Using data on all businesses started by mothers of young children in Sweden between 2000 and 2014, we investigate what factors are the most important drivers of entrepreneurship among mothers. We find that being unemployed or being an immigrant are important drivers of entrepreneurship among mothers. However, our findings show that the most important and primary determinant of entrepreneurship by mothers in Sweden is the amount of paternity leave taken by their partners. These findings suggest that in institutional contexts such as Sweden gender inequality is not a persistent feature of most households and that women can make career choices by negotiating with their partners who will make use of the parental benefits offered by the government.

Adopting the socioemotional wealth perspective, we argue that the presence of a family CEO in family SMEs negatively affects export scope, but that such negative effect is mitigated by board service. We develop and test a model that considers the synergistic combination of family management and another important aspect of family governance in the context of family firm internationalization: the service behavior of the board of directors. The empirical evidence from a sample of 248 Belgian family SMEs shows that governance is crucial to overcoming the problems of family management: family CEOs may negatively influence export scope, but board service is able to turn the tide so that the family CEO effect becomes positive. With such novel findings, we contribute to international business and family business studies.

Mumpreneurship understood as an entrepreneurial activity by women who are mothers is a growing phenomenon worldwide, yet its rise in Sweden is counterintuitive. To understand the circumstances of the participation of mothers in entrepreneurial activities, we use Career Kaleidoscope Model and adopt the narrative perspective and analyze 15 life-stories of Swedish mumpreneurs. Our data show that Swedish mumpreneurs frame their decision to enter entrepreneurship as a choice. The narratives portray them as agents – entrepreneurship results from a reevaluation of one’s own preferences, rather than an adaptation to the role of a mother. Because of the Swedish social welfare system mothers are not pushed into entrepreneurship, yet its design is consequential for their choice to enter into entrepreneurship.

The staged internationalization model posits that firms internationalize incrementally over time. However, born-globals are less likely to follow a more gradual model of staged internationalization, and they must decide on the scope of internationalization at their founding to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities on a global scale. Because returns from international expansion must be considered along with the risk of failure, we propose that born-globals’ local industry conditions moderate the relationship between the scope of intraregional diversification (geographic diversification within a region) or interregional diversification (geographic diversification across different regions) and survival. Using a sample of 680 Swedish born-globals founded in 2002, 2003, or 2004 and followed until 2010; data from Swedish Customs; and archival performance data, we find that interregional geographic diversification increases—and that intraregional diversification decreases—the likelihood of failure, which declines further when born-globals undertake intraregional geographic diversification under higher environmental dynamism in the home country industry. Conversely, undertaking interregional geographic diversification even when the home country industry is munificent increases the likelihood of failure (marginally significant). The findings are robust to several alternative specifications.

This study examines family firms’ propensity to protect their intellectual property through patents. Building on the mixed gamble logic of the behavioral agency model, we theorize that family ownership has a U-shaped relationship with firm propensity to patent. Specifically, we argue that family firms’ desire to prevent losses of current socioemotional wealth inhibits their propensity to patent until a threshold level of family ownership, beyond which the family’s socioemotional wealth is secured and a greater focus on prospective financial gains attainable through patents is possible. We also suggest that environmental munificence moderates this nonlinear relationship such that a low-munificent environment accentuates the potentially detrimental (beneficial) effects of low-to-medium (medium-to-high) levels of family ownership on patents. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 4,198 small- and medium-sized family firms.

This paper applies unique survey data on innovation and external interaction of small food producers in Sweden.The overall purpose is to test if firms that are more engaged in external interaction are more innovative. To disentangle innovativeness beyond new goods and services, innovation is measured as new processes, new markets, new suppliers, new ways of organization, and new distributors. Findings point to a positive relationship between firm innovation and external interaction, both in terms of collaboration, external knowledge and support from regional actors. In particular, collaboration regarding transports and sales is shown to enhance most types of innovation. Product and process innovation benefit from external knowledge from extra-regional firms as well as regional support from the largest firm. Findings suggest that current innovation policies can improve their efficiency by increasing their flexibility to enable tailor-made innovation policies at the local level.