Although the phenomenon of hybrid entrepreneurs—individuals who work in paid and self-employment simultaneously—is prevalent, the psychological well-being of hybrid entrepreneurs has not been researched systematically to date. This is unlike research on paid employment and (assumed) full-time entrepreneurship, where psychological well-being has been researched as a key factor. Using data from the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Survey, we address this void by studying whether hybrid entrepreneurs display distinct psychological well-being patterns (measured via mental strain, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction), utilizing a comparison with full-time paid employed, full-time self-employed and individuals working in two paid jobs. We further examine whether the specific work arrangements of hybrid entrepreneurs shape their well-being. To this end, we study the changes in well-being of hybrid entrepreneurs and other individuals in the comparison groups who switch to other jobs. For this purpose, we employed matching (entropy balancing approach) to account for self-selection effects. Our results suggest that the well-being of hybrid entrepreneurs is indeed distinct and can be explained by both self-selection effects and unique aspects of their work arrangements. Our study is thus the first to deliver evidence showing that hybrid entrepreneurs need to be studied as a separate group in entrepreneurship research concerned with well-being and psychological functioning. Our results have important implications not only for future research but also for practice.
Firms face opposing incentives regarding when to take strategic decisions towards their exploration ventures. On the one hand, postponing can reduce uncertainty, but on the other, moving quickly allows capitalizing on a potential competitive advantage. Drawing on theories of entrepreneurship and real options reasoning, we suggest that firms resolve the competing tensions for acceleration and deceleration through an assessment of their venture portfolio and environment. An empirical study of the timing of termination and exploitation decisions taken with regard to 3,272 exploration ventures in Australia’s mining industry over the years 2002-2011 provides an insight into the drivers of decision timing. We find that venture portfolio composition is an important driver of timing— but only with regard to exploitation decisions. Higher levels of market uncertainty increase the time to venture termination but not exploitation, and a positive market trajectory increases the time to venture termination, yet decreases the time to exploitation. Finally, we find support for interaction effects between the portfolio and market. The overall pattern of findings sheds new light on the tension between deceleration and acceleration in entrepreneurial strategic decision making and highlights the importance of distinguishing between the timing of different types of decisions.
Firms face opposing incentives regarding when to make strategic decisions about their exploration ventures. On the one hand, postponing a decision can reduce uncertainty, while on the other hand, moving quickly allows one to capitalize on favorable market conditions. Drawing on theories of entrepreneurship, real options reasoning, and decision speed, we suggest that firms resolve competing tensions between acceleration and deceleration through an assessment of their venture portfolio and environment. An empirical study of the timing of termination and exploitation decisions regarding 3,272 exploration ventures in Australia’s mining industry over the years 2002–2011 provides insights into the drivers of decision timing. We find that venture portfolio composition is an important driver of timing but only with regard to exploitation decisions. Higher levels of market uncertainty increase the time to venture termination but not exploitation, and a positive market trajectory increases the time to venture termination yet decreases the time to venture exploitation. We also find support for an interaction effect between the portfolio and market characteristics. This pattern of findings sheds light on the tension between acceleration and deceleration in strategic decision making and highlights the importance of distinguishing between the timing of different types of decisions.
Digitization is arguably currently the single most important force in entrepreneurship and innovation. In this special issue editorial, we shed light on the current state of digital entrepreneurship and digital innovation research to take stock of past research and identify opportunities for the future. The 11 papers in this special issue present a decisive step in extending the current research by either exploring the context of digital entrepreneurship and digital innovation, by operationalizing digital technologies as moderators or mediators, or by modeling the particularities of the role of digital technologies as independent or dependent variables. This editorial suggests paths for future research and specifically calls for more joint consideration of digital entrepreneurship and digital innovation along with specific theory building and testing that incorporates the specificities of digitization. An important aspect in that process is extending the understanding of the dark side of digitization.
S’inscrivant dans les recherches récentes, qui soulignent l’importance des ressources et compétences spécifiques pour l’internationalisation des nouvelles entreprises, cet article teste un modèle binomial négatif sur un échantillon de 520 nouvelles entreprises de hautes technologies du Royaume-Uni et d’Allemagne. Les résultats montrent que l’expérience internationale passée des entrepreneurs facilite la pénétration rapide des marchés étrangers et, plus encore, lorsque l’entreprise créée manifeste une intention stratégique délibérée d’internationalisation dès l’origine. Cette recherche fournit une des premières études empiriques reliant l’influence de l’équipe entrepreneuriale à une forte probabilité de réussite à l’international des entreprises de hautes technologies.
A long-held assumption in entrepreneurship research is that normal (i.e., Gaussian) distributions characterize variables of interest for both theory and practice. We challenge this assumption by examining more than 12,000 nascent, young, and hyper-growth firms. Results reveal that variables which play central roles in resource-, cognition-, action-, and environment-based entrepreneurship theories exhibit highly skewed power law distributions, where a few outliers account for a disproportionate amount of the distribution's total output. Our results call for the development of new theory to explain and predict the mechanisms that generate these distributions and the outliers therein. We offer a research agenda, including a description of non-traditional methodological approaches, to answer this call.
In this short essay I offer some “business researcher” advice on how to leverage a strong background in psychology when attempting to contribute to the maturing field of “entrepreneurship research”. Psychologists can benefit from within-discipline research, e.g. on emergence, small groups, fit, and expertise as well as method strengths in, e.g. experimentation, operationalisation of constructs, and multi-level modelling. However, achieving full leverage of these strengths requires a clear conceptualisation of “entrepreneurship” as well as insights into the challenges posed by the nature of this class of phenomena.
This chapter offers some “business school researcher” observations and speculations about current and possible future developments in the field of entrepreneurship research. Particular topics include the delineation of the “entrepreneurship research” field and community; data and data sources; the quest for increased theoretical precision, and demands for practical relevance and real-world impact. The chapter concludes that the future of entrepreneurship research offers both challenges and opportunities, and that it will remain an exciting field for scholarly study.
Honig and Samuelsson (2014) and Delmar (2015) recently had an exchange in this journal related to a replication-and-extension attempt of two papers which originally arrived at different conclusions based on the same data set. This commentary provides further clarification on the issues and links the debate to broader issues scholarly culture and practices in entrepreneurship research.
Per Davidsson discusses in the following chapter how he and David met and how they became close friends and collaborators. Using the economic analogy of knowledge spillovers, Davidsson creates a narrative of how David has built friendships across the world while also becoming one of the most prolific scholars in his field. These insights show how well-respected and connected David became by way of his open and honest demeanor.
Extending earlier critiques, I suggest that continued use of Shanian discovery and Alvarez-Barnean creation views and their respective standpoints on “opportunities” would constrain future entrepreneurship research. Instead, I suggest venture creation be recognized as the field’s true core, with or without the opportunity concept. Within a big tent of venture creation research, researchers with different knowledge interests and varying convictions regarding the roles of agency and structure in venture creation can partake in our most valuable contribution to the broader domain of economic and organizational studies: insights into the journey from non-existence to existence of new ventures.
Starting from the vantage point that explaining success at creating a venture should be the unique contribution—or at least one unique contribution—of entrepreneurship research, we argue that this success construct has not yet been adequately defined and operationalized. We thus offer suggestions for more precise conceptualization and measurement of this central construct. Rather than regarding various success proxies used in prior research as poor operationalizations of success we argue that they represent other important aspects of the venture creation process: engagement, persistence and progress. We hold that in order to attain a better understanding of venture creation these constructs also need to be theoretically defined. Further, their respective drivers need to be theorized and tested separately. We suggest theoretical definitions of each. We then develop and test hypotheses concerning how human capital, venture idea novelty and business planning has different impact on the different assessments of the process represented by engagement, persistence, progress and success. The results largely confirm the stated hypotheses, suggesting that the conceptual and empirical approach we are suggesting is a path towards improved understanding of the central entrepreneurship phenomenon of new venture creation.
The literature on "entrepreneurial opportunities" has grown rapidly since the publication of Shane and Venkataraman (2000). By directing attention to the earliest stages of development of new economic activities and organizations, this marks sound redirection of entrepreneurship research. However, our review shows that theoretical and empirical progress has been limited on important aspects of the role of "opportunities" and their interaction with actors, i.e., the "nexus". We argue that this is rooted in inherent and inescapable problems with the "opportunity" construct itself, when applied in the context of a prospective, micro-level (i.e., individual[s], venture, or individual-venture dyad) view of entrepreneurial processes. We therefore suggest a fundamental re-conceptualization using the constructs External Enablers, New Venture Ideas, and Opportunity Confidence to capture the many important ideas commonly discussed under the "opportunity" label. This re-conceptualization makes important distinctions where prior conceptions have been blurred: between explananda and explanantia; between actor and the entity acted upon; between external conditions and subjective perceptions, and between the contents and the favorability of the entity acted upon. These distinctions facilitate theoretical precision and can guide empirical investigation towards more fruitful designs.
Ramoglou & Tsang's (R&T) article “A realist perspective of entrepreneurship: Opportunities as propensities” is a recent, potentially influential addition to the literature on “entrepreneurial opportunities”. This short communication argues that R&T's intellectual exercise largely fails to move matters forward on the two most central problems with prior research on “entrepreneurial opportunities”, namely 1) lack of construct clarity and 2) slow progress regarding how characteristics of “entrepreneurial opportunities” give shape to entrepreneurial action and outcomes. I suggest that entrepreneurship researchers should avoid the detour of conceptually dichotomizing complex and empirically non-tractable sets of external circumstances into “opportunities” vs. “non-opportunities” and instead direct attention to multi-dimensional and continuous variation in “those [evolving] entities which entrepreneurs actually evaluate and [sometimes] act upon” (and which should not be mislabeled as “opportunities”). For this endeavor, the notion of “agency-intensity” is the primary take-away from R&T's study.
Introductory paragraph: One of Egon Brunswik’s main tenets was that psychology should pay as much attention to the properties of the organism's environment as it does to the organism itself. This is the spirit in which the External Enabler (EE) concept and framework were created. They were coined and developed within entrepreneurship studies as an alternative to the unproductive notion of “objective opportunity” (Davidsson, 2015) and more broadly to address the neglect of environmental changes as a causal force in business scholarship of recent decades (Davidsson, 2020). The EE framework (Davidsson et al., 2020a) aims to supplement the many agent-focused theories on individual-, group- and organizational levels that are used in these fields with conceptualizations that capture important variance in the external reality these agents encounter.
I grew up in academic heaven. At least for me it was. Not only was Sweden in the late 1980s paradise for any kind of empirical research, with rich and high-quality business statistics being made available to researchers without them having to sign away their lives; 70+ percent response rates achieved in mail surveys to almost any group (if you knew how to do them), and boards of directors opening their doors to more qualitatively orientated researchers to sit in during their meetings. In addition, I perceived an environment with a very high degree of academic freedom, letting me do whatever I found interesting and important. I’m sure for others it was sheer hell, with very unclear career paths and rules of the game. Career progression (something which rarely entered my mind) meant that you tried as best you could and then you put all your work – reports, books, book chapters, conference papers, maybe even published articles – in a box and had some external committee of professors look at it. If you were lucky they liked what they saw for whatever reasons their professorial wisdom dictated, and you got hired or promoted. If you were not so lucky you wouldn’t get the job or the promotion, without quite knowing why. So people could easily imagine an old boys club – whose members were themselves largely unproven in international, peer review publishing – picking whoever they wanted by whatever criteria they choose to apply. Neither the fact that assessors were external nor the presence of an appeals system might have completely appeased your suspicious and skeptical mind, considering the balance of power.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the profound impact changes the business environment can have on business. Moreover, the most impactful strategic and entrepreneurial initiatives in recent decades were rooted in environmental changes. Yet, research in entrepreneurship and strategy is predominantly inward-looking. To become more relevant and useful, theories and research designs need also to capture the existence, characteristics, and variance of environmental changes.
This essay reflects on the last few decades’ evolution of Ideas, Evidence, Concepts, and Methods in the multidisciplinary, multi-level, and multi-methodological field of entrepreneurship research. Using illustrations from my own career and how prior recipients of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research guided and inspired them, I describe the journey from early empirical exploration to understand the nature of the phenomenon to more recent, endogenous theory-development and -testing, heralding each as an indispensable steppingstone in meaningful knowledge development. The essay ends with an ode to the collective, co-creating nature of our knowledge-building enterprise.
McBride and Wuebker's (2022) “Social Objectivity and Entrepreneurial Opportunities” – published in Academy of Management Review and hence potentially influential – provides an improved philosophical basis for ‘creation theory’ compared to earlier attempts in that direction, and it undoubtedly reflects a considerable amount of hard work and an honest intent to make a meaningful contribution. Regrettably, it is also characterized by questionable premises, claims, and conclusions. In this article I identify and discuss these issues and explain why McBride and Wuebker may mislead our field rather than guiding it toward more productive knowledge accumulation and dissemination. I argue that much more is known about new venture creation than their narrow lens allows us to see, and that going forward based on their suggestions would lead to lopsided entrepreneurship research and education.
The key ideas behind the empirical study of ‘nascent entrepreneurship’ are that the research aims to identify a statistically representative sample of on-going venture start-up efforts and that these start-up efforts are subsequently followed over time so that insights can be gained also into process issues and determinants of outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the developments of ‘nascent entrepreneur’ – or ‘firm gestation’ – research so far, and to suggest directions for future research efforts along those lines. For this purpose a review has been made of some 75 journal articles, various book chapters, conference papers and research reports.
The review shows that the current approach to capturing on-going start-up efforts and studying their concurrent development longitudinally is a basically sound, workable approach that has opened up a new and very promising avenue for entrepreneurship research. While many interesting results have already been reported and while considerable improvements on both the method and theory sides of research have been made, there is still room and need for further improvements. A set of 17 specific propositions is developed towards that end.
Researching Entrepreneurship is targeted primarily at research students and academics who are relatively new to research or to entrepreneurship research. This said, basic knowledge of research methods is assumed, and when foundational issues are discussed they are typically approach from a non-standard angle and/or with an eye to illuminate entrepreneurship-specific problems and solutions. This makes large parts of the contents potentially valuable for entrepreneurship scholars at any level of research proficiency. The book is also of interest to sophisticated, non-academic users with a professional interest in collecting and analyzing data from emerging and young ventures, and to those who make use of published entrepreneurship research. For example, analysts in marketing research or consultancy firms, business associations, statistical agencies and other government offices may find this book to be a valuable tool. Moreover, while the examples are derived from entrepreneurship research, the book provides a unique "experienced empirical researcher" (rather than "textbook method expert") treatment of issues that are of equal relevance across the social sciences. This goes for topics like the role of theory; research design; validity assessment; statistical inference, and replication.
Entrepreneurship research has developed rapidly in the decade that has passed since the first edition. Therefore, all chapters have been comprehensively updated and many have been extended; sometimes to twice the original length. Two of the original chapters have been excluded to make room for entirely new chapters on “the Dependent Variable” and “The Entrepreneurship Nexus.” While retaining a unique, personal tone, the author uses examples and references that build on contributions from a large number of top entrepreneurship researchers.
Reflecting on real and perceived differences between European and North American research cultures, I challenge views that European research is under appreciated or discriminated against, and caution against isolationist European positions. Instead, I argue that although no distinctive and coherent European tradition or culture really exists, there may be elements of the prevalent research culture that can be turned into an advantage for Europe-based and/or European-trained researchers in helping to influence and improve one, global research conversation. Of course, a range of sub-communities and sub-conversations will and should exist, but there is no reason for these to be based on geography.
This chapter revolves around research-based insights into the entrepreneurial process. By is meant the process of setting up a new business activity resulting in a new market offer. This new offer may be made by a new or an existing firm, although the main focus here is on the start-up of new, independent firms. Further, the new offer maybe innovative, bringing to the market something that was not offered before or imitative i.e., a new competitor enters the market with products or services very similar to what other firms are already offering. Although the lsatter type of process may be less complex and also have less market impact, it still entails most of the steps that typically have to be taken in order to get a business up and running. If successful, it also shares, at least to some degree, the consequences that signify entrepreneurial processes:
- it gives consumers new choice alternatives- it gives incumbent firms reason to shape up- it attracts additional followers to enter the market, further reinforcing the first two effects (Davidsson, 2004).
Besides, imitative start-ups outnumber by far innovative ones (Reynolds et al., 2003; Samuelsson and Davidsson, 2009).
This chapter discusses significant developments in the field of entrepreneurship research. These include, but are not limited to: (a) considerable growth in volume, quality, and theory-drivenness; (b) a drift of the main emphasis from small scale and independent ownership towards newness and novelty realized through a multitude of organizational solutions; (c) interest in multiple aspects of the entrepreneurial individual beyond personality; (d) moving beyond the individuals towards teams, networks and social capital; (e) viewing entrepreneurship as a multi-level phenomenon, with increased emphasis on outcomes beyond the individual- and firm-level financial result; (f) realizing the heterogeneous, context-dependent and process nature of entrepreneurial practice, along with the challenges to generalizability and research design that follow from this. These developments, including the increased focus on theory and theoretical contributions, have served the field well. This said, the author argues that we are now at a juncture where recognizing a broader set of types of scholarly contributions would be even more beneficial.