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This paper aims to explore the impact mechanism of Chinese university students’ perceived entrepreneurial environment on their entrepreneurial tendency in the context of Chinese economic transition. In particular, the paper provides a reference for relevant departments to make policies and entrepreneurship educators to perfect the pedagogical design and curriculum development in entrepreneurship education programs.

The authors used questionnaires to collect data in Chinese universities via random sampling, and gained 729 valid questionnaires. Results from principal component analysis indicate that the scales have a good reliability. In particular, entrepreneurial attitude had three components. The hypotheses are tested by using Spearman correlation and multiple linear regression; the level of statistical significance of F-test was less than 0.05. Hence, multiple linear regression can be used in the analyses.

The study found that university students’ perceived social environment and economic environment have a positive influence on their entrepreneurial tendency, and entrepreneurial attitude is partially playing a mediating role between students’ perceived entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial tendency. However, students’ perceived policy environment has no significant impact on entrepreneurial tendency.

Environmental factors are often viewed as“gap fillers” in related studies, and mostly concentrated in the Western developed countries. This study attempts to fill the gaps in the context of Chinese economic transition.

To study how entrepreneurial environments influence entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities in China.

This paper constructs statistical models to test the relationship between environmental factors and entrepreneurial opportunities or capacities in 13 cities in China according to the conceptual model of GEM. Based on the data derived from GEM reports, the authors use principal component of factor analysis and lest square regression to study the impacts of entrepreneurial environments on entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities empirically.

This paper indicates that among 13 Chinese cities, if one city has more favorable conditions in terms of nine factors of entrepreneurial environments, it will have more entrepreneurial opportunities, and its entrepreneur will have higher capacities. Moreover, the authors find the extent of the impacts of the economic and cultural environments on entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities is higher than that of political and market environments.

The quantity of sample statistics is relatively small, because it is difficult to develop the GEM project roundly in China.

This paper provides Chinese government with theoretical support so that the government can utilize limited resources to develop entrepreneurial activities. Meanwhile, it furthers foreign researchers and investors to understand the specific conditions in terms of Chinese entrepreneurial environments, opportunities, and capacities more clearly.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the correlations among entrepreneurial environment, market-oriented strategies, and entrepreneurial performance.

Entrepreneurial environment is measured by institutional environment and industrial environment. A survey of 176 large Chinese automobile firms is conducted. The structural equation model is applied to perform analysis.

The uncertainty of the institutional environment is positively related with market-oriented strategies and market-oriented strategies are positively related with firms’ performance. The stronger the uncertainty of the industrial environment is, the larger impact that market-oriented strategies have on firms’ performance will be. There is no distinct positive relationship between the uncertainty of industrial environment and firms’ market-oriented strategies. The hypothesis, that the stronger the uncertainty of institutional environments is, the larger the impact that market-oriented strategies will be on firms’ performance, is not supported.

In terms of research design, this paper does not select survey samples randomly. This paper only takes institutional and industrial environments into consideration while the environmental characteristics are omitted.

This paper expands entrepreneurship research by integrating previous studies. Findings in this paper are helpful for firms in emerging countries to implement “going abroad strategies,” to start up new businesses in other countries, and to achieve the goals of improving competitiveness and integrating with international firms.

Since the limited growth of enterprises has been identified as a deliberate choice of women entrepreneurs, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the institutional environment of an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) fosters the gender gap in entrepreneurial growth intention. The mediating role of the perceived institutional environment in the gender effect on entrepreneurial growth intention is tested in the Chinese context. As individuals’ cognitions are usually influenced by their cultural orientations, the gender difference in perceptions of the institutional environment is considered to be contingent on entrepreneurs’ self-construal.

Using a multiregional sample of 206 Chinese entrepreneurs who completed the questionnaire, the study obtained results by adopting a structural equation modelling analysis with a partial least squares approach.

There are significant gender gaps in perceptions of the institutional environment and growth intention among Chinese entrepreneurs. Due to their limited political ties and lower legitimacy in economic activities in the country, Chinese women entrepreneurs have more negative perceptions of the regulative and cognitive institutional environment than their male counterparts, which accounts for the lack of growth ambition among Chinese women entrepreneurs. Independent self-construal enlarges the difference in environmental perceptions between male and female entrepreneurs.

This research enriches the discussion in the emerging area of EEs by adequately responding to the highlighted target to advance ambitious entrepreneurship and offering an interpretation of its evolutionary thinking. Given the increasing calls for a focus on high-growth women’s entrepreneurship, this study provides an explanation for how the institutional environment engenders the absence of women in growth-oriented entrepreneurial activities. It also uncovers the overlooked deficiency in institutional practice by highlighting the gender inequality in the implementation process of entrepreneurial support policies and the distribution of entrepreneurial capabilities in society.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the institutional environment, entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which affect small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs’ social entrepreneurial intentions.

A self-administered survey was used to collect data from 600 owner-managers of tourism and hospitality businesses on the Khon Kaen-Nong Khai railway route. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses using a two-step modeling approach.

Normative and cognitive environments positively influence entrepreneurial passion. However, regulatory environment was not significantly related to entrepreneurial passion. Entrepreneurial passion relies on entrepreneurial self-efficacy, a major mechanism that creates social entrepreneurial intention. Interestingly, entrepreneurial self-efficacy fully mediated the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and intention.

This study provides an original contribution to social entrepreneurship in terms of the role of self-efficacy in mediating the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and intention. The findings enhance theoretical viewpoints and aid in the practical implementation of the roles of small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs in social enterprises, supporting the entrepreneurial sector.

This paper aims to build a theory model to examine the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurial environment on new firm performance based on network view and resource‐based view, and then carry out empirical research.

Data were obtained from 112 new firms, through the use of questionnaires, in Changchun city, China.

Evidence indicates that the entrepreneurial environment has an impact on new firm performance through entrepreneurial network and resource acquisition. The results show that eight out of ten hypotheses are supported.

In a hostile, dynamic and complex environment, the new firm should enhance its entrepreneurial network to ensure resource acquisition and then promote performance.

The paper shows definitely the significance of entrepreneurial network as a bridge between external environment and resource acquisition and new firm performance. Entrepreneurial network and resource acquisition are identified as important intermediary variables, and resource combination ability as a moderating variable. This paper examines the influence of external environment on new firm performance. The research has some theoretical and managerial implications for new firms' survival and obtaining growth in highly uncertain and turbulent environments.

Using statistical analysis, this paper aims to understand and investigate the factors for starting a new company successfully. Indicators from the literature and the data analysis prove that entrepreneurial environment, ability, intentions and self-actualization affect the success rate of entrepreneurship.

To analyze the success factors for entrepreneurship, the authors take entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial ability as the independent variables, self-actualization as the mediating variable and entrepreneurial intentions as the dependent variable. Then, the authors build the frame model of the influencing factors according to entrepreneurial intentions based on the self-actualization mediating effect of college students. At last, four hypotheses are proposed based on this frame model.

The empirical research proves that the better the entrepreneurial environment, the stronger the entrepreneurial intentions of college students; the stronger the entrepreneurial ability of students, the stronger the entrepreneurial intentions; and under the mediating effect of self-actualization, entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial ability will affect entrepreneurial intentions strongly. Finally, based on the empirical results, this paper proposes to pay attention to entrepreneurship education and strengthen the construction of the entrepreneurial environment to better enhance entrepreneurial intentions.

The study has a few limitations because, as it refers to the sample for college students and the new start-up, it would require a more generalized analysis of the factors, such as to include more and better indicators for demographic, economic and institutional determinants of the entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurship. For further studies on entrepreneurship, the validate measuring scale of the concept must be addressed.

The present work shows that optimizing the entrepreneurial environment and improving the entrepreneurial ability of college students can enhance the success rate of the entrepreneurship. Besides, the entrepreneurial intentions should be enhanced from outside to inside. Namely, stimulate the entrepreneurial desire of college students from the external environment, such as policy support, ideological education and mobilization on employment options and other aspects of new college graduates. The psychological aspects of graduates should be guided.

For the study of entrepreneurial intentions, most scholars mainly studied the entrepreneurial psychology to discuss its relationship with entrepreneurial intentions in the early years, and gradually extended to the study of external factors, such as the entrepreneurial environment. However, the study on graduate entrepreneurship has yet to be improved. Based on the existing research, this paper makes an in-depth study on the influence mechanism of entrepreneurial intentions from entrepreneurial ability and entrepreneurial environment, puts forward a research model taking self-actualization as a mediating variable and studies the intrinsic driving force of entrepreneurial intentions.

This study focuses on the implementation of entrepreneurship education in non-business education at the basic education level and in class-teacher education in Finland. The subject to learn was music, which did not include any entrepreneurial content. Accordingly, this study looks closely at the way learners behave when studying music. The purpose of this paper is to see whether entrepreneurial behaviour is appropriate in non-business education.

The study used the action research approach; in particular, it used the special teacher-as-researcher method. The analysis was based on content analysis.

In this study, the teacher-researcher looked at entrepreneurial learning as experimenting with alternative learning methods and different learning contents. To ensure that every learner received the support they needed in their self-chosen tasks, peer learning was encouraged. Learners got the support they needed both from each other and from the teacher-researcher.

Although this study was only carried once during some music lessons in one particular comprehensive school and once in one class-teacher education in Finland, the findings may prompt teachers in other subjects and other countries to add entrepreneurial activities to their learning environments.

There is a lack of research into entrepreneurship education practices at lower educational levels and where education is not business-oriented. Using the entrepreneurial approach in general education raises another question: is the approach suitable for every learner? Neither of these facets has been studied in depth.

Environmental uncertainty, turbulence, and heterogeneity create a host of strategic and operational challenges for today’s organizations (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998). To cope with the challenge of simultaneously developing and nurturing both today’s and tomorrow’s core competencies, firms increasingly rely on effective use of corporate entrepreneurship (Covin & Miles, 1999). These facts make it imperative that managers at all levels actively participate in designing and implementing a strategy for corporate entrepreneurship actions. The recent literature reveals that there is a general although certainly not a complete consensus around the position that successful corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is linked to improvement in firm performance (Ireland et al., 2001). Covin, Ireland and Kuratko (2003) suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a legitimate path to high levels of organizational performance and that the understanding of corporate entrepreneurship as a valid and effective practice with real, tangible benefits is occurring across firm type and managerial levels. Other researchers cite corporate entrepreneurship’s importance as a growth strategy (Kuratko, 1993; Kuratko et al., 1993; Merrifield, 1993; Pinchott, 1985; Zahra, 1991; Zahra & Covin, 1995; Zahra, Kuratko & Jennings, 1999). As an example, Dess, Lumpkin and McGee (1999) note that, “Virtually all organizations – new start-ups, major corporations, and alliances among global partners – are striving to exploit product-market opportunities through innovative and proactive behavior” – the type of behavior that is called for by corporate entrepreneurship. Barringer and Bluedorn (1999) suggested that in light of the dynamism and complexity of today’s environments, “…entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors are necessary for firms of all sizes to prosper and flourish.” Developing an internal environment that cultivates employees’ interest in and commitment to creativity and the innovation that can result from it contributes to successful competition in today’s competitive arenas. A valuable and appropriate internal organizational environment is a product of effective work (often within the context of corporate entrepreneurship) by managers at all levels (Floyd & Lane, 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize corporate entrepreneurial strategy using collaborative dynamics of contingency and agency theories, and to demonstrate how some constructs of these two theories are integrated to support long-term strategies of entrepreneurial firms in sustaining their competitive advantages and enhancing their performance.

Review of literature on strategic entrepreneurship, firm growth, contingency and agency theories were explored to support the conceptualized framework of the entrepreneurial strategy developed in this paper. The authors adopt a vignette approach to problematize theoretical gaps identified. The vignette was also used to embody the entrepreneurial strategy matrix developed.

This paper suggests that the effectiveness of corporate entrepreneurial strategies is influenced by the impacts of contingent environment and agency problem of goal conflicts. It provides some propositions for qualitative and empirical research that will extend the rigours of strategic entrepreneurship literature.

This paper highlights the implications of understanding and adopting diverse competitive and sustenance strategies. It provides avenues for entrepreneurial firms to take cognizance and use of the contingency and agency approaches to influence their long-term strategic directions to stay competitive. Institutional authorities will also benefit from having a conceptual reference and guide to further improve their entrepreneurship policies.

The authors took three novel steps to address the existing gap in the literature. First, the theories of entrepreneurship, contingency and agency were bound together and unified as a single framework to conceptualize entrepreneurial strategy. Second, the identified gaps were embodied in a vignette to problematize the theoretical issues and lastly, some testable propositions were put forward to explain different forms of entrepreneurial strategy. The authors also developed a corporate entrepreneurial strategy matrix based on the Covin and Miles (1999) forms of corporate entrepreneurship. It forms the basis for the propositions.