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In order to address the gender divide in technology entrepreneurship, we explore how different national contexts impact policies and policy implementation. We investigate how transnational concerns (macro level) about women’s low participation in (technology) entrepreneurship are translated and implemented amongst actors at the meso level (technology incubators) and understood at the micro level (women tech entrepreneurs).

We adopt gender institutionalism as a theoretical lens to understand what happens in the implementation of gender equality goals in technology entrepreneurship policy. We apply Gains and Lowndes’ (2014) conceptual framework to investigate the gendered character and effects of institutional formation. Four countries represent different levels of gender equality: high (Norway and Sweden), medium (Ireland) and low (Israel). An initial policy document analysis provides the macro level understanding (Heilbrunn et al., 2020). At the meso level, managers of technology business incubators (n = 3–5) in each country were interviewed. At the micro level, 10 female technology entrepreneurs in each country were interviewed. We use an inductive research approach, combined with thematic analysis.

Policies differ across the four countries, ranging from women-centred approaches to gender mainstreaming. Macro level policies are interpreted and implemented in different ways amongst actors at the meso level, who tend to act in line with given national policies. Actors at the micro level often understand gender equality in ways that reflect their national policies. However, women in all four countries share similar struggles with work-life balance and gendered expectations in relation to family responsibilities.

The contribution of our paper is to (1) entrepreneurship theory by applying gendered institutionalism theory to (tech) entrepreneurship, and (2) our findings clearly show that the gendered context matters for policy implementation.

This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Brazil.

The authors conducted a detailed historical case study spanning 1988–2005 and encompassing the period leading up to Brazil’s FCTC ratification. The authors collected qualitative data from various sources to triangulate and develop a comprehensive historical account.

The historical analysis identified three distinct phases. First, the acquisition of a Brazilian cigarette factory, Souza Cruz, by British American Tobacco dramatically altered power dynamics, strengthening the position of the tobacco industry. The second phase regards the era of dictatorship and the efforts of various actors advocating against smoking and the tobacco industry. The third phase involved Brazil’s re-democratisation and the challenges of securing FCTC ratification, during which fierce industry opposition had to be overcome. Throughout these phases, the authors identified four key strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Brazil to uphold unsustainable practices and products that contradicted public interests instead of reforming them: shaping collective memory, dissimulation, re-presentation and redirecting attention.

This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by examining how Brazil’s position in the global capitalist system has influenced its dependency and how MNCs produce and maintain cycles of poverty and unsustainable practices through the exploitation of power dynamics within the country.

Following the lead of neighboring fields such as strategy and organization studies, entrepreneurship is gradually joining in the adoption of a practice perspective. Entrepreneurship as practice (EaP) is thus a nascent domain of investigation where the methodological debate is still unsettled and very fluid. In this paper, the authors contribute to this debate with a focus on family entrepreneurship.

The authors develop a conceptual paper to discuss what it entails to look at family entrepreneurship through a practice lens and why it is fruitful. Moreover, the authors propose a research strategy novel to the field through which such investigation can be pursued, namely process tracing, and examine its inferential logic.

Process tracing is a strategy of data analysis underpinned by an ontology of causal mechanisms. The authors argue that it complements other practice methods by inferring social mechanisms from empirical evidence and thereby establishing a connection between praxis, practices and practitioners.

Process tracing helps the articulation of an “integrated model” of practice that relates praxis, practices and practitioners to the outcome they jointly produce. By enabling the assessment of impact, process tracing helps providing prima facie evidentiary grounds for policy action and intervention.

Process tracing affinity with the practice perspective has been so far acknowledged only to a limited extent in the social sciences, and it is, in fact, a novel research strategy for the family entrepreneurship field.

This study aims to explore the ways and contexts in which fintech firms are being developed, operated in the market and responds to competitive pressures and technological changes through isomorphism and decoupling mechanism.

How can new technology platform business successfully distinguish themselves from competitors while also ensuring that they are seen as legitimate and appropriate? This paper draws on a case study of fintech start-ups in Indonesia.

This study shows that managing market pressures for distinctiveness (customer-appealing) versus business pressures for profits (investor returns) drives firms’ quest for optimal distinctiveness. It is evident that fintech firms increase their control by consolidating themselves through their industrial association and by forming a close relationship with regulators. However, to escape the iron cage of the field, they increasingly control the coupling of profitability and compliance.

Through a qualitative-inductive approach, this study provides insights into technological development of platform business in the context of financial services and responsive movement towards cashless society.

This study holds the objective of evaluating the impact of formal (e.g. ease of doing business score, start-up procedures to register a business, property rights) and informal (e.g. school life expectancy, collaboration between companies and human capital) institutions on the economic performance of countries in conjunction with the mediating effect of entrepreneurial activities and social performance.

The authors collected quantitative, secondary data from a range of different sources, specifically the World Bank (WB), Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), World Economic Forum (WEF), Freedom House (FH) and Doing Business (DB) for the years between 2016 and 2018. The authors deployed a quantitative approach based on estimating structural equation models according to the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method.

The authors find that institutions, whether formal or informal, impact positively on economic and social performance with entrepreneurial activities positively mediating the relationship between informal institutions and economic performance and social performance.

The study research holds key implications for strengthening institutional theory. The authors find that our empirical results draw attention to the impact that institutions and their functioning can have on economic performance. Through this alert, the authors aim for researchers, politicians and other diverse decision-makers involved in public policies to prioritise not only the good working of institutions but also fostering entrepreneurship, in order to boost the resulting economic performance.

The study research contributes to the literature by testing the model that links institutions, entrepreneurial activity and economic performance. The authors also help policymakers to become aware of the importance that the quality of institutions has on entrepreneurial activity, and, consequently on economic performance.