Entrepreneurship & Regional Development

This conceptual paper offers a research agenda in examining the role of standards for innovation in high-tech SMEs’ business models from a capability perspective. This paper aims to address the research question, how are SMEs using standards in a new environment of rapidly emerging technologies to produce innovations and what are the new directions for...

This study investigates three pivotal factors influencing workers’ shift towards knowledge-based self-employment: the facilitation effect of telework, age-related modifications to this effect, and geographic influences, drawing from Self-Determination Theory, Procedural Utility, and the Job Demands-Resources Model. Pre- and post-pandemic teleworkers are categorized into four groups based on telewo...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) are changing as funding for traditional support structures is reduced and large corporations are running corporate accelerators (CAs). These new support organizations are struggling to survive and address challenges of legitimacy. However, research on EEs has not yet investigated the conditions of their existence from an ecosystemic perspective. Drawing on neoinsti...

The aim of this article is to show how student entrepreneurs construct their social capital within the sub-ecosystem of student entrepreneurship. We conducted a single case study on the professional network of a cohort of students participating in an entrepreneurship programme in the city of Strasbourg in France. Analysis of their professional networks for their...

Entrepreneurship can be a pathway to emancipation from social constraints and economic oppression. However, the stories of emancipatory entrepreneurship reveal that these pathways are as diverse and unique as entrepreneurs themselves. Inspired by Hermann Hesse, we explore this variation by conceptualizing emancipatory entrepreneurship as the lifelong pursuit of Eigensinn, a self-creating process o...

Uncertainty, discrimination, and socioeconomic marginalization in host countries lead many refugees to entrepreneurial bricolage. Understanding their bricolage practices is crucial to designing policies and programmes to support refugee entrepreneurship, yet little is known about how refugees enact bricolage practices where institutional support is lacking, resources are constrained and where they...

Rural entrepreneurship scholarship has long underscored the importance of contextual conditions that enable or constrain entrepreneurial activities. However, contextual relations are, at times, characterized by a stereotypical or superficial understanding of what ‘rurality’ is and means for rural entrepreneurship, prompting calls for an exploration of new theoretical foundations. We develop a nove...

Drawing on the entrepreneur-as-poet analogy, I explore the visceral aspect of the entrepreneurial imagination and how this visceral aspect is fuelled. I use a two-pronged method of exploring literary works whose protagonists are poets (such as Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives). The first prong is an aesthetically faithful summary that explores the construct of the...

Sustainable entrepreneurs are not only confronted with a ‘liability of newness’ that characterizes any entrepreneur but also with a ‘liability of otherness’ as they pursue both collective goals and personal interests. The resulting obstacles include the need for legitimation and a lack of financial, administrative, and informational support. This study explores how sustainable entrepreneurs strive...

This study introduces a novel framework that integrates social neuroscience and entrepreneurship to explore how neuronal pathways enable the transformation of individuals into entrepreneurs with robust capabilities. Moving beyond traditional individual-centric views, it investigates inter-individual neural and social synchronization, identifying neurosocial mediators that drive the development of...

This paper contributes to the senior entrepreneurship and rural entrepreneurship literature by developing a contingency view on the likelihood of entrepreneurial entry by senior individuals in rural areas in emerging economies. Drawing on utility maximization theory, we propose that multi-level factors and their joint effects help older individuals overcome barriers to entrepreneurial entry. Using...

Using an experimental approach, we examine how gender and feminine adornments impact stakeholders’ spontaneous perceptions of entrepreneurs. Although previous research shows that female entrepreneurs face negative stereotypes and prejudice, we find that compared to their male counterparts, female entrepreneurs and their ventures are no longer viewed less favourably and are even generating more pos...

Despite scholarly interest in how emotional and instrumental place attachments motivate entrepreneurship, the influences on embeddedness remain underexplored. Building on the notion that entrepreneurship becomes embedded in a locality, we argue that this process is packed with place-based interpretations of the material and imagined reality. Engaging with the empirical setting of Chile, the world’...

Family businesses are rich in stories and narratives and offer a fertile ground to explore ‘everyday life of family businesses’ that ‘may be difficult to access through other forms of empirical material’ (Nordqvist and Gartner 2020, 122–123). In this paper, we use Helen (Tse’s 2007) biography Sweet Mandarin to explore the complex dynamics of gender,...

Existing research highlights the confident, heroic founder figure as a gendered norm in entrepreneurship. Moreover, confident behaviours and powerful speeches have been presented as key factors in delivering successful pitches. This study applies a dramaturgical approach to explore how pitch-training sessions as a backstage context reinforce the gendered ways of displaying confidence and how diffe...

Public support for enterprises contributes to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. The impact evaluation is a relevant and complex topic that still receives relatively limited scholarly attention. The study consists of an integrative review of a systematic selection of 60 articles published between 1998 and 2023 on public financial and non-financial support and firm performance outcomes....

This study uses a narrative approach to explore how role modelling unfolds throughout the start-up process. Drawing on the experiences of 25 nascent and novice entrepreneurs, we illustrate how attributes of role models, role modelling outcomes, and related mechanisms change for entrepreneurs over time. Our emerging theoretical model highlights three distinctive role modelling narratives: ‘Taking.....

Collaborative spaces such as fab labs, incubators, and coworking spaces have become a worldwide phenomenon based on their promise of fostering creativity and entrepreneurship. Mature, large organizations have also tried to benefit from this by creating such spaces in-house. This paper studies a failed attempt to create one such space in a large bureaucratic organization....

The importance of home and hometown for entrepreneurs has significant implications for entrepreneurial identities, venture success, and broader contextual dynamics. Traditionally, the concept of home in entrepreneurship literature is viewed instrumentally, largely focusing on the unit of dwelling (i.e. premises/house/apartment), the implications of location choices, and their effects on performanc...

This study investigates the interplay among parental support, familial legitimacy, and next-generation succession intentions in family businesses in different societal contexts. Building on attachment theory and insights from family business literature, the study underscores the influence of family at both the parental and societal levels in creating a nurturing environment that supports successio...

ntrepreneurship is growing in popularity as a tool to combat the challenges of unemployment and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. A host of training programme offerings have emerged to mitigate the challenges of starting and sustaining a business in this context. Non-formal trainings (educational activities outside formal places of learning such as universities or schools)...

Culture plays an important role for the study of entrepreneurship. However, whereas cross-cultural research in management (CCM) has strongly evolved in the last three decades and identified different paradigms, paradigmatically diversified research is still lacking in cross-cultural entrepreneurship. To fill this gap, this study suggests an integrative literature review with two objectives: 1) pro...

This study contributes to the debate on family business environmental sustainability by investigating the environmental orientation of family versus nonfamily firms. We study whether family business status affects (i) the extent of environmental orientation, i.e. the number of incentives set for environmental sustainability activities, contingent upon firms’ engagement with policymakers, and (ii)...

Positioned within the context of active ageing, this research investigates the relationship between entrepreneurship and physical and psychological health, and examines whether health outcomes for entrepreneurs vary across different contextual dimensions. To achieve this, a systematic review was conducted including 78 empirical papers from 1993 to 2023 investigating the relationship between entrep...

Little is still known about the approach and rationale of family members’ entrepreneurial behaviours for sustainability that occur at different interconnected levels. Our study helps to fill this void by examining a multilevel web that links a family firm, a cooperative and a rural community. We rely on an inductive semi-grounded approach guided by conceptual...