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The purpose of the paper is to examine the gender composition and structure of the board of directors in not‐for‐profit organisations and their relation to firm‐level entrepreneurship.

Data were collected through a survey sent to Swedish riding schools. The paper focuses on not‐for‐profit associations and the analysis is based on 60 respondents. The data were analysed by multivariate methods.

The overall gender composition of boards had no influence on firm‐level entrepreneurship. However, a high proportion of women in powerful positions were found to have a positive influence on one of the study's two dimensions of firm‐level entrepreneurship, i.e. strategic opportunism. No influence concerning gender in powerful positions was found on risk taking, the other dimension of firm‐level entrepreneurship.

The attention to gender composition not only focuses on the board at large, but also highlights the specific positions of the chairperson, secretary and treasurer in the board structure. Another valuable insight concerns firm‐level entrepreneurship, here treated as a two‐dimensional concept, consisting of strategic opportunism and risk taking, which finds support in the analysis. Further, the empirical data were collected from an industry that includes a high proportion of women on the boards, i.e. the Swedish riding school industry. The study contributes to the debate concerning the gender composition on the board of directors where a high proportion of women in powerful positions is positively related with strategic opportunism.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a better understanding of the relationship between firm-level entrepreneurship and organizational performance in an emerging economy through assessing the mediating influence of strategic entrepreneurship between entrepreneurial orientation and organizational performance. The extant literature on the relationship between firm-level entrepreneurship and organizational performance points to a lack of clarification of the link between real entrepreneurial events and organizational performance.

Data are collected from 324 respondents in 118 companies in four different industries. The paper adopts structural equation modeling to test the mediated relationship.

The results show that strategic entrepreneurship fully mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and organizational performance, assessed as two major categories of financial and non-financial performance.

The dominance of four industries in the data set limits the generalizability of the findings.

Findings highlight strategic and practical implications for managers especially in emerging economies who seek to enhance competitive advantage and exploit market opportunities through entrepreneurial initiatives.

The current study develops a measure of strategic entrepreneurship concept and attempts to contribute to the literature through differentiating between behavioral intentions toward entrepreneurship and real entrepreneurial events at the firm-level to serve as a step to reduce the ambiguity present in the field.

This study presents and validates a theoretical model linking individual characteristics of the founding or lead innovative entrepreneur of a start-up venture – the entrepreneur's values, entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial self-efficacy – to the firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) and, ultimately, to firm performance.

We conducted a survey on a stratified random sample of founders of early-stage South Australian micro- and small enterprises with a response rate of 24% (N = 204). Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model.

The study found that there is a significant relationship between the individual lead entrepreneur and firm strategies developed in early-stage firms in explaining firm performance. It also found that internal values are positively related to entrepreneurial attitude. Entrepreneurial attitude is positively related to entrepreneurial self-efficacy and EO innovativeness. In turn, entrepreneurial self-efficacy is related to innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. The proactiveness dimension of EO and entrepreneurial attitude is related to MO. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy, innovativeness and MO are related to firm performance.

This research was limited to entrepreneurial ventures in South Australia and may lack generalisability in other states and countries.

The research contributes to the understanding of the heterogeneity within self-employed individuals, in particular among innovative entrepreneurs, by expanding insights regarding antecedents and consequences of the entrepreneurial process. It develops insights into the links of individual-level constructs with firm-level constructs to develop a more meaningful understanding of new venture creation and performance. It enhances our knowledge of the heterogeneity within the group of self-employed by exploring the individual entrepreneurial antecedents of performance in early-stage firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how transformational leadership may relate to corporate entrepreneurship by adopting a multilevel approach. The authors also theorized and tested the top-down and bottom-up intermediate process linking transformational leadership and corporate entrepreneurship.

Multisource data across different timeframes were collected from 129 managers and 244 employees from 55 units of 27 firms.

The results showed that transformational leadership and corporate entrepreneurship were positively related at the unit level. Furthermore, unit-level collective efficacy mediated the relationship between unit-level transformational leadership and unit-level corporate entrepreneurship. The authors also found that the firm-level empowerment climate moderated the indirect effect of unit-level collective efficacy on the relationship between unit transformational leadership and unit-level corporate entrepreneurship.

First, the goal of this study is to extend the single focus of transformational leadership on corporate entrepreneurship (e.g. Ling et al., 2008) and develop a more thoughtful approach on determining how transformational leaders influence corporate entrepreneurship across levels. This study responds to calls for research to look at the impact of unit-level transformational leaders, such as middle managers, across levels (Ren and Guo, 2011) and creates a multilevel framework in which transformational leaders at the unit level influence the appearance of corporate entrepreneurship at the unit level.

The present study examines entrepreneurship in established firms holistically and critically. The authors start by reviewing previous research and highlight a variety of definitional, conceptual, methodological, contextual, and temporal factors that have been confounding the research. The authors then present a multidimensional framework that specifies a more nuanced picture of the determinants, motives, activities, and consequences of corporate in established firms. Finally, the authors discuss conceptual, methodological, and practical implications, as well as outline future research avenues.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the potential variances in strategic entrepreneurial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across different countries while also exploring the cultural implications that may arise.

In this study, a qualitative research approach was used, involving semi-structured interviews conducted with seven technology start-ups from two countries – Portugal and France.

The results of this study demonstrate significant differences in opportunity-seeking, performance and long-term orientation behaviors between the technology start-ups in Portugal and France.

This knowledge can help entrepreneurs and investors make informed decisions when developing strategies, entering new markets or seeking partnerships with start-ups from different countries. Furthermore, policymakers can use these findings to support entrepreneurship initiatives and foster an environment that encourages strategic entrepreneurship practices.

This study offers a unique perspective by focusing on the firm level of entrepreneurial SMEs and the strategic practices adopted by technology start-ups in Portugal and France. In contrast, prior studies have predominantly centred on analysing individual motivations for entrepreneurship, such as personal traits or attitudes, rather than exploring the actual strategic behaviors and practices of start-ups in various countries. By shifting the emphasis to the firm level, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of how strategic entrepreneurship practices differ across different cultural contexts. As such, it represents a significant contribution to the existing literature on strategic entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship theories have a predominant developed economy focus, but the relevance of these theories for emerging economies remains largely untested. The purpose of this paper is to show how the antecedents to strategic corporate entrepreneurship influence the entrepreneurial intensity of emerging economy firms in South Africa.

A quantitative study was carried out, using a telephone survey to obtain responses from 146 established South African firms.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurship theories are contingent on the economic context. Entrepreneurial intensity (EI) of firms is strongly related to organizational antecedents and environmental opportunity perceptions. Three organizational antecedents are crucial to create a supportive internal environment: management support, autonomy and rewards. Furthermore, perceptions of munificence are positively related to EI. However, hostility, found to be related to entrepreneurial activity in developed economies, is not related to EI in this sample.

Managers, operating in emerging economies, can stimulate strategic corporate entrepreneurship by creating a supportive internal climate and fostering opportunity perceptions in dynamic, hostile environments; however, strategies using social or political capital seem to be more suitable for managing threats.

This paper enriches understanding of the contingent nature of entrepreneurship theories, suggesting that emerging country context matters, in terms of environmental opportunity and hostility perceptions for strategic corporate entrepreneurship.

Eco-entrepreneurship has emerged as an intensively debated topic over the last few years with a recent upsurge of writing in the field. At the same time, the debate on this topic has moved increasingly from journals focused on environmental management (Schaltegger, 2002) to mainstream business journals (Cohen & Winn, 2007; Dean & McMullen, 2007). The topic of eco-entrepreneurship lies at the nexus of innovation, concern for the environment, and entrepreneurship. Yet, most contributions to date remain conceptual or focus on reporting case studies (Schaltegger, 2002; Schaltegger & Petersen, 2001). Rarely found are results and analyses of larger-scale empirical surveys on the topic, and it is this gap in the literature that this chapter addresses.

This study aims to use dynamic capability theory to investigate the effect of entrepreneurial orientation and dynamic capabilities (DC) on the firm’s entrepreneurial performance through strategic entrepreneurship (SE).

To address the research objective, the authors obtained data from larger organisations operating in an emerging Pakistani economy.

Findings reveal that, in emerging markets, DC are essential elements that influence the organisation’s opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviours to ensure the firm’s entrepreneurial performance.

The present study implies that training is needed for the managers and team leaders of emerging market corporates to think entrepreneurially by revising the strategic goals of the corporate.

SE-based executive training should also be compulsory for the top management teams, including the board of directors for larger firms.

SE is a critically important business concept and should be taught in the emerging market’s business schools as a course at the graduate level.

This paper strengthens entrepreneurship literature by using a unique context of an emerging market and suggests a unique SE-based framework for the firms operating in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents of, and the relationships between, entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, and individual‐level innovation performance.

Questionnaire data were collected from 268 senior R&D project team members (response rate 64.58 percent) along with 83 R&D managers who evaluated their employees' innovative behaviors in one science park in Taiwan.

The results show that an individual's self‐efficacy, prior knowledge, social networks, and perception about the industrial environment on opportunities all had positive effects on entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. Also entrepreneurial opportunity recognition contributed significantly to individual‐level innovation performance.

The findings show that perception about the industrial environment on opportunities variable was the most important predictor among all four of the antecedents of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. That is, individual characteristics and traits cannot fully explain the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition process. Because the data were limited to high technology industry, future studies need to validate these findings in other industries.

Findings of this study suggest that to increase R&D employee's innovation performance, it is critical for high technology firms to invest in developing and enhancing employees' entrepreneurial opportunity recognition ability.

The process of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition has been viewed as a black box. Although the literature has explored various antecedents that influence entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, there is limited empirical research that has examined the linkage between entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and potential outcome variables.