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This chapter uses discourse analysis to explain why entrepreneurship has become a primary response to Africa’s youth employment challenge. It analyses almost 20 years of academic literature and publications from one of the world’s foremost authorities on entrepreneurship: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The study found that youth were positioned within a discourse of entrepreneurial essentialism; where entrepreneurship was narrativised as the only option for youth employment; and youth were framed as entrepreneurship being the natural solution for them. Youth were concurrently framed within numerous contradictory entrepreneurial discourses which were used to elevate and legitimise entrepreneurship as the key pathway for addressing Africa’s youth employment challenge. An important finding in this study was that the dominant model of entrepreneurship being promoted by GEM to address the challenge is a mainly skills-based pathway to self-employment and low-growth microenterprise development. This is concerning for two reasons: firstly, global evidence does not demonstrate much support for such an approach, and secondly, it undermines other responses to youth unemployment, particularly those which seek to address more structural, demand-side barriers to employment.

The present study explores gender inequalities in the entrepreneurial landscape in Romania, based on Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data, highlighting similarities and differences between women and men entrepreneurs. Even if the GEM reports include data on entrepreneurship since 1999, Romania has been among the participating countries only since 2007 for the Adult Population Survey (GEM, APS). Thus, to include Romania in the analysis, the data from this study were selected for nine years, namely from 2007 to 2015. Our results indicate that among Romanian men and women, similar drivers influence the odds of engagement in entrepreneurial activities relative to not being involved in businesses. For both men and women, having confidence in their knowledge and skills had the highest odds ratio values. Also, identifying opportunities proved to be positive and significant for both genders, while fear of failure had the opposite effect. Knowing other entrepreneurs can lead to great benefits generated through social exchange. Findings reveal that the external knowledge that an entrepreneur’s environment gives rise to can prove to be supportive in the discovery of opportunities and their exploitation.

This chapter provides an introduction to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a project under Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) regional approach. As a region, the countries of LAC correspond to the second-highest representation in GEM after Europe. The chapter describes the GEM project, summarizes some key longitudinal indicators for the region, and analyzes the contributions and importance of GEM project for the systematic study of entrepreneurship.

The debate that entrepreneurship is an engine of economic development has been a long-standing one. The higher the level of entrepreneurial activities, the higher the economic development. However, this literature is contradictory or elusive in Sub-Saharan Africa. Entrepreneurial activities are high in Africa, but economic development is not. Using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM, 2017) data, the chapter discusses some of the contradictory factors. Further data were collected from 60 businesses, 20 each from Cameroon, Nigeria and Uganda for more clarification in 2019. The results show that the economic development is solely measured in economic terms. Entrepreneurship in Africa operates in an embedded context quite different from that of developed nations. Africans are often only making do with the environment in which they find themselves; thus, entrepreneurship in Africa should not be seen as unproductive considering the context and motives of the entrepreneurs.

This study aims to investigate the effect of the crisis on entrepreneurial activities and how it can be relieved. Specifically, we explore how the positive effects of the human capital (self-confidence, opportunity alertness, and risk willingness) on startup activities are changed after the global financial crisis. Additionally, we explore how knowing an entrepreneur boosts up these relationships. We applied data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) about prospective women entrepreneurs in China in 2006–2007 (precrisis time) and 2009–2010 (postcrisis time). Results show a sharp drop in effect size of self-confidence and opportunity recognition upon women's entrepreneurial actions; however, the global financial crisis nullified the effect of fear of failure on potential women entrepreneurs' business activities. Furthermore, knowing an entrepreneur has no significant moderating effect. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The entrepreneurial education has obtained special attention by researchers hoping to develop better entrepreneurship programmes that may result in higher entrepreneurial activity outputs of students. The culture on its own is one of the main determinants, among others, of the entrepreneurial activities undertaken in different countries. In that sense, this research contributes to a greater understanding of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurial education. Using one of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s surveys, the National Experts’ Survey, the authors used Structural Equation Models to analyse the sample of N =  445 experts in Mexico as an effort to achieve a consensus about which of these two constructs is dependent on the other, ‘entrepreneurial education’ or ‘cultural and social norms’. The results of this chapter show that in Mexico there is an influence of the cultural and social norms on entrepreneurial education at all levels, primary, secondary, and superior. Nevertheless, an important limitation of the study was that it does not differentiate between private and public education, but yet it contributes to the understanding of the less visible entrepreneurial educational levels in the literature. This chapter aims with the phenomena of how teaching entrepreneurship works by analysing the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s social environment variable effect on entrepreneurial education. This research contributes to the evidence that the teaching practice under the socio-cultural dimension enables to detect the continuity factors to make an educational transformation.

Interest in the role and behavior of women entrepreneurs has increased in the last decades. This research study examines personal characteristics and labor and business regulations on entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship. It also analyzes how gender differed in these forms of entrepreneurship across Latin American countries. We performed logistic regressions to different models with information from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) from 2016. We used a sample from 10 countries. We also used information from the Heritage Foundation and The World Bank. The results show that antecedents of entrepreneurship activity differ by gender. Specifically, the effect is different when analyzing labor regulations. We also find different intensities depending on gender. The study contributes to the literature about gender and different forms of entrepreneurship. We suggest developing policies in favor of women's entrepreneurial activity within the workplace and as independent entrepreneurs.

This chapter draws its findings from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data set for 2016 to 2019 to provide a comprehensive albeit concise overview of the evolution of entrepreneurship activities in Qatar.

The results indicate that Qatar experienced an increase in the entrepreneurship activities with a significant percentage of adults starting or running new businesses. Data also revealed that, despite an equal proportion of women and men involved in early-stage entrepreneurial activities, women experience a lower transformation rate into established business ownership. In addition, to the gender gap, this study revealed that transforming new businesses into established business ownership is one of the main challenge to be addressed to develop the impact of entrepreneurship in the country further. Finally, the chapter shows that Qatar has created an entrepreneurial ecosystem of very high quality as demonstrated by its third place in the National Entrepreneurship Context Index and by having secured the first place in the MENA region.

This chapter concludes by outlining a number of recommendations for policymakers to further foster the entrepreneurial activities in Qatar especially among the younger population.

Within developing countries, particularly in Africa, there is an emerging literature which highlights the unique obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs who start and develop their own businesses (De Vita, Mari, & Poggesi, 2014; Jamali, 2009; Minniti & Naude, 2010; Naude & Havenga, 2005; Nziku & Struthers, 2018). A key objective of this chapter is to critically appraise some of the conceptual approaches adopted in this literature. In so doing, the authors revisit a seminal paper first developed by Granovetter (1973) which suggested that female entrepreneurs, instead of being disadvantaged by the so-called ‘weak ties’ that bind their business networks, actually enjoy compensating benefits which Granovetter referred to as the strength of weak ties (SWT). Building on the conceptual work of Nziku and Struthers (2018) which developed an innovative taxonomy for analysing the SWT concept within a Principal-Agent (P-A) paradigm, the chapter will set out new insights which challenge some of the assumptions of the extant entrepreneurship literature. In particular, that women are inherently more risk averse in their business decision making than men. The theoretical context for this will be derived from a behavioural economics methodology first developed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979). They introduced the concept of loss aversion as a more realistic approach to attitudes towards risk on the part of entrepreneurs than risk aversion. The chapter contends that the loss aversion perspective may be more appropriate to the decision-making frame adopted by female entrepreneurs, especially in the context of Africa as well as in other developing regions of the world. The chapter will therefore suggest that such an approach can yield fresh insights on the topic of female entrepreneurship which the extant literature heretofore has not addressed, though this will have to be subsequently tested empirically.

The chapter analyzes tendencies and initiatives regarding entrepreneurship development and support at European Union and Romanian levels, and also the role and importance of education by investigating the existence of specific training courses for entrepreneurs and guiding successors from family-owned technology-based businesses. The purpose of the analysis is to determine the tendency to involve graduate students in entrepreneurial field and to provide solutions to streamline entrepreneurship education and educational institutions.

The chapter focuses on the difficulties faced by the Romanian family-owned and technology-based businesses (in general) and small businesses in particular – the aim of this chapter is to reveal that – while [technology] entrepreneurship and small business management are topics fairly well covered by the engineering curricula of the Romanian technical universities – the problem of business succession (either property or management succession) is not discussed; therefore, there is no wonder that entrepreneurs are not prepared to make the related decisions; even worse, they are not aware of the capital importance of planning the succession process well in advance, and – as result – their decisions in this regard are precarious.

Conclusions can be useful to engineering professors, university managers and policymakers as well as young people who want to pursue an entrepreneurial path or are about to take over the management of the family business; they should realize that entrepreneurship is not just starting-up a business, but it involves a way of strategic thinking which leads to attitude formation and development of useful skills in the field of business development and management.