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Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area. Entrepreneurship scholars still know little about whether entrepreneurs are eventually embedded in other structures whose relationships go beyond the restricted dimension of the interested actor’s assumption. This study aims to propose investigating the social structures in which a specific type of entrepreneurship, the religious one, is embedded.

The research was qualitative, using interviews as an evidence collection instrument. A total of 17 entrepreneur-pastors responsible for business churches in Brazil and eight parishioners took part in the study.

Religious entrepreneurs are embedded in market structures, corroborating a perspective that associates embeddedness with the utilitarian notion. At the same time, entrepreneurs are embedded in two other social structures: reciprocity and redistribution.

This article emphasizes the relevance of going beyond the predominant perspective associated with the utilitarian and rationalized understanding of embeddedness in relationship networks.

This study makes essential contributions. Initially, it attests to the utilitarian perspective of Granovetter’s embeddedness while suggesting incorporating two other dimensions into the metaphor. By highlighting this, this article stresses the need to reinterpret the metaphor of embeddedness and how entrepreneurship scholars use it. Further, by emphasizing the need to consider embeddedness in networks beyond its still utilitarian perspective, this paper highlights unexplored opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars.

This paper aims to investigate factors that induce entrepreneurial orientation (EO), i.e. what influences the manifestation of its fundamental attributes (innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking).

This study focuses on religious entrepreneurship in an emerging economy, employing a single case study approach. A total of 17 shepherd-entrepreneurs and 4 parishioners were interviewed.

The results suggest that two key driving factors influence religious entrepreneurs’ EO: the search for the discovery of opportunity (a finding that strengthens current literature); and both the search for the creation of opportunity and overcoming challenges associated with the need for survival.

This paper allows entrepreneurs to understand better the factors and motivations that affect their entrepreneurial behavior. It is particularly relevant to entrepreneurs embedded in emerging and developing countries, in which the interchange between opportunity and need contexts is apparent. Further, this paper sheds light on significant dimensions for entrepreneurs’ education and training programs. It also suggests elements capable of bolstering public policies.

The contributions of this paper are fourfold: it supports an integrative view of creation and discovery theories; it reinforces the alternating character of entrepreneurial motivations; it expands the literature by arguing that creating opportunity and the need for survival also influence entrepreneurs' innovativeness, proactivity and risk-taking; and it stresses the neo-Pentecostal shepherds' entrepreneurial propensity.

This paper investigates if and how entrepreneurs' social capital influences their individual entrepreneurial orientation attributes (innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking).

The research method adopted is an exploratory multiple case study. The case chosen is that of an emerging and under-examined entrepreneur, the religious entrepreneur. The study investigates 20 pastors responsible for small enterprise-churches in Brazil.

Social capital influences individual entrepreneurial orientation, being characterized by a relative paradox. The networks must be dense enough to stimulate entrepreneurs' individual entrepreneurial orientation but not be so dense as to harm innovativeness, proactivity and risk-taking. Further, data show that individual entrepreneurial orientation influences social capital.

One limitation relates to the semi-structured interviews' restricted use. A second limitation is associated with the recognition of churches only as productive enterprises.

This article suggests the significance of incorporating both themes in entrepreneurial education and training programs. It also stresses the appropriateness of religious entrepreneurship as an empirical research field for business scholars.

The contributions are fivefold. First, the authors build exploratory theoretical propositions on the influence of social capital on individual entrepreneurial orientation. Second, they highlight the significance of dense networks for individual entrepreneurial orientation, expanding the literature that supports the relevance of cohesive networks solely to the construct's organizational dimension. Third, the authors suggest that a relative paradox may characterize individual entrepreneurial orientation. Fourth, the authors suggest the existence of recursion between both constructs. Finally, this study is one of the first to examine social capital and individual entrepreneurial orientation, considering innovativeness, proactivity, and risk-taking, which represents a neglected field in benchmarking studies.

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is highly emerging in the management literature. However, recent studies highlight the necessity to associate with reflections on this theme, usually approached from an economic perspective, propositions also derived from relational approaches. This paper aims to investigate associations between EO and social networks, specifically about the still little explored relational coupling/decoupling theme.

This paper provides an empirical and qualitative study of religious entrepreneurs. A total of 18 pastors responsible for creating and leading independent neo-Pentecostal churches located in Belo Horizonte/Brazil, selected using the snowball technique, participated in this qualitative, case-study research. Two analysis categories guided data collection: pastors’ EO (behaviors suggestive of their innovativeness, proactivity, competitive aggressiveness, risk-taking and autonomy) and churches’ social framework (the resources and attributes that pastors obtain from their institutional structure).

The study concludes that pastors combine attributes representing their EO and their social structure in developing their religious endeavors.

Among the limitations are the restricted use of semi-structured interviews as a data collection source and the absence of data proving the churches’ performance.

The paper contributes by showing that entrepreneurs can influence the structure of their networks by using EO; proving that networks influence pastors’ EO; revealing recursivity between EO and networks; emphasizing a relational dimension of the EO construct and presenting new theoretical propositions that can be explored and tested in future investigations.

Women entrepreneurs face several challenges in creating and running ventures, especially in emerging and developing countries. In this sense, by aiming to generate inputs capable of helping overcome them, this study aims to categorize the policy, managerial and practical implications of articles whose empirical research was in one or more of the 155 emerging and developing countries. Further, although scholars have addressed female entrepreneurship in developed economies, there is scant literature in the context explored here. This article provides suggestions for new studies, helping academics fill gaps in the literature.

This article adopts a systematic literature review approach, performing content analysis and bibliometric description for the sample. The study comprises 77 articles selected from the Scopus and Web of Science databases.

Research concentrates on Asian countries, with lower incidences in Latin America and Africa. The policy implications focus mainly on the executive rather than legislative spheres. The practical implications focus mainly on entrepreneurial development agencies and women entrepreneurs. Among the suggestions for novel studies, those focusing on methodological choices and female enterprises stand out.

This paper maps and categorizes the policy, managerial and practical implications, helping to raise governments’, policymakers’ and practitioners’ awareness of the preferred strategies to overcome the challenges of female entrepreneurship.

This paper emphasizes reflections of mutual interest to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, filling gaps in studies that prioritize an academic audience. Regarding the academic audience, this paper contributes to innovatively categorizing suggestions for future research and building an extensive research agenda capable of guiding research in this area.

This study aims to investigate the influence of social and spatial embeddedness on indigenous rural entrepreneurship in Amazon/Brazil. Rural entrepreneurship has increased in recent years. Some studies have focused on the relevance of spatial embeddedness in understanding this phenomenon, whereas others have highlighted the importance of social embeddedness. Although some scholars have associated both construct dimensions to understand rural entrepreneurship in developed economies, such an association remains scarce when considering both emerging and developing contexts.

The strategy was qualitative, using the integrated case study method. The case was the Paiter-Suruí indigenous tribe in the Amazon region, Brazil, recognized for the entrepreneurship of their community. Fourteen indigenous rural entrepreneurs participated in the study.

Field data show that entrepreneurs embed themselves in dense social networks that influence their decisions, including those involving the creation of enterprises. In addition, entrepreneurs are deeply embedded in rural territoriality (spatial), impacting how they create and seek to develop their own ventures.

The study of an empirical context that is still poorly explored has made two main contributions to the social and spatial embeddedness literature. First, evidence shows social influence on spatial embeddedness and vice versa, suggesting the need to integrate both perspectives. Second, this study contributes to the literature on rural entrepreneurship by shedding light on novel strategies for developing such enterprises. In addition, this study emphasizes the relevance of investigating the challenges that hinder rural entrepreneurial development in emerging and developing contexts.

The purpose of this article is to investigate if and how social capital offline – stemming from face-to-face interactions – and social capital online – stemming from social digital media – can influence early-stage entrepreneurs, i.e. ventures with up to 42 months of existence.

The authors used herein a qualitative research approach. The method used was the case study. The authors investigated three early-stage entrepreneurs in order to achieve the objective of the paper. These entrepreneurs are both the unit of analysis and the unit of observation.

The outcomes of this research indicate (1) the combined importance of social capital offline and online; (2) the different performance of the two different types of social capital (they seem to operate in relatively distinct ways) and (3) the existence of recursiveness between resources stemming from the two social spheres (offline and online).

As research limitations, the authors point out the following: (1) the use of semistructured interviews as the only data collection instrument; (2) the limitation of the outcomes to entrepreneurs only (3) the absence of information on the performance of the business ventures; the focus of the paper was only on establishing causality between social capital offline and online and entrepreneurial performance.

This paper provides important research contributions. Initially, the paper presents a range of offline and online variables, which can be used in further research. At the same time, the paper emphasizes the combined impact of social capital offline and online, expanding the literature related to entrepreneurship. Moreover, this study proposes the creation of an integrative model. Finally, the authors point out the need for new theoretical and empirical studies on the subject, which still presents a gap in the literature.

Despite the increase in female entrepreneurship literature, very few studies exist that systematize the extant literature, especially in emerging and developing countries. This article fills part of this gap; it maps, categorizes and groups the objectives, theoretical approaches and research methods on female entrepreneurship conducted in one or more of the 155 emerging and developing countries.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted, using Scopus and Web of Science, over a 10-year timeframe (2010–2020). Out of 465 papers, 77 were selected for content analysis.

Most articles focus on understanding women entrepreneurs' challenges, the factors affecting their entrepreneurial performance and encouraging entrepreneurship. Qualitative research was found to be the predominant approach, while mixed studies appeared less frequently.

This paper sheds light on female entrepreneurship characteristics, including business competence, performance and entrepreneurial orientation. Further, it can help female entrepreneurs to recognize the most relevant aspects regarding performance, the essential driving factors and entrepreneurial motivations, among others.

First, this paper groups the objectives and the theoretical and methodological approaches that guide female entrepreneurship research. Second, it identifies distinct gaps, grouped and explored using unpublished thematic categories. Finally, the authors propose an extensive future research agenda regarding female entrepreneurship in emerging and developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and identify the various characteristics of the institutional environment and the factors that propitiate the attraction of franchise chains to cities in the interior, using Brazil as an analysis.

Secondary data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics were used. It comprised a sample of 1,683 Brazilian cities with commercial outlets featuring franchise brands. It was limited to cities with populations of up to 100,000 inhabitants that did not constitute metropolitan regions. The statistical technique performed was multiple regression.

The results of the multiple regression confirm the explanatory power of R² = 36% for the analyzed model. Such presence of franchise chains is based on four institutional dimensions and their environmental characteristics: demographic (demographic density); economic and financial (average monthly salary of formal workers and number of banking agencies); business (number of active companies and presence of shopping centers); and human resources (presence of higher education units).

The main contribution of the study encompasses the call that regional institutional characteristics are part of knowledge guidelines on regional development and institutional environments for entrepreneurship. In this sense, the paper contributes to studies on regional development in particular, by punctuating the characteristics of the institutional environment of cities that are related to the existence of franchise chain brands.

Such contributions are addressed to managers and directors of expanding franchise chains, given the choice of locations that best enable the concept of their franchises. The fact that only 20% of franchises have a presence in these cities, even if it is admitted that for 70% of these chains, their businesses have the capacity to make these locations viable, shows the importance of this contribution.

This study is addressed to public managers, represented by secretaries of municipal developments, in view of the construction of an institutional environment conducive to entrepreneurial activity, in this specific case, by franchises. It is an important mechanism for attracting new businesses and creating a virtuous cycle of regional development.

Specifically, knowledge is generated about the insertion of ventures based on the franchise business model in small- and medium-sized regional markets. A second feature involves the understanding of the insertion of enterprises in a large and heterogeneous emerging market.

This paper aims to explore the formal (i.e. contracts, standards, processes, and structure) and informal (i.e. social structure, norms, information sharing, and value system and culture) governance instruments used in supply networks and their influence on quality.

This research is qualitative-exploratory in nature, involving semi-structured interviews with 20 managers from three essential layers in the dairy industry's supply chain: companies that supply essential inputs to milk producers; milk producers; and milk cooperatives.

Analysis of the generated data show that formal governance instruments have a strong and/or weak influence on products' and operations' quality in the dairy industry context; informal instruments have a strong and/or weak influence on quality, as a counterpart to formal instruments; and the integration of verified governance instruments positively influences the quality of products and operations.

This paper offers several managerial and practical implications. The first is to encourage suppliers of primary inputs and milk producers to invest in the formal structure, primarily in formal contracts with each other. The second implication suggests the relevance of creating different training and qualification courses with members from all organizational levels. Third, there is a need for cooperatives, encompassing all industries, to consider several informal instruments, complementary to contracts and standards currently used for processes.

Governance instruments can lead to desired supply chain outcomes, including those related to quality. Although previous supply chain studies have investigated the relationship between governance instruments and the supply chain, and quality management and the supply chain, studies on governance instruments' influence on supply chain quality are limited.