Volume 9, Issue 1 -

Research in entrepreneurship decision making assumes that entrepreneurs use a relatively distinct decision-making process when it comes to market entry. Building on a biased comparative-judgment-formation framework and egocentrism theory, this article theorizes a model of entrepreneurs’ egocentric market entry decisions. Specifically, we illustrate how entrepreneurs may be vulnerable to cognitive biases in the three stages of decision making: information acquisition, evaluation, and comparative judgment formation. This article contributes to understanding the high failure rate of new ventures by suggesting that egocentric and myopic decision-making processes on the part of entrepreneurs may impede rational decision making.

Social entrepreneurship has turned into the focal recognition of scientists in the field. In the Middle East, specifically, where nations are yet developing, SE has played a critical aspect because of its driving role in advancing comprehensive development at both the full-scale and smaller-scale economy levels. This article investigates how academic achievement of social entrepreneurs and government or non-government funding increase social enterprises’ performance and size leading to job creation in a pivotal nation in the Middle East, Lebanon. The study applies a multivariate linear regression to analyze variability among 39 small to medium sizes social Lebanese enterprises. Results show that academic accomplishment, training and financial support positively affect the performance of the SE and hence impact job creation.

Using a dataset of Chinese listed companies, this article quantizes the centrality of interlocking director network based on the social network analysis and examines the effect of interlocking director network on corporate risk taking. The empirical results find that when interlocking director networks have a high centrality, network members are more likely to imitate risk-taking behaviors. Marketization and investment opportunities have positive moderating effects, indicating boundary conditions in social network theory.

Studies of the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) programmes have tended to focus on adults, in particular on university students. The present study examines the impact of an EE programme on primary school pupils from two perspectives: the effects of the programme on entrepreneurial intention (EI) and the changes in attitudes. The results show a significant increase in the EI of the participating, as well as in their perception of the feasibility of starting a business and the attitudes associated with entrepreneurship. Unlike in adults, the attitudes found to develop in children are those related mostly to self-control and achievement.

The theory of entrepreneurial rent posits that powerful incentives for managerial learning are provided by giving managers the opportunity to share the firm surplus, which further enhances the management cognition and situation awareness. These incentives enable management to seek cognitively distant opportunities that provide the firm entrepreneurial rent. Further, the greater the firm-specific risk, the greater the entrepreneurial rent. The source of entrepreneurial rent is the uncertainty associated with the firm’s value opportunities. Further, since managerial attentional resource is shared between the firm’s current operations and the exploitation of the value opportunities, the managerial attentional resources are greater when the firm has greater value opportunities.