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The purpose of this paper is to contribute a deeper understanding of how natural disasters influence entrepreneurial intentionality as an important antecedent of entrepreneurial intention. It reviews the conceptual and operational backgrounds of natural disaster research and entrepreneurship theories and formulates a distinctive conceptual approach to entrepreneurial intentions in natural disaster settings.

An exhaustive review of research articles published in peer-reviewed entrepreneurship journals is provided and focuses on entrepreneurship, natural disasters, and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Six propositions about the influence of natural disasters on entrepreneurial intentions in ways that are distinct to the specific circumstances of post-disaster environments.

The paper’s findings serve as a useful foundation for future research of post-disaster entrepreneurial behavior. The propositions highlight the relationship between opportunities, self-efficacy, feasibility, desirability, fear of failure, and resilience that complement macro-level research with micro-level antecedents. Implications entail new methodological avenues for future studies of humanitarian and post-disaster entrepreneurial activities.

This paper suggests ways in which public policy and educational, state and community programs can be designed and executed so that entrepreneurial intentions are developed and entrepreneurial action is not hindered. Moreover, it clarifies several ways to achieve more effective action (or inaction) to serve those affected by natural disasters and minimize disaffection.

The study illustrates that natural disasters can and do create opportunities for entrepreneurial behavior even as they generate powerful and sweeping negative effects on socioeconomic systems. Its unique approach explores individual-level variables concerning intent and motivation that drive entrepreneurial decisions in disaster contexts.

Examine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster.

We examine informal volunteerism (the activities of people who work outside of formal emergency and disaster management arrangements) through the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial effectuation to explain informal volunteer behavior and cognition and gain insight on how they develop their disaster relief ventures.

We find that informal volunteers follow an effectual logic, relying on available means to take advantage of opportunities as they are recognized or created. Application of effectuation vs causation processes depended on whether the informal volunteers were categorized as traditional, emergent or extended volunteers.

Informal volunteers’ disregard for the Affordable Loss Principle task governments and disaster relief organizations with the important challenge of managing and assuring the safety and well-being of informal volunteers. Their entrepreneurial behavior also invites the establishment of formal processes to counsel and guide informal volunteers, helping them fill out the necessary paperwork and funding applications to develop their efforts.

Through their experimentation and flexibility, informal volunteers accelerate disaster recovery, recognizing opportunities, working around bureaucracy and other roadblocks that hinder the efforts of established organizations. They also demonstrate entrepreneurial behavior that helps revitalize and jumpstart the local economy, making for stronger and more resilient communities

This study borrows from Effectuation Theory from the entrepreneurship field in order to bring a much needed theoretical lens to the topic and greatly assists informal volunteerism research, moving from past efforts that simply define and categorize the concept.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role exposure to digital fabrication technology plays in the development of students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and intentions.

Data were collected from 131 students enrolled in a business administration undergraduate program at a large Midwestern university in the USA. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Results provide evidence on how exposure to and hands-on experience with digital manufacturing technology in universities can have a positive impact on students’ ESE and intentions to become entrepreneurs.

Results support initiatives by business schools and entrepreneurship programs to invest in digital manufacturing technology as they help increase students’ confidence in their technological and entrepreneurial abilities.

This is the first study that directly looks at the role that exposure to digital technology in a business and entrepreneurship education program has on students’ ESE and intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in perceptions and actions taken on post-disaster entrepreneurial opportunities.

Utilizing worldwide data on natural disasters (EMDAT) and entrepreneurial perceptions (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)), the authors apply analysis of covariance to compare entrepreneurial opportunity perceptions and actions before and after a disaster took place.

The study found that natural disasters have a significant and positive impact on entrepreneurial opportunity perceptions and actions but not on perceptions of self-efficacy, fear of failure and entrepreneurial intentions.

One limitation of the study is the use of the secondary data. While the GEM data as well as the EMDAT data are country specific, disasters usually have a direct impact on a region of a country rather than affecting the whole country’s behavior.

The results hold important policy implications. The fact that disasters increase entrepreneurial action implies that local government institutions should include entrepreneurial action as part of the post-disaster recovery process. By providing assistance and access to resources, government institutions could further increase entrepreneurial action and could increase the number of opportunities perceived by individuals which would lead to new and innovative businesses, in addition to the rebuilding of pre-existing firms.

Natural disasters are frequently considered to be the cause of small business failures or an obstacle to their performance, while simultaneously thought to be a vital component of post-disaster reconstruction. To date, few researchers have attempted to understand the impact of these events on entrepreneurial tendencies, behaviors and activities, even though the authors barely understand how they could serve as a source of entrepreneurial opportunity and innovation. This research is one of the first attempts to shed some light into this interesting and important phenomenon.

Young/small firms are often seen as acquisition targets, but rarely viewed as potential acquirers. However, in this study we found that one-third of the young ventures in our sample pursued aggressive growth though acquisition of their competitors. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, we found striking evidence that young firms pursuing growth via acquisition significantly outperformed their peers who pursued growth via internal development. Thus, growth via acquisition clearly represents a viable strategic option for young, small firms.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the development of entrepreneurial opportunities within the context of environmentally‐sustainable business. The “4P” creativity framework (person, process, press/situation, and product) was used.

Three cases were used to examine opportunity development. Each case involved an entrepreneur in the process of starting a new environmentally‐friendly business. The entrepreneurs were interviewed on a weekly basis.

Findings suggest that the 4Ps are useful framework for examining entrepreneurial opportunity development. Furthermore, they are strongly interrelated.

Given their inherent creative nature, a creativity perspective is useful for examining opportunities. Additionally, the findings suggest that future research should consider the interaction within the constellation of creative factors – person, process, press and product – when using a creativity perspective.

This study provides one of the few accounts of the development of entrepreneurial opportunities in which data were collected contemporaneously.

Entrepreneurial firms are vital to economic growth because they bring creative insights and unique capabilities to the marketplace. The content of entrepreneurial firm strategies reflect the unique opportunities that the technological breakthroughs, operational efficiencies, and/or marketing genius of entrepreneurial firms bring into existence. Entrepreneurial firms are at the forefront of creating new classes of products and services, and sometimes even new industries. With them, they often bring new methods of competing. Volume 11 identifies several strategic dilemmas and strategic choices that organizations face in their efforts to be more entrepreneurial. It concludes with a lively debate between well-known scholars regarding the best ways to advance entrepreneurship as a scholarly field.

The purpose of this research is to identify the main authors, the main influential universities doing research on entrepreneurial intentions (EIs), the main subject areas and the main productive academic journals on this topic. This paper also aims to shed light on the current knowledge and contributions to the field, in particular co-authorships, co-words, research topics and cluster of themes.

The methodology is based on bibliometric techniques using mapping and clustering. The study has been conducted on 377 articles published in journals indexed in the Scopus database for a period of almost 24 years, that is, from 1 January 1993 to 8 July 2016. VOSviewer software was used to conduct the analysis.

Findings highlight the top authors, the ranking of the main journals and universities doing research in the field of EIs. Another relevant contribution is the identification and classification of main research streams and gaps that have been highlighted.

This paper is an attempt to clarify the state of the research study and to analyse the progress of the studies on EIs and to elaborate bibliometric studies that help to give some order to the variety of sources. This is helpful for new researchers approaching EIs for the first time and also for those who are familiar with the field.