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This paper aims to evaluate the microcredit position in the performance of micro and small enterprises (MSEs). In the case of Malaysian MSEs, the paper also aims to examine other relevant factors, especially entrepreneur‐specific factors, which may be equally important for improving firm performance.

Primary data were collected from 756 MSE samples in Kelantan, the state where a large majority of the microcredit recipients under AIM and TEKUN run their business. Descriptive and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data.

Microcredit is positively and significantly related to the performance of MSEs across all the microcredit programs under investigation. Other entrepreneur‐specific factors, especially entrepreneurial values and management practices are equally significant for enhancing firm performance.

This study reminds policy makers, support institutions and small entrepreneurs that the microcredit program alone is not enough for improving the performance of MSEs. Besides microcredit, entrepreneur‐specific factors are equally important for firm performance. Thus, readjustment to the existing microcredit programs, especially on entrepreneurial and managerial developments, should be made so that entrepreneurial values and management competencies of the entrepreneurs could be enhanced from time to time for superior performance of MSEs.

This paper proves that microcredit is important for firm performance. It also reminds theorists and practitioners that entrepreneur‐specific factors should not be neglected in their theoretical or practical consideration of micro and small firm performance.

This study aims to develop and test a framework for studying the failure of new women entrepreneurs in the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector.

Using a sample of 114 unsuccessful entrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda, this study aimed to identify key failure factors of women-owned SMEs. This study used mixed methods where quantitative data were analysed using the principal component approach with Varimax rotation to reduce the variables to only three clusters.

The study findings revealed that the failure of women-owned SMEs results from the entrepreneur’s inability followed by the enterprise incompetence, which are both internally controllable factors and the inauspicious business environment. These findings contribute to the validity of the dynamic capability theory by explaining how well internal and external factors must stay glued together to avoid failure among women-owned SMEs, something that was not yet previously well documented so far.

New SMEs are considered a noteworthy constituent of Rwandan development. Unfortunately, most new SMEs, in general, do not grow; their failure rate is high (70%), which raised many worries for both researchers and policymakers as to why this occurs at this stage of business growth. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this paper is the first to analyse the reasons for the failure of Rwandan women-owned SMEs in the service sector. These findings are important because they suggest that policies designed to reduce the incidence of SMEs’ failure should take account of the two main factors influencing failure among women entrepreneurs.

This paper aims to investigate the internationalisation inducement in family firms with domestic capital operating in a specific industry in a transition country. Examining the effect of entrepreneur-, firm- and context- specific factors, it provides an insight into the start of internationalisation via exporting and its initiating features.

The study uses a qualitative research approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews from informants with conclusive decision-making power and analysed using a combination of inductive and deductive coding.

The findings show that the sample firms internationalise early exhibiting mostly proactive behaviour in finding international clients. Owner-manager international orientation and commitment combined with contacts in his or her social spaces lead to early export inducement despite the fusion of ownership and control, and regardless of transition context volatility and inefficiency.

The limitations include the sample size and its industry embeddedness limiting generalisability. The key implications are that family firms need support to develop their social spaces through encouraging and enabling linkages between socio-economic actors that can expand the bounded sociality of the firm.

The owner-manager orientation, objectives, commitment and characteristics, coupled with the straightforward decision-making process that is safeguarded by full family ownership, can abate the dissuading role of the perceived lack of institutional support for small and medium-sized enterprise internationalisation in a transition context.

Based on behavioral learning theory, this paper argues that entrepreneurial learning plays an important role in enhancing entrepreneurs' capabilities. With increasing research attention given to entrepreneurs' capabilities, the need to explore the building mechanism has continued to escalate. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of changes in entrepreneurial learning approaches that influence the improvement of entrepreneurs' capabilities.

The authors sent out 1,200 questionnaires, and 226 were returned, of which 167 were usable. The authors used the difference in difference method and the ordinal logistic regression model to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

In this paper, the authors report findings using panel data from 167 entrepreneurs. The empirical results show that changes in entrepreneurial learning influence changes in entrepreneurs' capabilities.

Combining theory and evidence from this study, an intertemporal learning model that suggests entrepreneurs' capabilities rest on a self‐reinforcing learning cycle of experiential learning and social network learning from stakeholders is proposed. This is a sense‐making and seizing process affected by entrepreneurs' previous knowledge and their degree of involvement in the organization, which leads them to dedicate increasing resources to the exploration and exploitation of some opportunities, following a process of improving their capabilities.

An empirical verification of the links between learning and capabilities development in the context of China's emerging economy, which has not been studied in the current literature is conducted. This paper provides implications for entrepreneurs in finding the right way to build and enhance capabilities through deployment of learning.

This paper examines the nature of entrepreneurial dynamics in small business service firms. The past decade has seen a rapid growth in the number of small business service firms, with a corresponding increase in their importance in terms of employment and income generation. Despite the growing body of research on the impact that the entrepreneur has on the performance of small firms, very little of this research has focused on small business service firms. This paper reports findings from a study of the entrepreneurship process in a sample of 20 small business service firms based in the west of Scotland. Using a qualitative research design, evidence is found that entrepreneurs revise their motivations, objectives and strategies over time as a result of changes in market conditions or their own expectations. The most prevalent new objective is found to be business growth which was pursued as a means of increasing profitability, which in turn satisfies both pecuniary and non‐pecuniary intrinsic motivations.

This paper aims to explore the challenges faced by start-ups during COVID-19 and highlight solutions for catering to the new-normal consumer behaviour. The study accounts for 15 deep-tech start-ups sailing through the pandemic and their responsiveness. This study brings forth insights and experiences from the Indian start-up founders and CEOs during COVID-19.

This study uses a qualitative approach and is exploratory and phenomenological. A purposive sample of 15 young start-ups founded between the years 2013–2020 by founders aged between 24 and 41 was selected for the study. The recorded telephonic interview was collected from the founders from April 2021 to September 2021. The thematic analysis of the study evolves from Braun and Clarke (2006) using the MAXQDA 2020.

The study emphasizes upon challenges faced by start-ups, crisis management of start-ups and the relevance of technology-based start-ups during challenging times. This research provides a qualitative framework to establish the role of the technology acceptance model (TAM) towards the adaptability, responsiveness and resilience demonstrated by the start-ups. The findings also highlight the solutions to address challenges faced by start-ups and road to recovery.

The study has great relevance and lessons for budding entrepreneurs during crisis management. The study has implications for corporations and governments in terms of setting up incubators and accelerators to support budding entrepreneurs.

The study is unique in highlighting the relevance and importance of TAM for start-ups during crisis management like COVID-19. The study thrusts upon the need of technology acceptance for better crisis management.

Focusing on female entrepreneurs operating in a resource-scarce environment, this study aims to draw from the resource-based view to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial competences and firm growth.

This study used a cross-sectional research design. Data was collected from 232 women entrepreneurs operating in Kampala’s two biggest markets. The data were analyzed to test the mediation effect of absorptive capacity on the relationship between entrepreneurial competences and firm growth; a Sobel test and bootstrap estimation were analytical approaches that were used.

This paper argues that for female entrepreneurs, the venture growth process is not simply dependent on inimitable resources such as competences, as these are first not readily available to female entrepreneurs and second, only provide a temporary competitive advantage. Rather, venture growth also involves the ability to continuously identify and exploit knowledge resources through an absorptive capacity that may be limited by the sociocultural context within which the female entrepreneur operates in sub-Saharan Africa.

The novelty of this research resides in support for the mediating role of the ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it and apply it to commercial ends. This study shows that female entrepreneurs use externally generated knowledge as a mechanism to grow their firms and this is impacted by the sociocultural context within which they operate. The study further improves the understanding of the resource-based view by suggesting that a black box exists in the relationship between resources and performance. It is shown that the possession of one resource facilitates the acquisition of other resources and proposes that the role of resources continuously unfolds as a firm develops.

This paper aims to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) and its determinants in the handloom micro-enterprises of Assam (India) using the double-bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique.

The study uses a random sample of 340 handloom micro-entrepreneurs from the three districts of Assam in India. The double-bootstrap DEA was used to calculate the TE and its determinants.

The findings reveal that handloom enterprises are only 60% technically efficient, suggesting room for improvement. The bootstrap truncated regression results demonstrate that the handloom firms’ TE is influenced by both entrepreneur-specific and firm-specific factors.

The implication lies in the fact that the management of a firm may figure out how much it can reduce its input utilization to produce the existing amount of output so that it can move along the TE ladder. Moreover, it can crosscheck the factors to weed out inefficiency.

This paper has made two significant contributions to the extant literature. Firstly, it fills the gap by way of accounting the TE of handloom micro-enterprises, which has so far been neglected. Secondly, it used the bootstrap approach, which otherwise is very rare in the discourse on the Indian manufacturing industry, let alone in the micro, small and medium scale enterprises sector.

The paper aims to analyse entrepreneurs' expectations regarding future growth by analysing the relationship between information flows from networks and the perceived risk of decisions associated with the future size of a firm.

The paper's main proposition is that growth expectations might be the outcome of superior judgment stemming from the privileged information derived from networks. To provide evidence in support of this hypothesis, a sample selection model was estimated using a two‐step estimation procedure. Cross‐section questionnaire data were used in the empirical analysis.

Analysis indicates that networks are indeed information mechanisms; however, such information should be specific to problem‐solving firm processes. Better‐informed entrepreneurs are those that foresee higher growth in the future; yet, they are not blocked in only local networking.

The small sample size might be viewed as a limitation; yet, the very satisfactory fit of the estimated model allows empirical findings to be a useful comparison with future evidence in the field.

Evidence is provided on the role of inter‐firm contacts and relationships as a mechanism able to assist entrepreneurs in better assessing and even reduce the risk and uncertainty associated with their present and future decisions regarding firm growth.

The paper provides evidence on the factors affecting expected growth rates, while it explicitly formulates and tests the hypothesis that expectations regarding growth might be the outcome of superior judgment stemming from the privileged information derived from networks.

This paper aims to examine how economic freedom impacts the initial choice of legal structure for startup firms. The authors do this by first exploring whether economic freedom is an essential determinant of the initial legal form of organization (LFO). The authors then explore the impact of economic freedom on firms' choice of changing their initial legal structure over time and how this change impacts their survival rate.

The authors employ a multinomial logistic regression model to measure the initial determinants of LFO by utilizing an eight-year panel data set of 4,928 startups in the USA through the Kauffman firm survey and merge it with the Economic Freedom in North American index from the Fraser Institute. The authors then employ a logistic regression model to examine the determinants facilitating a change in legal structure over time.

The results show that economic freedom is a significant determinant in the choice of legal structure. The findings also report that the majority of startups do not change their legal form, but of those that do change the legal structure show a higher survival rate.

Major limitations are the size of the data and the nature of somewhat limited economic freedom differences with the USA. More nuanced measures of economic freedom would be highly desirable.

Policymakers should take note that limited red tape, smoothly working labor markets and straightforward processes for changes of legal structures of organizations would improve survival and growth odds for entrepreneurs.

Drawing on the theory of institutions, the authors attempt to bridge a gap in the literature by explicitly analyzing the determinants of the legal structure in startups in light of economic freedom. Institutional factors do not work in isolation; therefore, the authors also employ traditional entrepreneur-specific variables that affect the choice of legal structure in addition to the institutional framework.