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Increasingly, there is scholarly recognition that individuals' faith constitutes a background factor much like other antecedents conditioning entrepreneurial inclination. Yet, there is room to expand knowledge on how faith interrelates with psychological and social determinants of entrepreneurship, especially in under-researched contexts such as Nigeria.

This inquiry conceptualises associations between religiosity and (1) entrepreneurial self-efficacy, (2) entrepreneurial attitudes (3) and subjective norms as predictors of nascent entrepreneurship. For analysis, 1,259 observations of Nigerian students are assessed by structural equation modelling.

The path analysis showed that the religiosity–nascent entrepreneurship nexus is altogether mediated by entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial attitudes and subjective norms. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy is found to have the greatest impact on nascent entrepreneurship, followed by subjective norms and then entrepreneurial attitudes.

Theoretically, this study is one of the first to test all three dimensions of the theory of planned behaviour in the religiosity–nascent entrepreneurship nexus. It draws fresh attention to faith motivation and praxis, role-taking and attribution theory as explainers of the inherent correlations. Practically, the findings summon stakeholders to consider religious activity in the delivery of entrepreneurship programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how family ties in new venture teams (NVTs) influence the intended future growth of a nascent entrepreneur’s business. The authors posit that R&D-oriented entrepreneurs in NVTs with family ties have higher growth intentions relative to those who are less oriented toward R&D.

The hypotheses were tested using data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II (PSED II). One distinctive feature of the PSED is that it is based on a random sample of 1,214 nascent entrepreneurs in the process of starting new ventures in the USA, which overcomes the recall biases associated with surveying entrepreneurs already in business and potential survivorship biases.

The results show that growth intentions in NVTs with family ties is greater when the nascent entrepreneur shows an R&D behavior, even though the presence of family members in the team is negatively related to the intentions of nascent entrepreneurs with regard to new venture growth. This effect is attributed to entrepreneurs’ long-term vision and a more favorable attitude toward change.

Data on startup teams in the PSED II come from one team member (the respondent). Therefore, differences in perceptions regarding growth intentions cannot be determined. Moreover, the sample consisted exclusively of nascent entrepreneurs in the USA.

Knowledge about the determinants of growth intentions during the venture creation phase becomes relevant if we want to influence and support the growth of newly founded firms. Nascent entrepreneurs need to understand the trade-off between emotional and financial concerns.

Nascent entrepreneurs more oriented toward R&D become more risk tolerant, and may accept certain losses to their emotional endowment in favor of pure financial goals, being more able to access the additional external resources (tangible and intangible) needed for growth.

The research expands previous evidence on the family involvement-performance debate in large firms by focusing on new ventures with family ties, with distinctive characteristics that may affect growth intentions. The authors also shed new light on the interplay between family business and entrepreneurship. In particular, the research helps gain an understanding of how NVTs with family ties deal with the opposition between the benefits from venture growth and the tendency to preserve team member’s emotional attachment.

Taking entrepreneurial opportunity identification activity as a starting point, the purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the differences within the social background of the Chinese nascent entrepreneurs and to illuminate differences in the success of their economic activities.

This study will analyze the impact of the nascent entrepreneurs' social class identity and prior experience affiliation on entrepreneurial opportunity identification and the moderation effect of opportunity identification modes. The empirical study was conducted with the data from the “Chinese Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (CPSED)” project, especially targeting new technology venture samples.

The findings indicate that the social class identity and prior experience affiliation of nascent entrepreneurs (pre‐determined factors) have a significant impact on the innovativeness of their entrepreneurial identification. Because they determine opportunity identification results, these pre‐determined factors play a much more important role than the mode of the opportunity identification.

The findings provide a theoretical contribution to the transitional study with the unique data of the CPSED project. This study could be taken as the comparison for transnational cooperation and provides suggestions to government and entrepreneurship supporting agencies.

The authors advance a model theorizing how new ventures elicit citizenship behaviors to cultivate dynamic capabilities that help bolster survival in their nascent years of operations—a characteristically resource-scarce and turbulent context.

Drawing on and integrating research on citizenship behaviors with dynamic capabilities, the authors develop a theory that new ventures that are better able to evoke a combination of affiliative and challenging citizenship behaviors from their wider entrepreneurial team (i.e. internal, and external stakeholders) are more adept at mitigating the liabilities of smallness and newness. As these behaviors are spontaneous and not explicitly remunerated, new ventures become stronger at utilizing their limited resource base for remaining lean and agile. Further, key boundary conditions are theorized that the sociocultural norms the venture is embedded within serve to heighten/attenuate the degree to which entrepreneurs can effectively cultivate dynamic capabilities from their team's “extra mile” behaviors.

The propositions extend a rich body of research on citizenship behaviors into the new venture domain. As all new ventures face the challenge of overcoming liabilities of newness, models that help understand why some are more adept at overcoming this and why others fail, hold substantive practical utility.

This research is the first to unpack how citizenship behaviors manifest among an extended range of stakeholders traditionally overlooked in new venture teams research and the mechanism for how this links to venture survival.

Developing on the base of theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between perceived social support (SS) from one’s social network and entrepreneurial intention (EI). Moreover, mediating effect of other constructs of TPB, i.e., attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC) is also examined in this study.

This study involves a variance-based partial least square-structural equation modelling approach for analysing responses from 381 fresh business graduates.

Findings of this study revealed that SS positively influences EI and also that this relationship is fully mediated by ATE, SN and PBC.

Due to limited resources, cross cultural comparison and multi-group analysis were not performed, which are considered as a limitation of this study.

It is expected that the findings of this study can help policy makers, researchers and academicians in better understanding of critical role of SS for understanding the intentions of nascent entrepreneurs.

Further, findings of this study suggest that academicians and policy makers need to take heed towards relatively less explored phenomenon of SS to enhance the attractiveness of entrepreneurial career in fresh business graduates.

This study has proposed a model for assessing impact of SS on EI. By doing so, this study extends TPB in the context of EI. Moreover, findings of this study are a unique step forward, and offer a new insight towards better understanding of the determinants of EI in fresh business graduates.

Conventional wisdom as well as many studies confirm that entrepreneurship education increases entrepreneurial intention but there is a lack of research on some aspects including conceptual and theoretical development, mechanism of the effect of education and study of regional variations. The paper studies the process of impact of entrepreneurship education and training (EET) on attitudes toward entrepreneurship, perception of social norms, self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention.

Empirical data from 601 individuals from Iran is utilized to evaluate the model. The data are reported by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). Binary logistics regression is used to evaluate the effects of variables.

Results show that completion of one entrepreneurship course increases the likelihood of having entrepreneurial intention by 1.3 times. Wald criteria demonstrate that fear of failure, desirability of entrepreneurial career, entrepreneurs’ status in society, self-efficacy and education and training are significant predictors of entrepreneurial intention. Perceived opportunity is not a strong but a moderate predictor.

Because of the country-level focus of research, the paper's results may lack generalizability. The paper makes no rigid claim of causality. The causality is likely to be bi-directional.

The findings have wider implications for a theory of entrepreneurial intention and also for the practice of teaching entrepreneurship. Higher efficiency of informal training than formal training, failing entrepreneurship education to provide necessary knowledge and skills for nascent entrepreneurs, and not considering the effect of macro socioeconomic conditions call for an immediate pedagogical redesign of EET in Iran.

The paper summarizes learning processes and teaching models of entrepreneurship education, matches them with educational theories and makes argument on the mechanism of the effects of education. Then, utilizing empirical data, the paper shows the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training and education initiatives in Iran and propose areas for improvement in the national level based on the summarized educational theories and teaching models.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of entrepreneurial intention (EI) in relation to the influence of the five dimensions of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) on nascent behaviour.

The study relies on a quantitative approach where primary data were collected from 294 final year undergraduate students at a public university in Zambia. The data were examined by using correlation, logistic regression and mediation analyses.

The findings indicate that each of the five dimensions of ESE is positively and significantly related with EI. Additionally, each of the ESE dimensions, except the financial aspect, is positively correlated with nascent behaviour. Finally, the results show that the influence of ESE dimensions on nascent behaviour is significantly mediated by intention.

The study took place in a public university in Zambia; more universities could be involved to improve the generalisability of the study conclusions.

The study shows that the five ESE dimensions positively influence not only business start-up intention but also nascent behaviour. To motivate graduates’ involvement in business start-up, there is a need to tailor training and practical pedagogical approaches on entrepreneurship that are focussed on developing the five ESE dimensions.

This paper extends an emerging body of knowledge which has not been fully investigated in terms of the mediating role of intention on the relationships between dimensions of ESE and nascent behaviour. The study also makes a valuable contribution to the under-researched context of Zambia and African entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether business growth intention (BGI) and entrepreneurial motivations enhance the explanatory power of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to predict environmental intention (EI) among nascent entrepreneurs.

In the context of nascent entrepreneurship, the authors collected data from 193 nascent entrepreneurs in France. To test the hypotheses, stepwise multiple regression was performed.

The results show that BGI has a positive influence on EI. This indicates that it is possible for French nascent entrepreneurs to plan the simultaneous pursuit of business growth and environmental goals. However, entrepreneurial motivations have a mixed effect on EI. If necessity motivations negatively influence EI, opportunity motivations have no significant effect on the latter.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to extend the TBP model with additional factors, namely, BGI and necessity/opportunity motivations, to study EI. Moreover, the extended TBP model is validated in the under-research context of nascent entrepreneurship.

How general can a “general” theory of entrepreneurship be? Abstraction is a necessity but is it possible to include venture opportunity variation in a general theory of entrepreneurship building on two contrasting perspectives such as equilibrium economics and disequilibrium economics. Two important boundaries need to be explicated. First, defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new economic activity includes both the creation of new means – ends (cf. Schumpeter, 1934) – as well as optimizing within known means – ends frameworks (cf. Kirzner, 1997). Second, such a theory includes an opportunity – actor nexus because it is the first tangible or intangible evidence of existing venture opportunities. Formal models of entrepreneurship often start with a person and at some point in time an exchange of persons with firms take place which is confusing because both levels of analysis and outcome are mixed with each other. Apparently, there is no such thing as entrepreneurship without actors, but if we want to create knowledge about the creation of economic activity, we need to frame our boundary around the nascent initiative instead of single actors and/or teams of actors because value can only be assessed in relation to the costs of services withdrawn. Analogous to this is, for example, the theory of firm and the theory of organizations with boundaries well beyond single actors or groups of actors. Another factor behind a venture-based theory of entrepreneurship comes from empirical evidence from the Swedish PSED, which suggests that approximately 16% (n=97) nascent entrepreneurs are exchanged during the start-up process. Formal models of entrepreneurship could therefore start with the nexus of venture opportunities and enterprising actors as suggested by Shane (2003) or with resources as suggested by Davidsson (2000) and progress forward in the entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneurship models built around the economic activity itself needs to be dynamic allowing different outcomes and feedback loops because resource combinations alter our perception of value and diffuses information, which may lead to additional resource combinations (Hayek, 1945).

This paper aims to explore the effects of the positive psychological capital of young start-up entrepreneurs on start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance and examines variations in the relationship when measures based on Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions model are applied. This study aimed to analyze whether the sub-factors comprising positive psychological capital differ across distinct groups, thereby enhancing the effects on start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance.

Data were collected from a total of 600 young start-up entrepreneurs from China (n = 300) and Korea (n = 300) to examine the relationship between psychological capital and start-up intention on entrepreneurial performance. To test the hypotheses, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with covariance structure analysis was conducted using EQS6b.

The results of the CFA show that sub-factors that comprise positive psychological capital, namely, hope, resilience and self-efficacy, were found to have positive effects on start-up intention. However, another sub-factor, optimism, did not have a significant effect on start-up intention. In addition, the positive psychological capital of young start-up entrepreneurs was found to be closely related to start-up intention.

A limitation of this study is that it fails to cover a wide range of concepts associated with psychological capital. There are likely many concepts that factor into understanding psychological capital beyond trust, the sharing of core values and the sharing of knowledge. In the future, systematic studies need to be conducted on models that review the roles of a wide range of explanatory variables for psychological capital.

The implications of this study apply in two areas. First, the academic implications involve the evaluation of psychological capital. Psychological capital is not being studied as widely as it should be in many areas of management and financial studies. Even though intrinsic factors such as psychological capital are core marketing concepts that cannot be neglected by today’s enterprises and CEOs, theories and empirical studies on these factors have made little progress. Under such circumstances, this study represents an opportunity to advance the theoretical discussion by presenting and examining new intrinsic factors associated with young start-up entrepreneurs from the perspectives of the managerial mindset, personnel management and marketing capabilities.

In the early stages of the introduction of psychological capital, studies focused on the meaning of research, the development of valid measurement tools and strategies for developing psychological capital. This paper presents an empirical study on the relationship between several variables related to the positive psychological capital of entrepreneurs, start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance. On the individual level, this study focused on the relationship between psychological capital and start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance, respectively.

Existing studies on psychological capital have focused mainly on positive organizational behavior. In the early stages of the introduction of psychological capital, studies focused on the meaning of research, the development of valid measurement tools and strategies for developing psychological capital. This paper presents an empirical study on the relationship between several variables related to the positive psychological capital of entrepreneurs, start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance.