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This article reviews literatures on legitimacy, trust, and e-commerce and integrates them to propose a model of strategies designed to enhance the perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness of ventures.

While research has identified a consistent link between startup intent and entrepreneurship education (EE) intentions, studies also indicate that many entrepreneurs lack the EE they need. However, research examining factors that explain why certain individuals with high startup intent pursue EE while others do not is rare. Given this, the purpose of this paper is to examine how individual characteristics moderate the startup intent EE intentions relationship.

Survey data were gathered on 199 US adults. Moderators examined include attitudes toward education, perceived entrepreneurial efficacy, propensity for risk taking and the Big Five personality traits. Linear regression models were used to test each of the moderation relationships predicted.

Notable findings suggest that extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, perceived entrepreneurial efficacy and risk propensity reduce the chances that individuals with high startup intent will pursue EE, while viewing education as instrumental enhances the relationship.

Study findings imply that EE programs might not be reaching critical target markets, suggest that EE programs might need to be modified to attract individuals with high startup intent and indicate that individual characteristics are key factors that determine why certain individuals with high startup intent pursue EE while others with the same desires do not pursue EE.

This study builds on previous work that looks at the relationship between startup intent and EE intentions by investigating how individual characteristics either amplify or diminish the relationship, increasing scholarly knowledge about why certain individuals with high startup intent pursue EE while others do not.

The concept of the ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) is contested on almost every imaginable dimension. Stakeholders may decry it as an industry-created ploy to ethics wash their operations and strategically manipulate community relations, while some industry figures despair over what they perceive as the arbitrary and even unilateral power that the weaponized concept of the social licence gifts to activists who seek to malign and disrupt law-abiding commercial operators. Others have lauded the social licence as a heaven-sent ethical tool, an effective lever for action that motivates leaders at profit-seeking enterprises to seriously consider ethical issues and prioritize community engagement. Still others will worry that a concept that can mean everything to everyone must ultimately mean nothing at all, and that the social licence is an empty and unhelpful buzzword. As the contributions to this Special Issue show, in different contexts – and sometimes even in the same context but for different stakeholders – all these views can be correct. From an ethical perspective, dangers, promises and irrelevance all attend the social licence.

Trust has become a major issue among online shoppers. This underresearched subject will predictably determine the success or failure of e-commerce vendors. The lack of face-to-face interaction, the inability to inspect goods and services prior to purchase, and the asynchronous exchange of goods and money all contribute to the perceived risk of purchasing online and the resulting need for trust. Trust is particularly critical for small and new Internet ventures confronted by the liability of newness (Stinchcombe 1965). Lacking, among other things, a name that is readily recognized in the marketplace, entrepreneurial Internet ventures require trust if they are to succeed. The research presented in this article addresses this issue by building on the work of McKnight and colleagues and considering the effects of propensity to trust on trusting beliefs. Specifically, the author predicts that propensity to trust will significantly affect perceived ability, benevolence, and integrity but only for those individuals with limited direct experience. Based on a sample of web survey participants, the author found that propensity to trust significantly impacted perceived ability and benevolence for individuals with limited direct experience only. No statistically significant results were found for the effects of propensity to trust on perceived integrity.

Entrepreneurship researchers use various types of screening criteria to select samples for study. In that selecting these criteria is, in effect, choosing a definition or model of entrepreneurship, the consequences are immense and have had a direct impact on the generalizability of research and theory development in our field. The purpose of this study is to help entrepreneurship researchers better understand these consequences and, thereby, improve our understanding of entrepreneurial phenomenon. Four of the most commonly used screening criteria are included in this study: firm age, firm size, firm growth, and innovation. Based on a sample of 368 manufacturing firms, the results indicate that few firms fit all or even most of the considered screening criteria and independent-dependent variable relationships vary considerably by screening criteria selection.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) commonly struggle to acquire needed financial, human, and technological resources. The above being stated, recent scholarly research argues that SMEs that are able to successfully navigate the legitimacy threshold are better able to gather the resources they need to survive and grow. This article provides an empirical test of that claim by examining whether the presence of a corporate parent positively influences SME resource acquisition. Results of the study show that SMEs with corporate parents, when compared to like-sized independent SMEs, have higher credit scores, have more complete management teams, use more computers, and are more likely to be on the Internet. These differences are most pronounced for very small firms and diminish in significance as firm size increases. Study implications include the notion that presence of a corporate parent likely represents a successful navigation of the legitimacy threshold, positively increasing SME resource acquisition.

The importance of performance measurement is largely undisputed. There is debate, however, regarding the equivalency of objective and subjective performance measures.This debate has not considered a frequently used subjective measure, satisfaction with performance, to be an important measure independent of its equivalency with objective measures. Using a sample of 368 manufacturing firms, this study found that objective measures explained only a modest amount of variance in satisfaction with performance and that other variables added significantly to the explained variance.These factors included perceived environmental hostility, vulnerability, perceived competitive advantage, and commitment.

The purpose of the current study was to assess the impact of information technology on strategic flexibility for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Results of the study show that under conditions of low environmental dynamism, IT capabilities are associated with greater reactive strategic flexibility. Specifically, IT capabilities enabling the management of internal activities was significant. Under conditions of high environmental dynamism, IT capabilities are associated with greater proactive strategic flexibility. Specifically, IT capabilities enabling the management of competitor information was significant. Managerial as well as future research implications are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of organizational citizenship behaviour as a component of job performance. Participants comprised 41 human‐service workers, who completed a job satisfaction questionnaire and were rated for their organizational citizenship, as well as being measured on three discretionary organizational participant behaviours. Job satisfaction correlated significantly with organizational citizenship and participation behaviours (correlations ranged from +0.40 to +0.67). Findings were consistent with the view that satisfaction may not be reflected in productivity but is evident in discretionary involvement in the workplace. Implications for monitoring and managing a wide range of employee behaviours are outlined.