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As a new concept for humane entrepreneurship (HumEnt) evolves, many new research questions arise. At the exploratory stage, the authors found it relevant to examine and discuss the perception of the fundamental assumptions of the HumEnt concept and activities undertaken in this area by business practice.

To thoroughly understand the studied phenomenon, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. An exploratory survey was obtained from 126 purposefully selected enterprises in Poland; then, a single case study was analysed.

The conducted analysis showed differences between the activities of enterprises and the perception of the HumEnt concept among employees that are especially noticeable at different levels of the management hierarchy.

The multifaceted nature of the results obtained is limited by the inability to infer international differences, to capture trends over time and to generalise to the total population of enterprises.

Although the surveyed companies recognise the importance of the HumEnt concept, it is not tantamount to its execution. The research results may be valuable, especially for smaller enterprises, where the business practice may require support in applying the HumEnt approach.

The research explored both the actual state confirmed by the actions taken and the perception of the importance of individual elements of HumEnt. A knowing–doing gap has been demonstrated between these planes. Moreover, thanks to a two-stage study, practices were selected that can be successfully implemented also in small and medium-sized enterprises.

Adopting more sustainable and social-oriented perspectives is crucial for the emergence of the so-called humane entrepreneurial ecosystems (HEEs), the last ones supporting the improvement of both economic, environmental and social wealth. Entrepreneurs act as keystone players in each entrepreneurial ecosystem, thus the emergence of Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) is crucial in shaping HEEs. Given the role of culture in affecting HumEnt, the relationships between Humane Orientation (HO) – as defined in the GLOBE project – and the basic components of Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) were, particularly, explored in a selected sample of countries. Both Intellectual Capital (IC) and knowledge management (KM) perspectives were adopted in pursuing the research goal.

The study approaches this by the mean of the Ward method with Euclidean squared distance and the k-means method. The GLOBE project, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) were used as data sources. Correlations between HO “as is” scores and each components of HumEnt were checked for the world sample (N = 36), as well as for the groups of innovation-driven countries (N = 17) and European countries (N = 14).

Research results show a conditional confirmation of the developed hypotheses, depending on countries cultural levels of HO, with a moderating role exercised by the economic development on the relationship between culture and HumEnt.

Given the increasing pressure of fundamental societal challenges, such as climate change, poverty and increasing inequality within and between countries intensified by pandemic (UN report, 2021), integrating the more traditional approaches to profit seeking with the more sustainable and human-centric perspective is a priority for both scholars and society at large. Previous researches do not provide explanation about the contextual factors responsible for the emergence of more humane-oriented entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially when referring to culture. This article broadens our understanding about the reason why both HumEntr and HEEs differently arise and develop in different cultural contexts.

This chapter introduces the new expanded strategic posture for entrepreneurship in the XXI century, defining the Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt). HumEnt is conceived as a framework to capture what is happening in the present-day landscape. In particular, HumEnt focal dimension is represented by a strategic posture called Humane Entrepreneurial Orientation that is able to capture the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO), the Sustainability Orientation (SO), and the Humane Resource Orientation (HRO) of the firm. After a discussion on the theoretical basis of HumEnt, the chapter concludes with the identification of four different types of HumEnt firms.

The progressive increase in the size of datasets has given life to the so-called big data that provides researchers with the opportunity to extract a greater amount of useful information in many sectors, especially in the tourism industry.

The chapter aims to demonstrate that sustainable tourism (ST) could be particularly favored by using big data and a data-driven approach. Furthermore, as ST appears in line with a new type of responsible entrepreneurship, called Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt), this chapter investigates the link between ST and HumEnt and the impact of big data and data-oriented approaches on ST and HumEnt.

The research adopts a qualitative approach, applying the case study technique. The authors conducted ten semi-structured interviews with key informants from a specific form of hospitality: Albergo Diffuso. Findings show the advantages of the data-driven approach to tourism and entrepreneurship highlighting how using data creates new opportunities for decision making in ST and HumEnt.

Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) is strongly purpose-oriented and characterized by a focus on inclusiveness and social and environmental sustainability, with attention to both internal and external stakeholders and their needs. In the attempt to provide new research in this field, this study aims to conduct an empirical investigation within the theory of HumEnt and, in particular, of the Human Resource Orientation (HRO) model among Italian Small and Medium-size Enterprises.

Based on quantitative data, this study used a deductive approach to investigate the relationship between the HumEnt model and firms’ relational embeddedness with different types of stakeholders (value chain stakeholders and societal stakeholders, respectively). More concretely, to investigate the relationships between the dimensions of the HumEnt model and firms’ relational embeddedness, partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied.

Findings of this study suggest that Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) directly contributes only to value chain embeddedness. However, the results also show that if EO is mediated by an HRO (i.e. companies with a high HRO), a high level of societal embeddedness is also present.

This study represents a first attempt to provide comprehensive empirical evidence about the different dimensions characterizing the HumEnt theoretical model, and to highlight their relevance in supporting companies’ relational embeddedness capacity with different categories of stakeholders.

Doing business in depleted contexts requires the adoption of an unconventional strategic orientation based on the involvement of the local community and driven by the attainment of economic, environmental and social goals. Previous studies have explored the specific nature of community enterprises (CEs); notwithstanding, little attention has been paid to the understanding of the strategic posture adopted by community entrepreneurs to overcome difficulties and make the business up. In this vein, the study aims to investigate how CEs operating in depleted contexts manage to survive, by successfully achieving multiple – conflicting – goals.

The authors adopted the Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) framework as a form of institutional entrepreneurship where resources are leveraged to evolve the institutional context. This research adopts the case study strategy, focusing on Italian rural CEs.

The HumEnt approach, which takes into account both economic and non-economic and altruistic values of entrepreneurs, turned as better suited – compared to other approaches – to explain why people try to make business in such high-risk contexts. Second, the holistic approach of the HumEnt framework allowed catching up the particular mechanism that has enabled the CEs to obtain positive achievement.

The adoption of the HumEnt perspective enabled us to understand better the way CEs may survive and even grow where other initiatives have failed.

Humane entrepreneurship (HumEnt) has been theoretically proposed as a new model of entrepreneurship supporting the idea of an enlarged entrepreneurial strategic posture. The aim of paper is to frame humane entrepreneurial orientation’s (HEO) characteristics by showing how firms apply the HumEnt approach, and to offer suggestions to build an HEO measurement scale.

The study adopts a case study approach, focusing on five Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The study (1) identifies which are the characteristics of HEO strategic posture in the enterprises under examination; (2) shows that entrepreneurs' personal values and credos are fundamental to having an HEO strategic posture adopted; (3) provides indications on the development of a measurement scale through a discussion of emerging HEO themes.

The value of the study is that emerging themes of HEO strategic posture was derived from the analysis of five Italian SMEs. Entrepreneur's personal values have been proven to be relevant in the implementation of HEO. Based on the emerging HEO themes, the study contributes to the literature opening the way toward the building of an all-encompassing HEO measurement scale.

Although Humane Entrepreneurial Orientation (HEO) represents the focal dimension in Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt) theory and has been understood in two different ways, empirical evidence in the realm of business on this construct is severely lacking. The goal of this chapter is to perform an empirical assessment of HEO measurement having the aim of categorizing the types of enterprises that emerge from HumEnt theory. To these ends, a questionnaire with items designed to capture HEO components was developed, and a survey among entrepreneurs located in Italy was administered to provide a basis for an exploratory factor analysis. Results demonstrated that HumEnt enterprises are no longer invisible, and a novel way to identify them has been proposed. Theoretical and practical implications are formulated consequentially to the first step along the HEO measurement scale empirical assessment.

This chapter explores the impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO), Sustainable Orientation (SO), and Human Resource Orientation (HRO) – the key dimensions of the strategic posture known as Humane Entrepreneurship – on the success of 142 equity crowdfunding campaigns hosted on the US-based platform WeFunder. Utilizing text analysis in conjunction with fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a configurational research method, the study identifies diverse combinations of these dimensions that lead to successful funding outcomes. The analysis, encompassing both minimum and maximum funding targets and supplemented by robustness tests, indicates that successful equity crowdfunding campaigns are characterized by pitches displaying high levels of autonomy, innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking, with a lesser focus on competitive aggressiveness. It is also observed that campaigns emphasizing HRO consistently achieve their fundraising goals, independent of the funding target set. Notably, a startup’s SO does not seem to significantly influence campaign success within the equity crowdfunding context.