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This study aims to build on the emerging understanding that small enterprise growth results from a confluence of different factors. This study seeks to provide additional insights into the nature of these factors and how they influence the growth process of small businesses in rural communities in Ghana.

This study undertook a qualitative investigation of 28 small enterprises in three Ghanaian rural districts. Interviews were conducted with owners of the businesses.

The results indicate that growth-enabling conditions such as entrepreneurial ambition, market demand and infrastructure combine with finance to define small enterprise growth trajectories in rural Ghana. However, finance may not always be the major factor driving the growth.

Most past studies about small enterprise growth in Africa have concentrated on firms in urban communities and see finance gap as the most serious constraint to growth. This study joins the few recent studies about rural enterprise growth in Ghana, showing that the growth of these businesses depends on an interplay of a variety of factors.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of executives’ overseas education and work experience on enterprise digital as executives’ overseas background is critical to the development of enterprises. It also explored the mediating role of enterprise digital transformation on the relationship between executives’ overseas background and enterprise growth.

Chinese A-share companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges for the period 2018–2020 were analyzed using regression analysis and bootstrapping to verify hypothesized relationships.

Executives’ overseas study and work experience both enhanced enterprise digital transformation significantly, thus improving enterprise growth. The level of employee education moderated the mediating role proposed in the theoretical model. Moreover, the promoting effect of executives’ overseas background on enterprise digital transformation was more significant for non-state-owned enterprises and those in eastern China.

The findings provide reference for the formulation and optimization of companies’ human resource structure and have implications on the improvement of enterprise digital transformation and enterprise growth.

This study explored the factors influencing enterprise digital transformation at the microlevel of corporate human capital, thereby providing microlevel empirical evidence for research on the factors influencing enterprise digital transformation. Its findings shed light on the mechanism and context under which executives with overseas backgrounds may enhance enterprise digital transformation and growth.

The paper aims to explore the roles and impact of design in incubating and accelerating social enterprises. It aims to understand design’s influence on social enterprise ecosystems and in improving outcomes for social enterprises.

The study used an exploratory, qualitative approach, using case studies and interviews. The comparative case-study methodology was applied to evaluate the influence of design on the development of social enterprises in the UK and South Korea and identify critical issues in their utilisation of design. Empirical data included: in-depth case studies of design utilisation practices (UK = 6; South Korea = 15) and design applications (UK = 2; South Korea = 2) for the growth of social enterprise and its ecosystem; 27 social enterprise/design experts (UK = 17; South Korea = 10); and 22 social enterprises (UK = 12; South Korea = 10). Content and thematic analysis were used to synthesise the findings.

Findings demonstrate the differing influences of design on social enterprise, from improving products/services and business models to enhancing social enterprise ecosystem support and networks. Future directions are suggested for applying design for social enterprise growth, business stage development and systematising interactions between the social enterprise and design sectors.

The research is based on case studies from only two countries. Further, the adoption of working definitions of social enterprise in the countries may result in the research underestimating the heterogeneity of social enterprise.

The findings contribute to optimising efficient ecosystem development to improve social enterprise competitiveness and innovation.

This paper establishes a research foundation on design for social enterprise, offering theoretical and practical insights into its impact on growth.

The paper examines the key driving factors behind the rapid and uneven growth of social enterprises in China based on Kerlin’s Macro-Institutional Social Enterprise (MISE) model of social enterprise development, with an emphasis on testing key local institutional factors.

The study adopts the quantitative method approach. The hypotheses have been tested based on a cross-regional empirical analysis with two national datasets on China.

This study shows that among the state, market and civil society, local government support in terms of favorable policies is the sole determinant factor driving China’s social enterprise growth. On the other hand, the market is irrelevant and local civil society impedes social enterprise growth. This demonstrates that the current growth model is the result of government intervention.

The datasets have a limited sample size. We suggest that future studies may collect a larger sample size with more comprehensive information. We think this study will encourage more comparative qualitative studies at the local level to reveal the underlying mechanisms of growth.

Since government policy is the determinant factor, the quality and quantity of government-backed incubation programs and platforms would matter the most for social enterprise growth. Our study also helps social entrepreneurs understand what factors matter when they try to develop social enterprises in China. They are advised to work on aspects of gaining legal legitimacy and political support in order to grow the sector.

This conclusion suggests that professionals and practitioners should review the implications of the current growth of social enterprises in China, in terms of their sustainability, given their institutional isolation from other sectors.

Current studies have yet to thoroughly explore the role of meso- and micro-institutional factors in social enterprise development, especially in different contexts. With reference to Kerlin’s framework and the tri-sector model, this paper advances the understanding of social enterprise growth in China.

The purpose of this study is to explore how digital transformation helps enterprises achieve high-quality development, including the mediating mechanism of information transparency, innovation capacity and financial stability, the moderating role of financing constraints and government subsidies, and the heterogeneous effects of property rights, size and growth.

This study conducts two-way fixed-effect model using 780 samples of China's Shanghai-Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2019.

The results show that digital transformation can effectively improve the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises through the triple channels of information transparency, innovation capability and financial stability. Meanwhile, financing constraints significantly inhibited the contribution of digital transformation to TFP, while government subsidies significantly increased the contribution of digital transformation to TFP. In addition, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), large enterprises and high-growth enterprises are more able to achieve high-quality development by increasing their digital transformation.

In the process of implementing digital transformation, companies should actively improve information transparency, financial stability and innovation capabilities, and choose differentiated paths based on intrinsic characteristics such as property rights, scale and growth. At the same time, the government should actively improve not only the digital institutional environment but also the financial policy and credit system.

This study enriches the theoretical research framework of digital transformation and high-quality development by identifying the channel mechanisms and boundary conditions through which digital transformation affects high-quality development and expands the consequences of digital transformation and the antecedents of high-quality development.

This study aims to solve the realistic dilemma between the importance of entrepreneurship and the high rate of entrepreneurial failure, and to point out the direction of subsequent research.

The paper takes the form of a literature review.

Entrepreneurial activities involve multiple dimensions. Entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial teams will be affected by multiple factors when starting a business, and sufficient attention should be paid to both the factors within the group and the factors outside the group such as institutional quality and market competition. High entrepreneurial failure rate is an essential characteristic of entrepreneurial activities, while solving this problem requires entrepreneurs to maintain passion, clarify their own motivation, improve their learning abilities and adopt appropriate entrepreneurial strategies to improve entrepreneurial performance. Meanwhile, it also urgent to build entrepreneurial teams with common goals, heterogeneous knowledge structure, outstanding learning ability, solid mutual trust, strong social influence and social capital. Successful entrepreneurship should adhere to the perspective of openness and cooperation. It should not only actively strengthen international cooperation but also fully adapt to the country’s system and culture. Sustainable growth of entrepreneurial enterprises requires not only stable commercial revenue but also responsibility to society, which in turn leads to a good reputation and high social recognition.

The authors hope this review can provide some insightful viewpoints for deepening the theoretical system of entrepreneurship, improving the success rate of entrepreneurship and promoting the sustainable growth of enterprises.

Further research can be carried out on the promotion of business growth by entrepreneurship at the micro level in the following aspects: analyze functional mechanism between innovation and entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship research by integrating multiple institutional contexts and cultural traditions; consider the changes in emerging technologies on entrepreneurial activities; diversified mechanism between entrepreneurship education and business growth.

The purpose of the research is to identify the major constraints to the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in a less-developed region of an emerging economy and how these constraints are affected by owner/manager's attributes and firm-specific characteristics.

To fulfill the objectives, a structured questionnaire is used to gather data from 200 randomly selected MSMEs located in Cachar district of Assam, India. The study applies factor analysis to categorize various perceived constraints into resolute sets of problem variables or factors. Then, the summated scales are regressed on the predictors related to owner-manager's attributes and firm characteristics to validate the hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that the broad factors constraining the development of MSMEs in Cachar district are as follows: (1) financial issues, (2) infrastructure problems, (3) labor and management issues, (4) market problems and (5) input problems. Furthermore, the findings confirm that firm growth, size, age, sector, location, innovation activity, owner-manager's gender, age and level of education significantly affect the identified constraints.

Although the research is limited to the Cachar district of India, the findings are relevant for other similar districts of India and less-developed regions of emerging economies. However, the study needs to be replicated in other regions of India as well as in other emerging economies for cross-validation and to determine the generalizability of the results.

To the authors' knowledge, no studies linking the constraints faced by MSMEs to owner/manager's attributes and firm-specific characteristics are carried out in the north-eastern region of India. The study also extends the limited researches on the influence of owner-manager's attributes and firm characteristics on the constraints to the growth of MSMEs by incorporating additional predictors.

In this study, the authors argue that the host environment of subsidiaries may affect subsidiary initiative via relationships with two stakeholders: public and private stakeholders. On the one hand, the public relationships and private relationships of subsidiaries may affect their tendency to demonstrate initiative. On the other hand, including technological innovation as a moderating effect supports the tendency towards subsidiary initiative.

This study obtained the data through a survey of 216 subsidiaries in China; chief executive officer or senior managers were selected as the data collection sources. AMOS analysis was used to address sophisticated data analysis issues.

Findings based on samples from China support these arguments. The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting that different types of subsidiary initiative coexist within subsidiaries and by accounting for the external environmental relationships and technological innovation.

What determines subsidiary initiatives in the host market? We find that (1) public relationships directly influence subsidiary initiatives, and (2) this effect is moderated by technological innovation. The theoretical framework shows that this interaction arises from the separate impacts of innovation characteristics, especially a foreign subsidiary's interest in entrepreneurial action affecting both growth and maintenance initiatives. In summary, this article concludes that initiatives are not simply the activities of subsidiaries. The authors hope that the strong explanatory and predictive power of these external factors and technological innovation are further enhanced when these concepts are integrated with the charters of internationalizing MNEs.

This paper aims to explore how typical personal, interpersonal and environmental factors influence entrepreneurs' growth aspirations by investigating the impact mechanism of entrepreneurial competency and guanxi on the growth aspirations of small tourism entrepreneurs in a dynamic environment.

Applying social cognitive theory (SCT) and business growth theory (BGT), this research uses confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the questionnaire survey data of 371 small tourism business owners/owner-managers to test the relationship between entrepreneurial competency, guanxi and growth aspirations, with self-efficacy as a mediator and environment dynamism as a moderator.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurial competency is a more direct and significant factor than guanxi in facilitating the entrepreneurial growth aspirations in small tourism enterprises (STEs). Entrepreneurial competency and guanxi can both enhance entrepreneurs' self-efficacy, which then affects their aspirations to grow their business. Self-efficacy is a critical predictor of entrepreneurs' growth aspirations in STEs, although its effect is weakened by environmental dynamism.

This study expands the integrated application of SCT and BGT in tourism context, providing a more comprehensive and nuanced interpretation of the growth aspirations of entrepreneurs in STEs. It sheds more light on the effect of different entrepreneurial capital on growth aspirations and provides managerial implications accordingly.

Promoting and supporting entrepreneurship is a critical pillar of Oman’s vision 2040. The need to understand to what extent the effectiveness of public funds given to micro and small enterprises in Oman as well as to understand the characteristics of the funds that can drive the impact of such government financial support programs on those enterprises motivated us to conduct this study. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the government loan support programs on job creation in micro and small enterprises in Oman.

Hypotheses were tested using data collected from 1,127 micro and small enterprises that received loan supports from the Government of Oman. The authors explored the impact of a set of predictors on a dependent variable (job creation) to understand to what extent do the supported micro and small enterprise characteristics significantly influence job creations in the enterprises. Multiple regression and General Linear Model Multivariate Analysis statistical techniques were used to test the hypotheses.

There is a positive relationship between government supported firms’ characteristics and job creation for both nationals and expatriates’ employment. The empirical results suggest that, when compared with the micro enterprises, the small enterprises were able to create more jobs for nationals than for expatriates, although the effect of the support program on job creation was significant for both groups.

This paper contributes to the literature debate on the effectiveness of Oman’s entrepreneurship policy. Using multivariate analysis, the study analyzes the public support program for enterprises in Oman and how it can be improved to support the Oman 2040 Vision.