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Student entrepreneurs account for a considerable number of start-up ventures derived from university settings. Nevertheless, there is little research that demonstrates how university entrepreneurship education (EE) directly influences students’ start-up activities. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of various types of university entrepreneurship activities (incorporate entrepreneurial courses, extra-curricular initiatives, and start-up support) on student start-up behavior. This quantitative research utilized questionnaire data collected from university students (n = 1,820) in southeast China and was analyzed with hierarchical Poisson regression in STATA procedures. Research results indicate that engaging in any type of university entrepreneurship activities positively predicts students’ start-up activities, yet this positive effect is contingent on students’ prior start-up experience and the overall university entrepreneurial climate. These findings advance our understanding of crucial elements within university entrepreneurial ecosystems and how various entrepreneurship activities within these ecosystems potentially impact students’ venture creation.

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.

This study holds the objective of evaluating the impact of formal (e.g. ease of doing business score, start-up procedures to register a business, property rights) and informal (e.g. school life expectancy, collaboration between companies and human capital) institutions on the economic performance of countries in conjunction with the mediating effect of entrepreneurial activities and social performance.

The authors collected quantitative, secondary data from a range of different sources, specifically the World Bank (WB), Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), World Economic Forum (WEF), Freedom House (FH) and Doing Business (DB) for the years between 2016 and 2018. The authors deployed a quantitative approach based on estimating structural equation models according to the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method.

The authors find that institutions, whether formal or informal, impact positively on economic and social performance with entrepreneurial activities positively mediating the relationship between informal institutions and economic performance and social performance.

The study research holds key implications for strengthening institutional theory. The authors find that our empirical results draw attention to the impact that institutions and their functioning can have on economic performance. Through this alert, the authors aim for researchers, politicians and other diverse decision-makers involved in public policies to prioritise not only the good working of institutions but also fostering entrepreneurship, in order to boost the resulting economic performance.

The study research contributes to the literature by testing the model that links institutions, entrepreneurial activity and economic performance. The authors also help policymakers to become aware of the importance that the quality of institutions has on entrepreneurial activity, and, consequently on economic performance.

Review of literature suggests mixed findings on the relationship between the church and micro women entrepreneurship development. This signals that questions remain about the roles of churches in entrepreneurial development. Thus, this paper aims to explore what entrepreneurial activities are provided by churches to their micro women entrepreneurs and how do these activities influence their entrepreneurial start up and growth.

Phenomenological research methodologies were used to purposive collected data from 38 women entrepreneurs and four church administers in Tema. Results were analyzed using the emergent strategy.

The results suggest that churches provided four entrepreneurial activities which are categorized as finance, networking, promotion of self-confidence and impartation of ethical values. These factors promoted the growth of women entrepreneurial growth but not the start-up of entrepreneurial ventures. The study concluded that the church should provide more support for new entrepreneurial ventures. Therefore, embeddedness because of membership of a church is a critical part of women entrepreneurship development.

Further studies will need to replicate these findings with other types of businesses, in other locations.

This study suggests that policymakers should be working in conjunction with churches in a bid to promote micro women entrepreneurship development.

Limited research has been conducted on church entrepreneurial activities in the development of micro women entrepreneurs in developing economies such as Ghana. This empirical research provides important insights into this field.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential impact of entrepreneurial role models over entrepreneurial activities at different stages of an individual's life cycle in Romania.

To attain this objective, the paper adopts a socio‐institutional approach to entrepreneurship. The authors carry out a rare‐events logit model using a robust Romanian dataset from 2006 comprising 1,449 individuals.

The results indicate that the effect of entrepreneurial role models on entrepreneurial activities differs across age groups. The results indicate that for older individuals the positive effect of role models over entrepreneurship is diluted. In contrast, younger individuals, who have been mainly exposed to a market‐based economy, have a more positive societal valuation of entrepreneurial examples, which increases the positive effect that the knowledge of an entrepreneur has on their attitudes towards entrepreneurial activities.

The main contribution of the study lies in the identification of the specific effect that role models have over individuals' level of implication in entrepreneurial activities. This gives ammunition to the argument that, rather than uniform entrepreneurship support programmes, the effective implementation of policies aimed at fostering entrepreneurship should be designed according to the specific profile of the targeted group of beneficiaries. In this case, the implementation of role models as an effective entrepreneurial promotion tool should take into account the differential impact that entrepreneurial examples have over individuals' behaviour towards entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of entrepreneurial activity in the Nordic countries over the period of years 2004-2013 to provide supportive material for the Nordic entrepreneurial policy makers with specific focus on the role of necessity/opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, administrative barriers and the research and development (R&D) sector.

Quantitative study employed panel regression analysis with fixed effects estimator to test the impact of determinants on entrepreneurial activity operationalized as a rate of registered business activity and as an established business ownership rate.

The results obtained for the both dependent variables did not substantially differ from each other or the supported hypothesis stating a positive relationship between unemployment rate, GDP per capita and entrepreneurial activity. Also a negative impact of administrative barriers was found. However, no statistically significant positive impact of the R&D sector was observed.

Nordic entrepreneurial policy makers should put more effort into the reduction of administrative barriers towards founding enterprises and support entrepreneurship during the times of higher unemployment rates. Further evaluation of Nordic R&D policies is strongly needed, since no positive impacts towards entrepreneurship were found.

The empirical analysis was conducted based on the research gap in the studies related to the Nordic entrepreneurial policies and perceived need for the policy recommendations that are provided.

This paper aims to examine the integration of entrepreneurship and strategy to develop a conceptual framework of strategic entrepreneurship. The framework is developed through an analysis of theory and refined through an examination of practice.

This framework is considered in the context of potentially entrepreneurial and strategic activity undertaken by 12 of the 17 state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) operating in New Zealand in 2006‐2007. Based on a review of documents, observation, and interviews with SOE executives, cases of 12 SOE activities were analysed to compare and contrast strategic entrepreneurship in practice.

The findings reveal distinct elements within the four activities classified as strategic entrepreneurship, activities, such as leveraging from core skills and resources from a strategic perspective, and innovation from an entrepreneurial perspective.

This study is one of the first to examine the nature of strategic entrepreneurship in practice and the associated financial returns.

This study examines the mediation effects of entrepreneurial attitudes (EAs) on the nexus of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) quality and productive entrepreneurship for early-stage and high-growth entrepreneurial activities.

The study employs global entrepreneurship monitor (GEM) panel data of 137 economies from 2014 to 2018. Random effect panel regressions and relative effect size estimations were used for data analysis.

The study’s findings show complementary mediation effects suggesting that EE quality steers entrepreneurial activities via the EA. However, such mediation is much more vivid towards high growth than early-stage activities. Vibrant EEs provide necessary resources that boost the attitude of potential and nascent entrepreneurs to engage in early stage and high-growth entrepreneurial activities.

The study utilizes GEM data to explain the EEs and EA dynamics and their related effects on entrepreneurship at the macro level. Future research may study the phenomena by using micro level data.

The paper explores a less empirically researched question on how EEs steer entrepreneurship growth and development. It reveals a need for new perspectives/logics (e.g. mediation/moderation) for improving the explanations on the extant EEs framework. It further informs policymakers and practitioners to design entrepreneur-centred EE policies and programs.

There is a growing interest in exploring the interface between international marketing and entrepreneurial opportunities. This paper contributes by defining and elucidating entrepreneurial action in early internationalising software firms and the corresponding emergent international marketing activities. Entrepreneurial action in early internationalising software firms is explored through the operationalisation of a reconceptualised entrepreneurial opportunity construct and the associated entrepreneurial learning processes.

The paper adopts an inductive approach, which traces the evolution of five early internationalising propriety software South African firms; from the new venture idea to the establishment of the international entrepreneurial opportunity.

The findings provide support for entrepreneurial action guided by: prior industry experience, entrepreneurial alertness, opportunity confidence and two levels of entrepreneurial learning; experiential and double-loop learning. Learning by doing allows for the continuous evaluation of the new venture idea leading to the international entrepreneurial opportunity. Market responsiveness and continuous product development resulting in the emergence of the firm's inward international marketing activities constitute the key outcomes of entrepreneurial action.

The study is limited to a specific technology context, which is young software firms whose inward directed internationalisation activities coalesce around the development of their proprietary software technology.

Based on an original dataset of early internationalising software firms from South Africa, this paper inductively operationalises and conceptualises entrepreneurial action as the combined interaction of four key constructs: contingent effects, attitudes to opportunities, learning by doing and entrepreneurial activities leading to the firm's inward international marketing activities and a diversified international client and end-user base.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and test the relationship and interaction between “intrinsic” religiosity, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth.

The paper selects 23 countries that are predominately Christian and examine the connection between country‐wide religious orientation, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth. It specifically examines “intrinsic” religiosity, and defines entrepreneurial activity as either total start‐up entrepreneurial activity or opportunity‐based entrepreneurial activity. It is hypothesized that there is a direct relationship between religious attitudes and both economic growth and entrepreneurial activity, with entrepreneurial activity also acting as an intervening variable. The empirical relationship between “intrinsic” religiosity, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth is then examined.

The findings suggest that while “intrinsic” religiosity is positively related to economic growth, the key relationship may be between “intrinsic” religiosity and entrepreneurial activity, with entrepreneurial activity then resulting in economic growth.

By examining the diverse literatures of economic development, entrepreneurship, theology, and the psychology of religion, this paper offers a unique analysis of religious attitudes and their impact on entrepreneurial activity and economic growth. Both the conceptual discussion and the empirical results extend previous studies examining cultural approaches to understanding economic growth.