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Exploration and exploitation have long been documented as prominent approaches to business management and organizational adaptation to external environment. Maintaining balance between these activities is a key to survival and prosperity. However, there is little direct evidence of the effect of such combined usage of both approaches on firm performance in times of crisis, especially within small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to reveal the role of balanced ambidexterity in shaping firm performance during COVID-19 recession.

Based on a survey of 333 Russian SMEs, the authors test the proposed theoretical framework linking innovative ambidexterity to firm performance level and variability taking into account technological uncertainty.

The results show that innovative ambidexterity tends to increase level and decrease variability of performance outcomes, whereas technological uncertainty acts as a positive contingency for this impact.

The results provide an improved understanding of ambidexterity and organizational literatures by clarifying the contingent nature of the ambidexterity–firm performance relationship during COVID-19 recession.

The purpose of this study is to identify motivations for the uptake of crowdfunding by micro-entrepreneurs in an emerging economy and the extent to which these vary by entrepreneur characteristics, sector and crowdfunding model.

The authors conduct qualitative analyses of data collected in interviews with 57 micro-entrepreneurs in Morocco, all of whom used crowdfunding in fundraising.

The authors identify six key motives for crowdfunding adoption by micro-entrepreneurs including financing needs, legitimacy seeking, sense of achievement, network-building, entrepreneurial and marketing competence enhancements. They also find evidence for moderation effects of fundraiser characteristics on likelihood of adoption, including gender, age, education, training experience and sectoral affiliation. Furthermore, the authors show that the relative importance of different motives varies by the type of crowdfunding model used.

The original aspects of the study include the examination of adoption motives in an emerging market context and the distinguishing between entrepreneurs’ adoption motives based on different gender, age, education, training experience, sectoral affiliation and crowdfunding model used. Moreover, the authors show that enhancement of competencies is a more dominant motive in the emerging market context than mentioned in earlier studies in developed contexts.

This study aims to examine small-firm shifts in behavior during major supply chain disruptions that change supply chains permanently. The study focuses on small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) responses to suppliers’ opportunistic behaviors within a larger disruptive environment. The study addresses two broad research questions: how do small businesses adapt to supply chain disruptions, and under what conditions are such adoptions warranted?

This study used mixed methods, a qualitative netnography and a quantitative analysis of survey data. It tested a model based on responses from members of an online business-to-business community. The model development was driven by the findings from netnography and two theoretical lenses.

The responses suggested a strong relationship between the two theoretical approaches. The conditions described by the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm led to many real options. Supply chain disruptions and deceptive suppliers triggered rapid adaptation through traditional marketing tactics and strategies. Changes in the supply chain, and place, led to responses in price, promotion and product. Respondents hoarded, developed relationships with new, nonopportunistic suppliers and changed prices, products and product mixes. They developed cooperative relationships – coopetition – to deal with shared problems.

This study interprets supply chain disruptions through the lens of marketing in SMEs; it combines qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand supply chain disruptions in a marketing context; it applies the real options theory and the RBV of the firm to marketing in the context of supply chain disruptions, and it reflects real-time small-firm behavior in a crisis.

Wage employees enter self-employment either directly or in a staged manner and may subsequently undertake multiple stints at self-employment. Extant research on the relationship between entry modes and the persistence and outcomes of self-employment is inconclusive. This study investigates the relationship between wage employees’ initial mode of entry into self-employment and the duration of the subsequent first two stints of self-employment.

This study used a matched longitudinal sample of 9,550 employees who became majority owners of incorporated firms from 2005 to 2016.

The findings demonstrate that the initial mode of entry into self-employment matters for the first two stints at self-employment. Staged entry into self-employment was associated with a shorter first stint and became insignificant for the second stint. Staged entry into self-employment was positively related to the odds of becoming self-employed for the second time in the same firm.

Using a comprehensive and reliable dataset, the paper shifts focus from the aggregated onward journey of novice entrepreneurs (survival as the outcome) to the duration of their self-employment stints. By doing so, the paper offers insights into the process of becoming self-employed and the patterns associated with success/failure in entrepreneurship associated with self-employment duration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the entrepreneurs' social connections and types of employment differentially affect the survival of startup firms in the USA and India. Further, the authors analyze the differences during both the early stage and the later stages of new ventures.

The authors use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database between 2012 and 2014 and examine the hypothesized effects with logistic regression analyses.

The analysis reveals that an entrepreneur's social connections with other entrepreneurs favor the survival of the focal entrepreneur's early-stage business in the USA. However, social connections are more critical for later-stage ventures in India. During the early stage, new ventures of full-time entrepreneurs are more likely to survive in India, whereas those by hybrid entrepreneurs are more likely to survive in the USA. The differences between the importance of full-time and hybrid entrepreneurs across geographies are less discernible during the later stages of new ventures.

The novelty of this paper is that it demonstrates the significant differences in the way social connections and types of employment (hybrid versus full-time) affect the survival of entrepreneurial firms in the early and later stages. The study also expands the international business literature by shedding new light on country-level differences that affect the survival of new ventures.

Escalation of commitment is one of the most influential decision-making biases in entrepreneurs which may incur substantial losses and result in failure by making entrepreneurs allocate an increasing amount of resources to failing plans. Not only is escalation one of the less-researched biases in entrepreneurship but also most of the existing studies have been either limited to specific contexts or exclusively limited to men entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of escalation of commitment among a sample of Iranian women and men entrepreneurs to address these gaps.

By conducting a narrative inquiry, data were collected through semi-structured and in-depth interviews with nine women and 10 men Iranian entrepreneurs who were founder/owners of a small business and had introduced at least one product to the market.

According to the findings of this study, the fear of losing autonomy and fear of being blamed by one’s family were the main drivers of escalation of commitment among the women entrepreneurs, while overconfidence, sense of responsibility and hoping to gain more profits were the main antecedents of escalation among men entrepreneurs.

This study is a pioneer in studying the antecedents of the escalation of commitment among women and men entrepreneurs comparatively in the context of a developing country.

This research aims to theorize how a critical factor, resource access, can paradoxically impact the comprehensiveness of venture location decision processes and the relationship between decision comprehensiveness and new venture performance. To do so, the authors focus on nascent entrepreneurs’ venture location decision processes and introduce resource access as a double-edged sword.

In this conceptual article, the authors draw from the strategic decision-making and resource mobilization literature to theorize about the new venture location decision-making process and its performance implications.

By uncovering the paradox of resource access, the authors propose that high levels of resource access create a paradoxical situation in which nascent entrepreneurs are less likely to use comprehensive decision processes when their benefits are at their greatest.

This work contributes to entrepreneurship research on new venture location and resource mobilization in three important ways. First, the authors advance the literature on nascent entrepreneurs’ location decision-making processes by introducing “location decision comprehensiveness” as a decision process construct and juxtaposing it with resource access to uncover the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Second, the authors develop a more nuanced theorization of the location choices made by nascent entrepreneurs instead of relying on generalized conclusions drawn from well-established corporations’ location decisions. Last, the authors extend the literature on resource mobilization in entrepreneurship by shedding light on the paradoxical aspect of resource access. While previous research has emphasized the favorable effects of resource access on new venture processes and outcomes, the authors contend that it can also negatively impact entrepreneurs’ ability to make effective decisions.

This paper aims to explore the succession intentions of daughters in family businesses in Sri Lanka by shedding light on the motives behind their willingness to succeed in the family business.

A qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews was used to explore the factors that may influence succession intentions among a group of seven prospective successor-daughters.

Findings showed that while a majority of the daughters sampled have positive succession intentions, there were a few who were either undecided or unwilling. Interestingly, what motivated some daughters to be willing successors was also considered demotivating for others. Daughters perceived succession in family businesses to be impacted by both personal and family background, traditional gender-role expectations and other socio-cultural factors.

Findings from this study provide key insights into gender-related issues with regard to succession in family businesses.

This study aims to examine how the effect of gender on entrepreneurial growth aspirations is moderated differently by individual resources (human and financial capital) compared to those within the social environment (availability of entrepreneurial knowledge and role models).

A multilevel estimator is used to investigate the determinants of growth aspirations of owners-managers of nascent start-ups. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor database is employed, covering the period 2007–2019, with 99,000 useable cases drawn from 95 countries.

The results suggest that individual financial resources and human capital have positive effects on entrepreneurial growth aspirations; yet these effects are weaker for female entrepreneurs relative to males. In contrast, the impact of the availability of entrepreneurial social knowledge and role models on their growth aspirations is more positive than for male entrepreneurs.

This study offers a novel insight into entrepreneurial growth ambition, as it utilises a global perspective to scrutinise whether individual and social resources contribute differently to male versus female growth-aspirations, employing a multilevel approach. It also integrates insights from the resource-based view and from the relevant business literature on entrepreneurs’ gender to develop theoretical explanations.