Search results

Building on insights from the upper echelons theory and resource-based view (RBV), this study explains how directors’ exposure influences social enterprise performance through the mediating effect of entrepreneurial mindset, and the contingent role of financial resource availability.

The study follows a quantitative approach. Data were gathered from a survey of 168 social enterprises (i.e. Community Interest Companies (CICs)) in the United Kingdom (UK), and covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that directors’ exposure positively relates to social enterprise performance, and that the relationship is mediated by entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, the findings reveal that financial resource availability moderates the indirect path between directors’ exposure and social enterprise performance such that the effect is more pronounced at high levels of financial resource availability.

This study is a pioneering attempt to uncover the linkage between directors’ exposure and social enterprise performance. Unlike past research, the study integrates the upper echelons theory and RBV to extend social enterprise research within the social entrepreneurship domain and provide important practical value for social enterprise practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of a team’s personality faultlines on entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, this paper verifies the moderating effect of shared leadership on the connection between the two varies. The authors focus on the upper echelons theory and social identity theory as well as personality faultlines in entrepreneurial teams.

An online survey was conducted using data collected in China. Data from 618 members from 144 new venture teams were collected to examine the authors’ hypothesis.

The authors find a U-shaped relationship between the strength of entrepreneurial teams' personality-faultline and entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, shared leadership negatively moderates this U-shaped relationship. Specifically, when the entrepreneurial team has a high level of shared leadership, both the positive and negative relationships between the strength of the personality faultlines and entrepreneurial performance are weaker.

The research offers important theoretical and practical implications for the formation of entrepreneurial teams.

Although the published studies have noted that ambidextrous marketing capabilities (AMCs) could improve firm performance, they seem to ignore the differences between mature corporations and new ventures (NVs). Generally, it is impossible for NVs to simultaneously possess two types of marketing capabilities such as marketing exploitation and marketing exploration. They have to make a trade-off between the present market and the future market. This paper seeks to investigate the causal relationship between AMCs (exploitation-dominated AMCs and exploration-dominated AMCs) and entrepreneurial performance in the context of NVs. Furthermore, this paper attempts to explore the internal interaction of entrepreneurial orientation and the external interaction of competitive intensity.

This paper develops a theoretical framework according to configuration theory and investigates the causal relationship between AMCs (exploration-dominated AMCs and exploitation-dominated AMCs) and entrepreneurial performance as well as the moderating roles played by entrepreneurial orientation and competitive intensity based on the survey data collected from 257 Chinese NVs.

The results show that both the exploration-dominated AMCs and the exploitation-dominated AMCs have significant positive effects on entrepreneurial performance. However, the moderating roles played by entrepreneurial orientation and competitive intensity in the causal relationships are different and complicated. Specifically, entrepreneurial orientation negatively moderates the relationship between exploitation-dominated AMCs and entrepreneurial performance and positively moderates the relationship between exploration-dominated AMCs and entrepreneurial performance; competitive intensity positively moderates the relationship between exploitation-dominated AMCs and entrepreneurial performance and negatively moderates the relationship between exploration-dominated AMCs and entrepreneurial performance.

This paper plays a pioneering role in enriching the theoretical connotation of AMCs, improving the theoretical framework of AMCs and expanding the theoretical application of AMCs by analyzing and confirming the causal relationships between AMCs and entrepreneurial performance in the context of NVs, which is different from the previous studies. In addition, this paper also makes a valuable contribution to management practices, such as leading NVs, to match different types of AMCs with internal and external conditions for improving entrepreneurial performance.

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 this study is to delineate the differences in how contextual factors (i.e. funding, market reach and talent) influence performance of entrepreneurial ecosystems in advanced and emerging economies.

Building upon the biological perspective on entrepreneurial ecosystems, in this study we conduct the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) on the sample of 100 entrepreneurial ecosystems across 25 advanced economies and 21 emerging economies. The fsQCA allows us to embrace the causal complexity that characterizes the relationship between multiple contextual factors and ecosystem performance in countries with different levels of economic development.

The results elucidate how the level of a country’s economic development influences the interplay of contextual factors and their collective impact on the performance of entrepreneurial ecosystems across advanced and emerging economies.

Our findings provide useful guidance for practitioners and policymakers aiming to cultivate conducive environments for nurturing new ventures within local ecosystems, which will stimulate the economic growth of the regions and narrow the gap between advanced and emerging economies.

This study delineates the complex interactions of key contextual factors and their joint impact on ecosystem performance in emerging economies, in comparison to ecosystems in advanced economies. By looking into differences of antecedents of high and low performance of ecosystems embedded in countries with distinctive level of economic development, this study goes beyond prior research that primarily focused on singular countries or regions.

Achieving project performance goals in extremely resource-constrained environments, such as those of social enterprises, is challenging. These organizations often employ bricolage – making the most of available resources – to navigate challenging landscapes. This study aims to understand how bricolage capabilities enhance or attenuate organizational project outcomes in resource-constrained social enterprises.

An exploratory survey was conducted to understand project management practices in Canadian social enterprises. Established scales were used to measure constructs with confirmatory factor analysis, and linear regression was employed to analyze relationships.

The study provides empirical evidence of the positive influence of bricolage on organizational project performance, with a crossover interaction observed for moderators – entrepreneurial leadership and project management capabilities. While project capabilities strengthen the positive impact of bricolage capabilities on project performance, entrepreneurial leadership has the opposite effect.

The insights from this study offer an initial roadmap for project managers for effective resource acquisition and utilization through bricolage, ultimately enhancing project management effectiveness in resource-constrained environments.

Despite the crucial role of bricolage capabilities in resource-constrained environments, the project management literature has largely neglected this concept. It is unclear how organizations use bricolage to manage projects. This lack of understanding challenges organizations, hindering their ability to apply bricolage consistently and thoughtfully in managing projects. Our study provides a deeper understanding of how bricolage facilitates project performance and enriches our understanding of it as an effective resource mobilization strategy within social enterprises.

The study aimed to analyze the influence of network embeddedness on the innovation performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong Province.

A conceptual model of the influence of network embeddedness on the innovation performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong province is established, which takes the business model as the mediating variable and political association as the moderating variable. Multivariate statistical analysis and the MacKinnon confidence interval method were used to analyze 418 questionnaires.

The results show that both relational embeddedness and structural embeddedness have significant positive effects on the innovation performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong Province. The business model has a partial mediating effect between relationship embeddedness, structure embeddedness, and innovation performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong Province, respectively. Political relevance has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between the relationship embeddedness and innovation performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong Province, but the moderating effect on structural embeddedness and innovation performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong province has not been verified.

The study of this paper also has some shortcomings: very few data research samples exist; the external factors affecting the performance of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong Province need to be further refined. The research scale needs further improvement.

In this paper, embedding theory, transaction cost theory, resource dependence theory, rent-seeking theory, new institution theory and uncertainty management theory were integrated by system attempt to reveal the mediating and moderating roles of business model and political relevance, respectively, between network embeddedness behavior and entrepreneurial innovation performance of high-tech enterprises. The research conclusions expand the relevant research in the field of entrepreneurial innovation. At the same time, the research results provide theoretical support and reference for the innovative growth of high-tech enterprises and government behavior decision-making in Guangdong province.

Network embeddedness will have a profound impact on the entrepreneurial innovation performance of high-tech enterprises. Existing research has overlooked discussing this issue from the perspective of internal and external influencing factors within the enterprise. Therefore, this study addresses this issue by (1) introducing the business model as the mediating variable from an internal perspective of the enterprise, (2) introducing political association as the moderating variable from an external perspective of the enterprise and (3) 418 original questionnaires of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong Province were used to test the effect of the study variables.

There is a paucity of empirical studies on the impact of entrepreneurial management on small and medium enterprises (SME) performance. Against this backdrop and drawing upon the resource-based view, this study aims to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial management and SME performance and the mediating role of competitive advantage in an emerging economy.

This study adopted a survey research design and a quantitative approach. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from a conveniently selected sample of 174 manufacturing SMEs in Nigeria. This study performed mediation analysis to test the proposed hypotheses using Hayes’ PROCESS macro v4.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurial management positively impacts competitive advantage and SME performance. Furthermore, competitive advantage has a positive impact on SME performance and plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between entrepreneurial management and SME performance.

This study only examines manufacturing SMEs in a single country, Nigeria; thus, the generalisability of its findings is limited.

The findings of this study offer practical implications for SMEs and SME owners or managers. The findings suggest that to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and achieve superior performance, SMEs should pursue opportunities regardless of the available resources, promote flat and flexible organisation structures, adopt fast growth orientation and strategies, reward employees based on the value they add to the organisation and foster an entrepreneurial culture.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence of the mediating effect of competitive advantage on the relationship between entrepreneurial management and SME performance in an emerging economy. This study demonstrates that implementing entrepreneurial management practices by SMEs can result in sustainable competitive advantage and superior performance.

This paper examines the moderating role of firm size (FS) and industry type in the relationship between high-performance work practices (HPWPs) and entrepreneurial firm performance.

A descriptive research design involving a five-year dataset from firms in the retail and services industries of Nigeria was used in the analyses.

The use of HPWPs is widespread among entrepreneurial firms, with ability- and motivation-enhancing practices being dominant. Country context influences the types of HPWPs implemented by entrepreneurial firms. FS and industry type do not have significant moderating effects on the relationship between HPWPs and the performance of entrepreneurial firms. The positive effect of HPWPs on performance is consistent with findings made in prior studies.

FS plays a neutral role in the relationship between HPWPs and entrepreneurial firm performance. Within the broader retail and services industries, this relationship is weaker in capital-intensive firms compared to less capital-intensive ones. The restricted focus on only retail and service industries may limit the universal applicability of the findings.

Findings indicate that the efficacy of HPWPs is neither influenced by FS nor industry type. Entrepreneurial firms with higher capital intensity benefit relatively more from the use of HPWPs.

Unlike other research efforts focusing on a single moderating influence, this study combines two important contextual factors, FS and industry type, to provide a better understanding of HPWPs. The study spotlights the effects of country context in the implementation of HPWPs in a way that prior studies have not done.

This paper aims to specifically analyze the interrelationships of employee political skill and personal reputation with both workplace and non-workplace outcomes. The study further focuses on performance and career development as workplace outcomes and entrepreneurial intentions as a non-workplace outcome, while analyzing employee political skill and personal reputation.

The study uses a survey method, where multi-source data were collected in a time-lagged fashion from the employees working in the textile sector in an under-researched emerging economy setting of Pakistan.

The findings establish that political skill is a significant predictor of employee job performance, career development and entrepreneurial intentions. Moreover, the mediating role of personal reputation was confirmed for the proposed relationships. Hence, the findings highlight the contributory role of personal reputation in the enhancement of workplace and non-workplace outcomes, such as entrepreneurial intentions linked to political skill.

Despite some limitations, this paper offers theoretical implications both for political skill and indirect reciprocity literature. A vital theoretical contribution is extended by studying the mediating role of personal reputation in the main relationships analyzed in this paper. The scope of indirect reciprocity is expanded by identifying personal reputation as a vital mechanism for indirect reciprocity.

Organizations should focus on developing political skill amongst their employees, as these skills are salient for amassing a favorable reputation, that eventually leads to performance, career growth and development of entrepreneurial intentions. Organizations should put in place careful selection and coaching and mentoring programs that equip employees with such skills that eventually lead toward the alignment of employees’ personal goals and organizational goals. Employees, then, could focus on priming both organizational and personal goals.

This paper is one of the pioneering studies that specifically link employee political skill with job performance, career development and entrepreneurial intentions, especially in the relatively volatile and under-researched context of Pakistan. Another novelty of this research is the investigation of personal reputation as a psychological mechanism underlying the primary relationships proposed in this research.