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In this study, we question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect the early stage entrepreneurship activity? We address this question by employing the institutional theory and a unique dataset of 286,989 entrepreneurs across 35 countries.

To test our hypotheses, we use a multilevel modeling analysis that nests individual entrepreneurs within the countries. To capture individual and country-level variables, we constructed a unique dataset that combines data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), European Flash Barometer (EUFB), World Bank Development Indicator (WDI), World Bank Doing Business Report (WBDB) and World Economic Forum (WEF).

Our analysis confirms that higher levels of the country-level gender equality positively correlate with the early-stage entrepreneurship activity of women. Moreover, we find that this positive relationship is amplified in institutional environments with high social costs of failure, suggesting that societal intolerance for failure can exacerbate the negative effect of gender inequality on the participation of women in entrepreneurship.

Our research contributes to academic interest on the role of legitimacy in women entrepreneurship and is of particular interest to international business scholars, seeking a better understanding of multidimensional construction of institutional frameworks across countries. In this study, we set out to address an important research question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect entrepreneurship activity? Our study provides a comprehensive portrait of gendered institutions by including the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power. We found that in societies with gender equality, the likelihood of individuals engaging in the early-stage entrepreneurship activity is higher and that the positive relationship is strengthened in national environments with high social costs of failure.

Our study findings underscore the need for government policies addressing global gender gaps in economic empowerment. In particular, policies assisting women in obtaining education in high-growth industries like information technology or providing funding to women-dominated industries may foster activity for women seeking to do business in such industries. Such policies connect the early-stage entrepreneurship activities with gender equality concerns and initiatives.

Regarding the social costs of failure construct, specifically, prior studies generally focus narrowly on the context of failed entrepreneurs. We cast a wider net on men and women entrepreneurs’ entry decisions (irrespective of prior experience with business failure) and provide new views on the effects of social costs of failure on entrepreneurial ecosystems. We also extend the research on the legitimacy of women as entrepreneurs with the gender equality construct.

Unlike previous studies, which often focus on the “3Ms” of market, money and management, our research adopts a more holistic perspective. We recognize that the opportunities and challenges faced by entrepreneurs are shaped not only by individual skills and resources but also by the broader macroenvironment. By incorporating the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power, alongside the intricate interplay of social costs and norms, our study paints a comprehensive picture of the landscape of female entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the aftermath of business failure (BF) by addressing: how the individual progressed and developed new ventures, how individuals changed business behaviors and practices in light of a failure, and what was the effect of previous failure on the individual’s decisions to embark on subsequent ventures.

The authors resort to qualitative methods to understand the aftermath of BF from a retrospective point of a successful entrepreneur. Specifically, the authors undertook semi-structured interviews to six entrepreneurs, three from the north of Europe and three from the south and use interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The authors found that previous failure impacted individuals strongly, being shaped by the individual’s experience and age, and their perception of blame for the failure. An array of moderator costs was identified, ranging from antecedents to institutions that were present in the individual’s lives. The outcomes are directly relatable to the failed experience by the individual. The authors also found that the failure had a significant effect on the individual’s career path.

While predicting the failure of healthy firms or the discovery of the main determinants that lead to such an event have received increasingly more attention in the last two decades, the focus on the consequences of BF is still lagging behind. The present study fills this gap by analyzing the aftermath of BF.

There is an emerging consensus that systemically important banks should face stricter regulations and systemic surcharges. To make this latter principle operational the regulator will need to quantify the systemic importance of individual banks. The purpose of this paper is to review the proposed measures of systemic importance from the research community and discuss their merits relative to how a regulator would ideally wish to calibrate surcharges on systemically important banks, and to evaluate how useful proposed measures of the systemic importance of financial institutions will be to regulators.

The author reviews the main contributions to the research literature and discusses their relevance for the problem faced by regulators.

There are five main caveats that make the proposed measures of systemic importance less useful for regulators.

The proposed measures may help identify relevant aspects of systemic importance, but the regulators will need to construct their own measures for practical use.

The paper provides a critical review of a research literature that could potentially have large practical implications.

Conflict between work and family is a significant issue for entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of entrepreneurial failure on both family–work conflict (FWC) and work–family conflict (WFC) and the moderating role of perceived control of time and organizational slack based on conservation of resources (COR) theory.

This study used a questionnaire to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial failure, FWC/WFC, perceived control of time and organizational slack. Data were collected from the Chinese context in 2018 and as a result received 318 valid questionnaires, obtaining a response rate of 63.6 per cent.

The study finds that entrepreneurial failure has a significant relationship with FWC but a nonsignificant relationship with WFC and that perceived control of time and organizational slack moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial failure and FWC/WFC.

This study aligns the field of family–work (work–family) conflict and entrepreneurial failure. It addresses a research gap in the conflict literature by introducing one form of resource loss: entrepreneurial failure as a source of conflict between work and family based on COR theory and the work–home resources model. The study also enriches the literature on the social cost of entrepreneurial failure by exploring the crossover effect of entrepreneurial failure on conflicts in the family domain. Furthermore, the study advances the understanding of managing conflict between work and family after entrepreneurial failure.

The purpose of this study was to examine entrepreneurs’ learning before, during and after entrepreneurial failure and understand the relationship between learning and recovery from failure.

A qualitative multiple case study was carried out based on entrepreneur interviews who have experienced the failure of their businesses.

The study finds that entrepreneurs learn both during the company’s lifespan and post-failure, with distinct types and intensities of learning at different life cycle phases. It highlights the link between learning and emotions during the failure process, revealing entrepreneurs’ limited awareness of their knowledge gaps, particularly during successful business phases, and shows the difference between women and men.

One limitation of this study is that the companies are all located in northern and central Portugal, and the number of entrepreneurs starting new ventures post-failure is limited. Another is a lack of comprehensive measurement of the economic impact, especially on the health of individuals who have experienced the impact of failure. The absence of concrete data hampers understanding and the development of targeted support mechanisms for these individuals.

This study stands out for its unique approach, thoroughly exploring the intricate, profound and significant experiences during a crisis, such as a business failure, from the entrepreneurs’ perspective. It delves into their learning processes before, during and after the failure, providing a comprehensive understanding. This study evidence that significant learning occurs during the operation of the business, and not during or after failure, due to the limitations imposed by the pain and disorientation it causes. Therefore, if recovery does not occur, learning does not happen either. It also highlights the differences between women and men in their learning experiences, adding a new dimension to the research.

Many entrepreneurs often struggle with the fear of failure, which can be detrimental to both their business and personal well-being. To better understand the factors that contribute to this fear, the authors conducted research on the impact of various obstacles, such as limited financial resources, risk aversion, stress and hard work avoidance, and prior business failures. Additionally, the authors explored the effects of social capital in mitigating these obstacles and their relationship to fear of failure in entrepreneurship.

The authors conducted a survey with 440 young Iraqi entrepreneurs using non-probabilistic and purposive methods. The survey instrument included multiple measuring scales, which were provided in both English and Arabic. The authors analysed valid responses using structural equation modelling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS).

The findings show that the fear of failure in entrepreneurship is negatively influenced by factors such as limited financial access, risk aversion, and past business failures. However, aversion to stress and hard work did not have a significant impact. The findings also show that social capital could potentially mitigate these negative factors.

The theoretical and practical implications of this study manifest in revealing the difficulties entrepreneurs encounter in developing countries like Iraq, where entrepreneurship is vital for economic growth. The study's limitations stem from its focus on one country and the use of a single survey method. Future research could use varied methods across multiple countries for a more comprehensive view.

This study sheds light on the factors that are obstacles for entrepreneurs to starting a business in emerging economies like Iraq.

The purpose is to assess the impact of online platforms on the sex industry, focusing specifically on direct sex work, and evaluate what approaches to platform regulation is likely to align with the interests of sex workers.

The paper presents a review of interdisciplinary conceptual and empirical literature on sex work combined with analysis of key issues using a transaction cost framework.

Online platforms generally make sex work safer. Regulation aimed at preventing platforms from serving sex workers is likely to harm their welfare.

Regulation of online platforms should take great care to differentiate coercive sex from consensual sex work, and allow sex workers to experiment with governance mechanisms provided by entrepreneurs.

The paper demonstrates how a transactions costs approach to market behaviour as applied to personal services like ridesharing can also shed light on the challenges that sex workers face, partly as a result of criminalisation, and the dangers of over-regulation.

Utilising the Theory of Planned Behaviour as the conceptual framework, the authors argue that entrepreneurial financial failure enhances entrepreneurial growth aspirations for the subsequent start-up projects. Furthermore, this effect is particularly strong for individuals rich in human capital, both general and specific; for them, financial failure of an entrepreneurial business is likely to be subsequently transformed into higher entrepreneurial growth aspirations.

The authors employ multilevel estimation techniques applied to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data consisting of annual subsamples, each with at least 2,000 observations drawn from the working age population of 95 countries, for the period 2007–2019.

The results confirm that the experience of financial failure, both individual and societal, leads to higher growth aspirations for subsequent ventures, while exit for opportunity reasons has an even stronger positive effect on growth aspirations. Furthermore, higher education and entrepreneurial experience enhance the positive impact of financial failure on the growth aspirations of subsequent start-ups.

The authors demonstrate that the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which centres on intentions, can be successfully utilised to understand why entrepreneurial failure may be transformed into high growth aspirations for subsequent projects and why this effect may be enhanced by the human capital of the entrepreneur. Furthermore, the authors apply multilevel methods to a large international dataset from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and produce novel empirical evidence supporting their theoretical predictions.

Recent intensification of the “politicisation of childhood” has been observed by analysts in numerous social science disciplines, and in a variety of public policy domains. Sociologists of childhood, for example, often attribute this greater politicisation both to shifts in the social construction of “social problems” and visions of children's agency (for example Mayall, 1994; Oakley, 1994, p. 17; Qvortrup, 1994; Livingstone, 2002, p. 13). Others observe this politicisation in changing patterns of defamilialisation and refamilialisation of social care and their implications for patterns of social solidarity (Leira & Saraceno, 2002 or Wincott, 2006, for example). Indeed, the politicisation of childhood – defined as the move from childhood being understood as primarily a family or parental responsibility to it being also a matter of public importance and concern – has emerged as a major theme in debates about “modernising” social policy paradigms (for example, Leira, 2002; Jenson, 2004; Esping-Andersen, Gallie, Hemerijck, & Myles, 2002).

The multiple goals make social enterprises vulnerable to mission drift, which hurts the sustainability of these hybrid organizations. As initiators, the relationship between social entrepreneurs and the mission drift of social enterprises needs to be further explored. This study aims to explore how entrepreneurs’ education and age impact social enterprise mission drift and examine the potential moderating effects of social enterprise legitimacy.

This study uses the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data set to obtain the required samples, and further regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that the more educated the entrepreneur, the lower the social enterprise mission drift. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between social entrepreneurs’ age and mission drift. Finally, the inverted U-shaped relationship between age and mission drift was more pronounced in contexts with lower social enterprise legitimacy than high legitimacy levels.

This study highlights the significance of founders’ characteristics on the mission robustness of the social enterprises they create. At the same time, the role of social enterprise legitimacy is demonstrated in the context of this study. The findings of this research have implications for social entrepreneurs, social enterprises and policymakers.