Volume 14, Issue 2

Using interviews to explore the role imagination plays in the South American Nikkei phenomenon (a fusion of Japanese haute cuisine with Peruvian ingredients) and employing the alternate templates research strategy to analytically compare three entrepreneurial behaviors (adaptive bricolage, strategic planning, and transformative effectuation), this case study found that the current theoretical boundary conditions are insufficient to separate the three archetypes. Therefore, based on data, new concepts are proposed to explain entrepreneurial behaviors where they overlap (e.g., creative imagination as a bridging construct of the entrepreneurial process). A novel entrepreneurial trilemma and a behavioral model focused on the conceptual overlaps are introduced to frame the new concepts and to visually depict the relationships between them.

This research examines the relationship between a founding team’s social network and the acquisition of its critical human capital. First, explicitly dealing with technology-based firms, we disaggregate the founder(s) social network into four sub-networks: academic, industry, finance, and personal (family and community). Then, we detail the relationship between these individual sub-networks and the acquisition of both technical and business skilled human capital. Our results confirm that individual sub-networks have a differential effect on acquiring both technical and business human capital.

We investigate whether team ventures are more likely to be acquired than single-founder ventures, and if so, attempt to determine what number of founders results in the highest acquisition likelihood. Using the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) of US businesses started in 2004, our results indicate that team-founded new ventures are more likely to be acquired, and that there is a positive and diminishing relationship between team size and acquisition likelihood. This study contributes to the understanding of drivers of exit for new ventures, and opens up the new venture exit literature to future contributions of a team demography approach.

Existing network research has mainly adopted functional and/or structural approaches to study the instrumental goals behind entrepreneurs’ networking as well as the influence of personal position on access to resources and eventual performance. The variety of entrepreneurs’ networking styles and their normative underpinnings have not been adequately explored. Contextualized in China, this study asks: How do entrepreneurs’ understandings of social norms shape their networking styles? Through an inductive comparison of two entrepreneur generations in China, we identify three networking styles: guanxi -oriented networking, market-based networking, and mixed networking. We theorize that three types of norms shape these styles: market-inferred norms, dyadically formed norms, and identity-induced norms. This study provides new insights into the understanding of Chinese entrepreneurs’ distinctive networking styles and their normative underpinnings. Further, it suggests implications both for the wider study of entrepreneurs’ networking behaviors in transition economies, and for practitioners wishing to enhance their network building in China.

This study is developed based on particular social and cultural backgrounds and discovers young Eastern ethnic minority groups’ (EMGs) online-startup motivation on live streaming platforms. Drawing on the Hofstede cultural dimensions, this paper explores various influencing factors, including peers’ support, conservative thinking and family support. It analyses young Eastern EMGs’ entrepreneurial motivation and behaviour based on the Stimulus, Organism and Response (S-O-R) model. Compared with traditional research models, the combination of the Hofstede cultural theory and the S-O-R model could be conducive to make the research model reflect influencing factors and present their specific relationships. By analysing 531 valid online questionnaires based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the paper proves that peers’ support and family support can reduce young EMGs’ conservative thinking and positively affect young people EMGs’ online-startup motivation. Based on the analysis results, some suggestions are provided for related departments, aiming to enhance young EMGs’ online-startup confidence.

This paper aims to apply Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) to investigate social entrepreneurial intention factors. In particular, the impacts of social entrepreneurship education and prior experience with social organizations on social entrepreneurial intention through the mediating roles of social entrepreneurial self-efficacy and social entrepreneurial outcome expectations are scrutinized. Based on a dataset of 503 individuals who have completed social-entrepreneurship orientation courses, the analysis results reveal that the other direct hypotheses are supported except for the insignificant direct effect of social entrepreneurship education on social entrepreneurial outcome expectations. Thus, the applicability of SCCT in the context of social entrepreneurship is confirmed. In addition, the sequential mediating roles of social entrepreneurial self-efficacy and social entrepreneurial outcome expectations are also supported by this study. These two mediators fully and complementarity play a factor in the respective effects of social entrepreneurship education and prior experience on social entrepreneurial intention. Policymakers and educators can rely on the findings of this study to design curricula that aim to enhance the social education and experience of learners to stimulate social entrepreneurial intention.

Bricolage is commonly recognized as a practice of non-traditional resource mobilization by immigrant entrepreneurs within their country of residence. When the host country is in an adversarial social and institutional context characterized by the liability of foreignness, we posit that accessing “resources at hand” in the external environment is hampered by anti-immigrant sentiments, both socially and institutionally. Through a rigorous analysis of eight cases of immigrant entrepreneurs and their South African-based enterprises, we apply Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine the practice of bricolage at a more nuanced level. Our findings suggest that the localized prejudice against immigrants ‘otherizes’ their foreignness, and in turn, heightens the entrepreneurs’ awareness of their habitus. We argue that the immigrants’ ‘heightened habitus’ represents an internalization of both cognitive (i.e. resources at head) and adaptive (i.e. resources at heart) dispositions informed by the home country, and which serve as crucial endogenous resources by which to reimagine and reconstruct external resources accessed via local social capital. We present the novel theoretical contribution of immigrant entrepreneurial bricolage as the utilization of both endogenous resources at head and heart, which are activated by – and intended to overcome – their liability of foreignness. Our contribution also aims to reconstruct the frequently referenced exogenous resources at hand.

This paper explores how firms engage in corporate entrepreneurship through programmes, and what kind of outcomes they achieve in terms of innovations. Insights are drawn from four cases of organisations that engaged in corporate entrepreneurial activities. The paper identifies two dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship programmes as idea themes, indicating whether programmes are designed with specific themes in mind, and idea ownership, indicating whether there is a dedicated team to focus on new ideas, or not. These dimensions are under the direct control of management. Based on these two dimensions, four models of corporate entrepreneurial activities are presented linking each of these models to one of the four cases of product innovations (product line extensions, product improvements, new products, start-up businesses). By drawing on the insights of the effectuation and causation logics, the paper provides a fresh perspective of corporate entrepreneurship programmes in an emerging, non-Western cultural setup and the product innovation context. This is primarily done by introducing a 2 × 2 matrix regarding corporate entrepreneurship idea themes and idea ownership in an emerging context.

Different organizational perspectives surrounding social enterprises (SEs) have burgeoned over the past few years. However, integrating financial sustainability with social value remains a “black box” with respect to entrepreneurial strategic decision-making (SDM). Drawing from decision theories and the proactivity perspective of personality-based SDM literature, we investigate the impact of synoptic (rationalistic) and incremental (adaptive) process models, and moderate these approaches with the entrepreneur’s proactive personality traits on SEs’ financial and social performance. Our results show that when a rational and intuitive SDM develops in conjunction, financial performance improves. In contrast, a departure from rationality in favor of incremental decision-making processes advances only the social performance of SEs. A proactive entrepreneurial personality positively moderates strategic cognitions in improving SEs’ both financial and social objectives. On the other hand, when proactivity moderates rationality, the financial performance of SEs declines.

This study develops a conceptual model of network dynamics on innovation by integrating observations and insights from a world-leading innovation company with concepts and theories from the relevant literature. This study first defines the two stages of the innovation process – early-stage and late-stage and unpacks two types of network activities – knowledge networks and social networks. This work then suggests that the experimental learning cycle with failures spontaneously stimulates network activities to become cognitively activated in the innovation process and incorporates six testable propositions. This study illuminates the idea of Learning by Networking and demonstrates that inventors constitute the reality about what knowledge involves and which people act and intentionally create network dynamics for each task, thus merging these streams as a sequential phenomenon.

Entrepreneurship has been emphasized as a way of boosting economic growth. However, there is a lack of knowledge about whether changes in economic context influence entrepreneurial activity. This paper analyzes the influence that such economic changes may have on entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents from individuals’ cognitive perspectives. With this aim, an empirical study is conducted using the Partial Least Squares technique on a sample of 7454 Spanish university students, who had participated in the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Student Survey 2013 and 2018 editions. The results indicate that in times of optimistic job prospects arising from a period of economic growth, individuals reduce their entrepreneurial intentions as a professional option for the future. Despite this, improvements in the economic situation can intensify the perception of support from those closest to potential young entrepreneurs, as well as the confidence that these people have in themselves to start a new business. Moreover, our findings suggest that better economic expectations negatively influence the relationship between social support perceived and young people’s motivations (attitude and self-efficacy) towards the decision to become an entrepreneur.

Recent advances in entrepreneurial investment decisions research implied that early-stage investment decisions, given their extreme uncertainty and unpredictability, were results of investors’ intuition processes. In other words, investors manage the high risks of early-stage investment decisions by finding justifications of future value against risk in the invested entrepreneurial projects. Although some studies have discussed the decision-making process of mid- and late-stage venture capital, there is still a lack of discussion on the early-stage investment decision-making mechanism. In this paper, we draw on regulatory fit theory to theorize how the fit of regulatory focus between investor and entrepreneur could lead to the investor’s early-stage investment decisions in terms of investment amount and speed. Across three experimental studies, we found empirical support for our proposed model. Specifically, investors who have similar regulatory focus with the entrepreneurs are more likely to invest a larger amount of funds at a faster speed. We further found that investor’s sense of rightness mediates the relationship between regulatory fit and investment decision, and investor’s previous investment experience plays a moderating role.

We construct a discrete choice experiment to study opportunity evaluation by entrepreneurs. This new method in entrepreneurship studies allows us to measure entrepreneurs’ utility functions and thereby their perceptions of opportunity. Consequently, we produce empirical evidence for how entrepreneurs evaluate opportunities beyond the objective facts and find two types of entrepreneurs with different evaluative behavior that cannot be explained by situational or demographic differences. We contribute to the opportunity evaluation literature by measuring perceptions, provide theoretical argument and present empirical evidence for heterogeneity among entrepreneurs, and introduce new methods that allow for more nuanced empirical analyses of entrepreneurial decision-making.

Given the limited studies in the literature to understand entrepreneurial well-being, in this study, we aimed to answer the questions “what kind of resources does an entrepreneur need to experience a high level of well-being?” and “what would be the possible consequences of an entrepreneur’s well-being?” To elaborate the entrepreneurial well-being concept further, we conducted in-depth interviews with 20 male, married, and opportunity-driven entrepreneurs operating technology enterprises in Turkey. Based on the thematic analysis of the interviews, we ended up with six resources for their well-being (i.e., individual factors, family life, entrepreneurial success, network, the team, and investment) and five areas on which their well-being is impactful (i.e., individual, family, societal, employees, and business). Despite its limitations, our study contributes significantly to entrepreneurial well-being literature and paves the way for further research.

In this paper, we proposed an analytical framework based on the institutional theory to analyze the effect of institutional context on the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE). The influence of institutional environment was captured through three variables, namely perceived government support, perceived cultural norms, and social legitimacy of entrepreneurship. Based on a sample of 788 respondents from two African countries, our results show that beyond EE, institutional context is equally a determining factor of students’ entrepreneurial intention. Thus, a favorable institutional environment increases the students’ entrepreneurial intention. Our results also reveal that the positive effect of EE is higher when government policies are conducive to entrepreneurship development while it is lower when socio-cultural context (cultural norms, social legitimacy) is conducive to entrepreneurship. Thus, this study shows that informal institutions have a contingency effect while formal institutions play a complementary role in the impact of EE on students’ entrepreneurial intention.

Contemplating the directionality of age difference between the leaders and their team, the leader-team age dissimilarity can be divided into two categories: leader-team norm-consistent age dissimilarity and leader-team norm-inconsistent age dissimilarity. Previous studies have remained lacking to investigate these two types of age differences and their interactions relationship with leaders’ power under China’s cultural context. This study integrates the theoretical framework of social normative theory and power distance theory, and analyzes the impact of leader-team norm-consistent age dissimilarity and leader-team norm-inconsistent age dissimilarity, and their interaction with leader power on entrepreneurial firms’ research and development (R&D) intensity. Panel data on the entrepreneurial firms of the China’s Growth Enterprise Market is adopted, and panel random-effects tobit regression is used for empirical test. The results indicate that leader-team norm-consistent age dissimilarity is negatively associated with R&D intensity of entrepreneurial firms, whereas there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between leader-team norm-inconsistent age dissimilarity and entrepreneurial firms’ R&D intensity. The aforementioned relationship is stronger when leader power is high as opposed to when it is low. The execution of robustness checks authenticates the veracity of the empirical results.