Entrepreneurial firms are important engines for new job creation and play a critical role in defining the future of work. They are also noted for their inherit uncertainty, intimacy, idiosyncratic ...job design, and role ambiguity. There is reason to believe that the experiences of employees working for these firms, the entrepreneurial workforce, are different from those working within large, established organizations. As these firms navigate the process of growing into a mature firm, the employees working within them experience both opportunities that will improve their well-being and challenges that impair it. This dissertation is divided into three papers that set out to investigate the well-being of entrepreneurial workforce as measured by their job satisfaction. The first paper provides an overview of current directions in the study of well-being and entrepreneurship and identifies stakeholder well-being as an important area for future empirical research. The second paper builds on Penrose’s theory of growth and leverages a multilevel dataset to test the relationship between new venture growth and employee job satisfaction. The third paper combines human and machine coding to identify work design characteristics most salient in new ventures and tests how these characteristics influence job satisfaction. In doing so, this dissertation provides theoretical insights into the complex mechanisms found in new ventures that influence job attitudes, challenging the assumptions that high performing firms are always great places to work, and building new knowledge as to what employees’ value most from their jobs.
Entrepreneurial action is of keen interest to entrepreneurship scholars, and research on the topic centers on studying the different dynamics of entrepreneurial action as the underlying mechanism for ...engagement in the entrepreneurial process. This dissertation seeks to understand the underlying mechanism of enterprising activities in the formation process of entrepreneurial action. Building on the existing opportunity evaluation literature, I theorize a process framework with the argument that the event-based enterprising activities and the formation of entrepreneurial action processes are interrelated. With that, the process of entrepreneurial action formation consists of many types of enterprising activities, and over time, these enterprising activities accumulate into the market entry as an entrepreneurial action outcome. I test the theoretical framework in two studies. In the first study, I use a Kauffman Firm Survey, eight years of longitudinal data to test the direct effect of each type of activity, and the moderation effect of venture age on the likelihood of market entry as a proxy for the outcome of entrepreneurial action process. In the second study, using the concept regulatory focus, I study the cognitive mechanism of the entrepreneurial action and use a free-choice experiment to further explore the underlying cognitive mechanism that drives one’s choice for enterprising activities, and validate the causal relationship between enterprising activities and market entry as a proxy for entrepreneurial action outcome.
In this dissertation, I present four essays to answer relevant questions on how entrepreneurial passion can influence firm performance. In the first essay, I conducted a systematic review on the ...topic of entrepreneurial passion and identified several research questions. To address research opportunities in the literature, I implemented three empirical studies to examine the impact of different types of entrepreneurial passion (obsessive, harmonious, developing, and inventing passion) on firm performance and investigated different mechanisms (identity fusion, bricolage, exploitation, and exploration) and boundary conditions (overwork and entrepreneurial autonomy) behind the entrepreneurial passion-firm performance relationships. Specifically, in the second essay, I studied how obsessively passionate entrepreneurs advance firm performance through identity fusion with their firms. In the third essay, I explored the impact of CEOs’ harmonious passion on firm performance through bricolage in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises. In the fourth essay, I investigated the influence of developing and inventing passion on organizational innovation based on the identity theory.
The purpose of this study causal-comparative was to identify how and if leadership characteristics of female entrepreneurs influence small business success and failure. The use of the ...causal-comparative quantitative method of research explored the differences in leadership characteristics between successful and unsuccessful female entrepreneurs, identifying the leadership characteristics that directly influenced female entrepreneurial business success or failures. The target population for data collection was female business owners who have been in less than two years in business, two – six years, and six or more years with company revenue of less than $1,000,000.00 with less than 100 employees. The data sample collected consisted of MLQ and ALQ survey responses provided by volunteers from both successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. The researcher conducted a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to answer the research question of the relationship of how leadership characteristics influence the success or failure of female entrepreneurs. The research study data implied that female entrepreneurs across all groups scored lower in the positive characteristic (Five I’s, CR), and higher in the negative characteristics (MBEA, MBEP, LF). Which, based on the findings, could suggest that leadership characteristics influence the high rate of female business failures. The quantitative data from this study may provide current and future entrepreneurs the ability to increase successful start-ups and decrease the number of small businesses.
Περιγράφεται πως η καινοτομία επηρεάζει την βιωσιμότητα των επιχειρήσεων και πως βοηθά στο να αποκτηθεί το ανταγωνιστικο πλεονέκτημα. Παρουσιάζεται μελέτη περίπτωση για ένα καινοτόμο προϊόν.
This study explores the discourse of social entrepreneurs and their audiences in pitch situations. Adopting a practice perspective on social entrepreneurship, we videotaped 49 pitches by social ...entrepreneurs at five different events in two incubators in Germany and Switzerland. Our analysis of the start-ups’ pitches and the audience’s questions and comments as well as of interview data elucidates the nuances of social and business discourse that social entrepreneurs and their audiences draw upon. Our analysis shows how many social entrepreneurs mobilize a discursive repertoire that is familiar to their business-oriented audience while others predominantly draw on a social discourse. We identify separating, mixing, and combining as key strategies that allow social entrepreneurs to dance between the two. We discuss how the intertextual reproduction of concepts, objects, and subject positions contains both enabling and constraining elements, which results in an ethical dilemma for social entrepreneurs: Should they re-package their social impact story in a business discourse to connect with their audience?
Sustainable entrepreneurs, i.e. those who proactively facilitate latent demands for sustainable development, are now in higher demand than ever before. Higher (business) education can play an ...important role in laying the foundation for these sustainable entrepreneurs. Traditionally, however, educational scholars focus either on the issue of education for sustainability or on entrepreneurship education. There is little work which explores and/or crosses the boundaries between these two disciplines, let alone work in which an effort is made to integrate these perspectives. In this article, a competence approach was taken as a first step to link the worlds of education for entrepreneurship and for sustainability because we postulate that both, apparently different, worlds can reinforce each other. Based on a literature review, focus group discussions with teachers in higher education (n = 8) and a structured questionnaire among students (n = 211), a set of clear, distinct competencies was developed, providing stepping stones for monitoring students' sustainable entrepreneurship development in school-based environments.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
•Digital transformation is radically impacting on Academic Entrepreneurship.•Digital Academic Entrepreneurship is defined by a high level of utilization of digital technologies to improve the ...emerging forms of academic entrepreneurship, such as the development of digital spinoffs and alumni start-ups, the creation of entrepreneurial competence supported by digital platforms and a broader range of innovation development that goes beyond the region.•This paper reviews the Academic Entrepreneurship literature according to the emergence of Digital technologies, providing the state of research and outlining a future research agenda about Digital Academic Entrepreneurship.•Findings show that literature on Digital Academic Entrepreneurship is organized in four major research streams: 1) Digital Technologies for Entrepreneurship Education; 2) The “maker space movement” for Academic Entrepreneurship; 3) Digital technologies for discovering entrepreneurial opportunities; 4) Creating entrepreneurial competences in the Digital “University-based” Entrepreneurial ecosystems.
This paper reviews the Academic Entrepreneurship literature according to the emergence of powerful Digital technologies, providing an overview of the state of research and outlining a future research agenda about Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. One hundred and sixty-five journal papers were initially extracted from Scopus and their content was analysed for the paper selection process by two researchers in parallel, plus a third one in case of uncertainty. Finally, fifty-nine papers dealing with digital academic entrepreneurship and published in a variety of academic journals have been analyzed through a content and a bibliometric analysis. Findings show that literature on Digital Academic Entrepreneurship is really scant and dominated by unrelated research. Content analysis provides the emergence of four major research streams: 1) Digital Technologies for Entrepreneurship Education; 2) The “maker space movement” for Academic Entrepreneurship; 3) Digital technologies for discovering entrepreneurial opportunities; 4) Creating entrepreneurial competences in the Digital “University-based” Entrepreneurial ecosystems. The paper presents the first attempt to provide a comprehensive structured literature review of the disruptive role of digital transformation for the Academic Entrepreneurship. Despite the growing literature on Digital Entrepreneurship, this research area is still fragmented and undertheorized. More systematic and holistic studies, considering both the technological, economic and the social aspects of Academic Entrepreneurship are required.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
► The entrepreneurial effectiveness of European universities is examined. ► Scientific productivity is positively associated with entrepreneurial effectiveness. ► No trade-offs between transfer ...mechanisms are revealed. ► Contract research and spin-off creation even tend to facilitate each other.
The phenomenon of entrepreneurial universities has received considerable attention over the last decades. An entrepreneurial orientation by academia might put regions and nations in an advantageous position in emerging knowledge-intensive fields of economic activity. At the same time, such entrepreneurial orientation requires reconciliation with the scientific missions of academia. Large-scale empirical research on antecedents of the entrepreneurial effectiveness of universities is scarce. This contribution examines the extent to which scientific productivity affect entrepreneurial effectiveness, taking into account the size of universities and the presence of disciplines, as well as the R&D intensity of the regional business environment (BERD). In addition, we assess the occurrence of trade-offs between different transfer mechanisms (contract research, patenting and spin off activity). The data used pertain to 105 European universities. Our findings reveal that scientific productivity is positively associated with entrepreneurial effectiveness. Trade-offs between transfer mechanisms do not reveal themselves; on the contrary, contract research and spin off activities tend to facilitate each other. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Objective: To analyze whether the behavioral logic of decision-making could mitigate the effects of ethnic prejudice on the entrepreneur’s income. Method: Based on the theme of entrepreneurship by ...necessity and the effectuation theory, we prepared a survey with 107 entrepreneurs in Brazil, considering different socioeconomic aspects capable of mitigating or accentuating such effects. We used correlation analysis and linear regression to examine the data collected, with socioeconomic variables considered control variables. Originality/Relevance: The study contemplates the predominant logic of entrepreneurial behavior and the necessity entrepreneurship in discussing the effects of ethnic prejudice on the income of those who undertake it. Results: The results corroborate the research developed by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, indicating that the ethnic condition has harmful effects on the entrepreneur’s gain due to prejudice but indicates partial mitigation of such effects on the behavioral logic adopted by the entrepreneur. Theoretical/methodological contributions: This study points out how the interaction between ethnicity and entrepreneurial behavior can also cause positive results in the earnings of the entrepreneur, although the effects of prejudice are not fully mitigated, even if there is an effort in planning or using the knowledge, skills, and networking of the entrepreneur. Social/managerial contributions: Behavioral characteristics in decision-making (causation or effectuation) can mitigate the effects of ethnic prejudice on the entrepreneur’s income. Although not statistically significant, these characteristics have the potential to provide information for the construction of affirmative public policies for insertion and entrepreneurial education.
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