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Given the recent emergence of China as a dominant economy and internal changes that have led to the encouragement of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial initiatives, this paper explores whether family dynamics and relationships still play an important role in women's decision to become entrepreneurs. It aims to understand whether there has been a shift in family dynamics and decision-making that supports female entrepreneurship.

Given that the purpose of the study is to understand the role of relationships and family dynamics in their career choice, this study has taken a qualitative approach and carried out interviews with fifteen Chinese female entrepreneurs to understand the role of relationships and family dynamics in their career choice.

The results note that though there are changes in family dynamics that encourage female entrepreneurship, women still find it difficult to choose entrepreneurship as a career and there are unfair expectations that are placed on them. The expectations create undue stress which directly affects their ability to carry out their professional duties. The research suggests that to foster the development of female entrepreneurship, government agencies and local government bodies should provide further access to family support services that can facilitate women's empowerment and foster entrepreneurial thinking without feeling guilty about family commitments or unfair expectations.

Recent studies on women's entrepreneurship have focused on various facets. The role of family dynamics and relationships has long been studied in the context of female entrepreneurship. In emerging economies like China, family dynamics and relationships determine whether women can choose entrepreneurship as a career choice or not. However, there is very limited research on the topic, in the geographical context of China. Hence, this paper is among pioneer research addressing family dynamics in the female entrepreneurship debate in China.

This paper aims to develop a causal feedback structure that explains the dynamics of entrepreneurship development in Iran’s photovoltaic (PV) technological innovation system (TIS) to design effective policy interventions for fostering PV innovation.

This study adopts the system dynamics approach to develop the causal structure model. The methodology follows a systematic method to elicit the causal structure from qualitative data gathered by interviewing several stakeholders with extensive knowledge about different aspects of Iran’s PV TIS.

Lack of technological knowledge and financial resources within Iranian PV panel-producing firms are the main barriers to entrepreneurship development in Iran’s PV TIS. This study proposes two policy enforcement mechanisms to tackle these problems. The proposed feedback mechanisms contribute to the domestic PV market size and knowledge transfer from public research organizations to the PV industry.

The proposed policy mechanisms aid Iranian policymakers in designing effective policy interventions stimulating innovation in Iran’s PV industry.

The main contributions of this study include conceptualizing the causal structure capturing entrepreneurship dynamics in emerging PV TIS and proposing policy mechanisms fostering entrepreneurship and innovation in PV sectors.

The world is currently facing one of the most significant refugee crises in history, posing challenges to policymakers in host countries needing to facilitate socio-economic integration of refugees urgently. Policymakers and scholars have started shedding light on the entrepreneurial potential of refugees. Refugees confront considerable institutional barriers in their new environments. Particularly challenging is that they lose connection to their home country ecosystem through forced displacement and are not yet well-embedded in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem of the host country. The disconnection to the local ecosystem hinders refugees from accessing various resources essential to entrepreneurial activities. Against this background, this chapter illuminates the role of business incubators in integrating refugee entrepreneurs into the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, paying particular attention to relational dynamics within incubators. This study conducts explorative qualitative research with a single case study of a German business incubator for refugees. This study identifies three types of relational dynamics that characterise operation of refugee business incubators and two mechanisms constructive and descriptive to their mission. Finally, this study derives practical implications for refugee business incubators and policymakers in refugee-hosting countries.

The heterotopia is frequently portrayed as a third space in organization studies, characterized by its flexibility and receptivity to innovation. Rural entrepreneurship, embodied in the heterotopic space of community-based enterprises (CBEs), is a key concept in emerging economies. Understanding the CBE’s economic and social dynamics is vital for the genesis of entrepreneurship in these spaces, for regional development and for national economies. This paper aims to deep dive into the group dynamics of Villa Ahumada (VA), a well-known subspace located close to the Mexico–USA border, which, despite its market potential, has not been able to support the collectivization required of a CBE.

Under a case study design, four deep interviews were conducted, which explore the stories of entrepreneurship in VA and analyze the rich narrative accounts of the participants. Narratives offer opportunities for extending the current conceptualizations of entrepreneurship and its processes.

This paper opens a conversation about the negative aspects of heterotopias, especially with regards to entrepreneurship. Much literature has been devoted to the power of rural communities and peasant villages as fertile places for entrepreneurship. They emphasize the role of entrepreneurial culture and governmental support as almost guarantors of entrepreneurial success. This narrative provides one reason for entrepreneurial failure: the deviant heterotopia. Despite government policy that favored collective entrepreneurial efforts, and despite a vibrant underground entrepreneurship culture combined with a valuable brand, entrepreneurship in VA was dead before it started.

Rural entrepreneurship should be a multidimensional phenomenon focusing upon entrepreneurship, context, group dynamics and social capital; but it has not been interpreted from the perspective of a heterotopia or paratopia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of digital entrepreneurship and the role of innovation ecosystem in its shaping by applying a multilevel perspective on the phenomenon.

An exploratory in-depth analysis of an IT company in Brazil is conducted using a quasi-mixed method design and three analytical techniques: pattern-matching, data exposure and social network analysis. The study is based on qualitative data, complemented by quantitative data. The case company is investigated within its time (historical development) and spatial (entire ecosystem) dimensions, providing an integrative approach to analysis.

The results revealed significant differences in a set of supporting innovation ecosystem’s actors and relationships throughout the development of the company from lower to higher levels of digitalization. The findings are discussed within a framework that links ecosystem’s actors at different layers with different levels of business digitalization.

This research brings implications to SMEs in high-tech industries that are aiming to transform their business toward greater digitalization, and stresses the importance of strategic partners in innovation ecosystem in this process.

The novelty of this research is related to how external actors contribute to a company to adapt and create value, and how companies may exploit opportunities by configuring internal resources and external assets from strategic relationships. The study considers digital entrepreneurship in dynamics, distinguishes between different levels of digitalization and prescribes them different enablers and sets of relationships.

This paper aims to investigate how entrepreneurial families (EFs) influence the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) by using the family social capital (FSC) approach.

For this paper, the authors analyzed the Manizales EE as a case study. The authors used a variety of data collection procedures, including in-depth interviews with 26 entrepreneurs and mentors.

The authors established how EFs affect EE development, identifying how the FSC bridging mechanisms impact the EE’s social and cultural attributes, boosting entrepreneurial dynamics.

The results indicated the relevance of EFs’ embeddedness and the degree of the FSC institutionalization in promoting of entrepreneurship within the EEs.

The main objective of this research is to exploratorily analyse different factors that influence the decision of the senior population (+50 years) to engage in entrepreneurship activities in a group of Latin American countries. This study considers the motivations for entrepreneurship (opportunity and necessity) and the level of development of the countries.

The authors used data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) with a sample of 22,139 observations of senior individuals in seven Latin American countries surveyed between 2013 and 2017. The authors also used the Human Development Index to capture the relevance of the level of development. The authors employed a multilevel logistic regression model to test the study hypotheses.

The study results show that individual factors such as personal income, education and occupation have a significant influence on the probability of entrepreneurship of senior individuals. Related to contextual factors, the level of human development of a country has a negative influence mainly on opportunity-based entrepreneurs.

Because of the rapidly ageing population in Latin America, understanding senior entrepreneurs and their motivations is very relevant not only in terms of theoretical development but also for policy and practical implications, primarily those related to labour markets and social protection.

This paper aims to propose a multi-level integrative research framework anchored in an institutional theory that can successfully capture the multitude of factors affecting the expression of female entrepreneurship in context. Although female entrepreneurship is known to contribute to economic growth and vitality, and to enhance the diversity of employment in any economic system, there is very little research pertaining to female entrepreneurship in the Middle East. The authors use this framework to provide insights into multi-level factors enabling and constraining the experience of female entrepreneurship in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and advance knowledge of female entrepreneurship in a particular Middle Eastern context as well as cross-nationally.

Analytical framework and qualitative research methodology consisting of focus group meetings and interviews with 15 female entrepreneurs and five male partners in the UAE.

Our findings aptly highlight the salience of a complex set of entangled factors lying at multiple levels of analysis in shaping female entrepreneurship in the UAE. Our findings also accentuate the importance of the institutional and social contexts in shaping the situational opportunities and constraints that affect female entrepreneurship and its complex expressions in a particular society. Although our findings document a positive tide of change in favor of female entrepreneurship, they also reveal the persistence of various traces of stereotypes and patriarchy that continue to constrain the free expressions of female entrepreneurship in the UAE.

This study contributes empirically by conveying the lived experiences of a sample of women entrepreneurs in the UAE, but the results cannot be generalized given the limited size of the sample investigated. Conceptually, the analytical framework proposed in this paper represents a simplified heuristic tool rather than an explanatory model of the complex dynamics and interplays between different levels of analysis and institutional pressures when examining female entrepreneurship.

The value added of this research is to present original insights into female entrepreneurship from a vibrant Middle Eastern context, namely, the UAE, a country that has attracted and witnessed increasing attention in recent years in the context of globalization. In view of the Western-centric nature of academic publication on the topic, there is a real need for fresh theoretical and empirical insights stemming from an Arab-Middle Eastern context to advance knowledge and scholarship in this area.

The main aim of this chapter is to systematize observations regarding changes in entrepreneurship in Serbia during the previous decade, having in mind some key factors such as high-impact low-probability (HILP) events, dynamic development in the sphere of information technologies (IT), and foreign direct investments (FDI). The choice of these factors was made in accordance with the fact that there were no significant changes in other external factors in the sphere of entrepreneurship (regulatory framework, financial conditions, and socio-political instability). This chapter discusses the assumptions that HILP events and FDI can have both positive and negative impacts on individual sectors or agglomerations of entrepreneurship, while only positive impacts are attributed to IT development. Using official databases and annual financial and business reports given by entrepreneurial agencies and micro and small enterprises we created a set of reports that indicate the strength and direction of the influence of the mentioned factors and their consequences in the sphere of entrepreneurship at the level of Serbia and selected cities, based on the fact that the entrepreneurial ecosystem in those cities faced greater than average challenges. The selected ratios indicate changes in the growth rate of the entrepreneurship sector (number of entrepreneurs and employees) as well as in the improvement of its competitiveness (productivity, assets, and profit per employee).