility. Our findings extend the entrepreneurship and leadership research by investigating how entrepreneurial leadership affects innovation performance of new ventures via strategic flexibility, and the effectiveness of entrepreneurial leadership under technological turbulence.