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Refining and updating Harvey’s theorisation of the shift from managerialism to entrepreneurialism, this chapter charts the changing business of entrepreneurial governance through an examination of English economic development practice. Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), sub-national entrepreneurial governance entities, provide the empirical lens to understand the contemporary role of private interests in the pursuit of public goals in securing innovative approaches to economic development.

Comparative analysis of the strategic priorities, ways of working and interventions of LEPs operating across Greater Birmingham and the North East of England is undertaken against the backdrop of a competitive environment where the mantra is ‘the market knows best’.

The key finding is that while some policy outcomes are prosaic, albeit across contextually distinct entrepreneurial governance places, more innovative policy approaches are emerging.

The chapter shows that there remains value in business involvement in urban governance in its present mode. A more permissive, entrepreneurial mode of governance with the liberation of private enterprise may be leading to imaginative as well as boosterist ways of securing sustainable growth.

The chapter suggests some options for policy-makers and a series of challenges for decision-makers.

This chapter uses a historical lens to analyse the role of governance institutions in shaping enterprising places using the context of the English city of Coventry in the early to late Middle Ages. Using historical documentation as an empirical method, this chapter examines the formation, evolution, growth, maturation, decline of institutional structures, related governance mechanisms and their interactions with other institutional influences that shaped the entrepreneurial nature of the city and its economy. The chapter discusses aspects of success, failures and discontinuities that beset the entrepreneurial landscape of the city and draws parallels to some contemporary developments in UK’s entrepreneurial governance.

The chapter is underpinned by a research methodological approach that is historical and processual in nature and relies on historical documentation including archival sources of empirical material and other published data which have not previously been studied in the context of entrepreneurship and public governance. The research method and approach addresses a methodological and conceptual void in extant entrepreneurship literature.

The empirical findings from archival sources of data and their analysis sheds a new interpretive light on the nature of enterprising places as a combination of continual historical synergies in the specific context of Coventry. The chapter specifically focuses on the role of merchant and craft guilds as a unique presence in the entrepreneurial landscape of Coventry in the early to late Middle Ages and their contribution as powerful institutional and governance forces in shaping the city’s economic history. The guilds and associated governance institutions exercised and enacted multiple economic, legislative, regulatory, civic, municipal, socio-cultural and religious roles and left a strong imprint on the city’s economic destiny that endured for several centuries. Through the interpenetrative influences of these guilds with other political, royal and religious institutional structures of their day, the economic history of the city and its enterprise was woven together in a fabric of cooperation, discord and power struggles. The historical analysis provides a powerful narrative in charting this story and draws parallels to ongoing struggles in contemporary developments in Coventry’s entrepreneurial governance and leadership.

The chapter contributes a historic and contextually enriched sensibility in understanding the entrepreneurial and economic history of Coventry as viewed through the lens of institutional interactions and provides a valuable study that draws parallels between the past and the present. It provides a historically informed approach in understanding the current context of the nation’s local and regional economic policies and attempts to understand how enterprise and enterprising places thrive and sometimes struggle to survive within such a landscape.

The chapter is a unique take on the analysis of entrepreneurship and institutional governance of a city’s local economy in that it takes a historical perspective of issues that animate current public discourse. A historical approach to studying entrepreneurship provides a longitudinal and macro perspective to studying ideological debates that shade contemporary economic, political and socio-cultural governance. The analysis draws interesting parallels to the power discourses and dynamics and ideological conflicts that shaped institutional influences across centuries that impacted upon the city’s economy and use that as a backdrop to comment upon contemporary developments in the policy landscape viewed as an articulation of a political-ideological agenda. The analysis provides and calls for a greater application of historical sensibilities in governance and entrepreneurship scholarship in order to glean valuable lessons.

Concerning that limited explanation exists examining the function of corporate governance in trust processing within entrepreneurial network development, the purpose of this paper is to explore trust evolution and the role of corporate governance in an entrepreneurial network.

This paper makes an innovative exploration based on the case study of NVC Lighting Holding Limited.

It proposes that in the initial period of network relationship which is based on entrepreneur’s individual social network and embodies sole social network embeddness, entrepreneurial network relies more on affective trust than contractual trust. When stepping into extending period of network relationship which reflects separate embeddedness of social and market network, however, entrepreneurial network has an equal reliance on both affective trust and contractual trust. With further development, when ushering in the phase of maturity which undergoes superimposing embeddedness of both social and market network, entrepreneur network inclines to rely more heavily on affective trust than contractual trust. During the whole process, it can be found that the reliance of entrepreneurial network on trust has the tendency to transfer from affective trust to contractual trust. Furthermore, decreasing of equity ratio of founders and strengthening of controlling right heterogeneity in the corporate governance have facilitated the transfer process and the entrepreneurs’ authority has restraining effect on the evolution of the process.

Through case study, this paper presents the trust evolution process in different stages of entrepreneurial network. Another important theoretic contribution of this paper is that it reveals the function of corporate governance in trust processing within entrepreneurial network development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutional context of the entrepreneurial discovery of blockchain applications.

This paper draws on institutional and entrepreneurial theory to introduce the economic problem entrepreneurship in the early stages of new technologies, examines the diversity of self-governed hybrid solutions to coordinating entrepreneurial information and draws policy implications.

To perceive a valuable and actionable market opportunity, entrepreneurs must coordinate distributed non-price information under uncertainty with others. One potential class of transaction cost economising solution to this problem is private self-governance of information coordination within hybrids. This paper explores a diverse range of entrepreneurial hybrids coalescing around blockchain technology, with implications for innovation policy.

This paper points to the problem of how the defining of the innovation problem as either choice-theoretic or contract-theoretic changes the remit of innovation policy. Innovation policy and blockchain policy should extend beyond correcting sub-optimal investments or removing barriers to action, to incorporate how polices impact entrepreneurial choices over governance structures to coordinate information.

Aim: This chapter aims to examine the connection between government policies and entrepreneurial dimensions present in 13 European Union member countries, over the period 2002–2019. As long as the policies represent a set of decisions and actions issued by state-run structures, bodies with political, legislative, and financial authority to act to deal with a matter of public interest, this study overviews how intervention channels and policy instruments act upon supporting entrepreneurship.

Method: The methodology employed consists of correlations, principal component analysis (PCA), and regression models, in order to emphasise the statistically significant relationships between governance indicators and several entrepreneurial dimensions (financing for entrepreneurs, taxes and bureaucracy, basic school entrepreneurial education and training), and also the robustness of the results.

Results and Discussion: After observing the correlations evidencing strong relationships between the governance indicators, the results from PCA returned two main components for the Worldwide Governance Indicators: one incorporates the direct effect of control of corruption, government effectiveness, voice and accountability, regulatory quality, and rule of law, while the second component is based on political stability and absence of violence/terrorism factor. Results proved that governance has a significant impact on the financing available for entrepreneurs, especially from the first principal component, while taxes and regulations applied to new businesses have more impact in supporting entrepreneurship in countries with lower political stability levels. The consistent regression results emphasised that entrepreneurs feel more support from an institutional environment and more financing opportunities in an economy characterised by good governance, and taxes and regulations applied to new businesses have more impact in supporting entrepreneurship in countries with lower political stability levels.

Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature studying the role of government policies on economic growth, by bringing more insights on the governance aspects and policies which are more favourable to productive entrepreneurship.

Synthesising an individual–opportunity nexus model, this research aims to develop a model of early internationalisation by integrating international competitiveness readiness, entrepreneurial motives and home country institutions and empirically assesses this model using a multi-level estimate design.

Drawing upon a global context comprising 79,402 entrepreneurs from 87 countries, this research applies a Heckman 2-step model together with a multi-level approach that allows to deal with self-selection bias and to take the hierarchical nature of the data into account.

The findings show that early internationalisation is significantly affected by entrepreneurs' international competitiveness readiness and this association is moderated by entrepreneurial motives. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the individual-level effects are further modified by the quality of country-level governance.

The research findings have significant implications and value for policy-makers who are aiming to stimulate the rate of early internationalisation by influencing the quality of governance.

The results contribute to the development of knowledge and theoretical bases in international entrepreneurship (IE). The results provide a multi-level view on the relationships between entrepreneurs and the internationalisation of entrepreneurs' firms from an integrative perspective, thereby complementing the perspective of international competitiveness readiness that primarily focuses on the effects of inherent resources and capabilities.

This paper examines the governance function that incubators perform for entrepreneurial firms. The authors demonstrate that this governance function has both a consultative and a control dimension and illustrate how these are enacted in the interactions between incubators and entrepreneurs. The authors also show how these interactions come into being and how entrepreneurs assess the value of the governance role played by incubators.

The paper is based on a cross-sectional interview study with entrepreneurs of 21 start-ups that were hosted by three different incubators. The start-ups are all early-stage technology firms. The analysis in the paper follows an inductive approach.

The authors find that the governance role of incubators is about both consultation and control. Consultative forms of governance include providing input and advice as well as questioning ideas and assumptions. Controlling forms of governance comprise setting targets and tracking progress as well as enforcing structures and documentation. The authors furthermore show that governance episodes are triggered either by the entrepreneurs themselves or by the incubator. In the former case, such episodes are mainly about consultation, while in the latter one, they often have a pronounced control element, which materializes particularly through regularly enforced meetings. Most entrepreneurs seem to appreciate this control element, acknowledging that, in its absence, they would lack the self-discipline of doing some things that need to be done.

This study’s findings extend prior research on inter-organizational relationships and the types of governance mechanisms observed therein. The authors show that a strict separation between actors who offer consultation and those who exercise control is too simplistic. Incubators influence entrepreneurial firms both through consultative and controlling forms of governance. In terms of limitations, this study’s analysis focuses on the perspectives of entrepreneurs, and the authors did not include the perspectives of incubators nor did the authors directly observe meetings between these two parties.

This paper provides examples for how entrepreneurial firms can benefit from being part of an incubator.

This study contributes to the discussion of the governance of inter-organizational relationships by focusing on incubators. In so doing, the authors also complement extant literature on management control in entrepreneurial settings by showing how the incubator fulfills a control function for entrepreneurs before these implement control mechanisms themselves.

Drawing from the firm’s entrepreneurial identity and ecology perspectives, this study aims to explain why the firms deviate from standard corporate governance practices and apply innovative management control.

The authors used a panel of 2,538 public companies listed with the New York Stock Exchange to explain the impact of corporate governance deviance on firm’s performance. The authors relied on unique governance variables extracted from the Bloomberg database to develop the governance deviance index.

Study unveils that deviance from governance practices influences firm’s performance. Consequently, it can be said that the firms which use innovative governance mechanisms, usually stay ahead of the market by leading the governance trends. The findings also generalise the firm’s entrepreneurial identity and organisational ecology perspectives.

Research implies that the firm’s entrepreneurial identity demands innovative managerial control. This study is focused on the US financial market, but in future, researchers could revalidate the deviance index. Scholars can also use mixed methods to test the need for innovative governance mechanisms in emerging markets.

The firms should focus on innovative governance practices not only to safeguard the firm’s entrepreneurial identity but also to pursue the growth objectives. Such innovative mechanisms and managerial controls are helpful to deal with industrial transformations to satisfy key stakeholders.

The study contributed to governance and management control research by sharing insights and catering the potential endogeneity problem faced to measure corporate governance measures. The study also proposes an alternative testing tool to measure governance deviance to add methodological uniqueness and reduce knowledge gap.

The authors contend that immediately following the initial public offering (IPO), the new owners that replace the original ones are likely to request changes in two corporate governance mechanisms, board of directors and top management teams (TMTs). Following these alterations, the purpose of this paper is to propose that such changes will be detrimental for the performance of young entrepreneurial firms.

This study examines the post-IPO governance changes in young entrepreneurial firms. The sample consists of 185 companies that went public between 2001 and 2005. A hierarchical linear regression approach with the appropriate control variables is adopted to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results revealed that, following the changes in ownership structure post-IPO, changes are observed in one of the corporate governance mechanisms the authors considered, boards of directors, but not TMTs. Consistent with the general theme of this study, the authors also observed a negative impact of changes in boards of directors on subsequent firm performance; this was not the case with TMTs.

Contrary to the fundamental contentions of agency theory, the results highlight the need for adopting a different approach for young entrepreneurial firms.

The findings highlight the importance of preserving the entrepreneurial efficacy of young entrepreneurial firms.

This paper challenges the fundamental contentions of agency theory in the case of young entrepreneurial firms. The results demonstrate that post-IPO shareholders’ interference with the governance mechanisms results in lower performance.

While the entrepreneurship literature historically supported the idea that the center and finality of the research is the entrepreneur or the entrepreneurial firm, current developments highlight the importance of the context in which the entrepreneur or the entrepreneurial firm operates. This modern view challenges how the entrepreneurship field has been evolved and illustrates the transformation of the research that calls for an accurate overview of where the entrepreneurship field is going. This chapter aims at providing the historical evolution of the field of entrepreneurship by highlighting the state of the art, the main theories, the research gaps, the trends, the current research discussion, and where the field of entrepreneurship is going. Thanks to this historical view, scholars could learn of the origins of the field, how the research discussion has been evolved and how some popular trends appear or disappear and therefore find some research directions and a future research agenda for the future of entrepreneurship.