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High-growth firms have recently received considerable attention in the firm growth literature. These firms might have grown despite the existence of growth barriers, and evidence also suggests that, having already grown exponentially, they may not be in the best position to grow further. Policies targeting high-growth firms may therefore be misdirected. We argue that entrepreneurship researchers should concentrate more on firms that are not hiring, despite having high profits. We call these firms “sleeping gazelles,” and demonstrate that they represented almost 10% of all limited liability firms in Sweden from 1997 to 2010. Nearly half of these firms continued to earn high or moderate profits in subsequent three-year periods, while still displaying no growth. Regression analyses indicate that these firms were significantly smaller, older, more likely to be active in industries with high profit uncertainty, and more likely to be located in less densely populated municipalities than were corresponding growing firms.

The open objective of liberalization or globalization for the developed nations is the expansion of market or the creation of opportunities to produce and sale more and more goods and/or services beyond the domestic market which ultimately lead the nation in the right path of development. On the other hand, this economic environment is a challenge for the developing or less developed or small nations with respect to share of world trade to compete with the developed or large nations with respect to the quality of the product, technology, skill of human resources, etc. There arise tariff impositions to protect the domestic economies to defend against the challenges. Under these circumstances, this chapter tries to investigate the impact of such tariff war measured by trade as a percentage of GDP on the per capita GDP of the nations. It finds that all the variables are cointegrated. The effect depends on how we measure world tariff, for example, the effect of tariff on trade is positive and significant when we measure the world tariff as simple mean of all products but the effect of tariff on trade is negative and statistically significant when we take tariff as weighted mean of all products. Similarly, the effect of tariff on per capita income is positive if tariff is measured with simple average of all products but this effect is negative and significant when it is measured with weighted mean of all products. In this case, imposition of world tariff (weighted mean of all products) declines world per capita income especially in short run.

Although research on the relationship between culture and female entrepreneurship has developed strong insights, to date limited studies have examined the country-specific factors which may account for variance in women entrepreneurs' behaviour and subsequent outcomes. Therefore, this study attempts to close this gap through taking a closer look at the country-specific cultural factors creating differences in female entrepreneurs' behaviour and business strategies within the context of Turkey and the United Kingdom. In light of previous studies examining the impact of social institutions, this chapter adopts a survey approach to examine whether the networking strategies, growth orientation, perceived impediments, lifestyle choices and business structures of well-established female entrepreneurs vary between these two different cultural environments. In total, 240 females participated in this study with 120 from each country. The macro-cultural environments within the case countries are described through the application of Hofstede's Culture Model.

Despite the expansion of women's entrepreneurial activities and its positive effects on the economic development of societies, women still face numerous difficulties in starting and running a business compared to men, especially in developing countries because of gender discrimination in the field. The cultural context in societies is a significant factor affecting the status of entrepreneurship among the Iranian women. Therefore, the present research is an attempt to identify the challenges affecting entrepreneurship among Iranian women. The results obtained from 30 semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs and women with entrepreneurial roles showed that sociocultural challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are classified into: “the society's perception of entrepreneurship among women,” “women's social security,” and “common family norms governing a society.”

Despite the remarkable expansion of microfinance over the past several decades, the industry remains in a developmental period of experimentation and rapid growth, exploring which approaches work best under different circumstances. Widespread diffusion and local adaptation of techniques and innovations from pioneering organizations such as ACCION International, Grameen Bank, FINCA, Bank Rakyat Indonesia, BancoSol, and many others fostered the emergence of a global industry that by most counts now serves more than 100 million clients. Yet along many dimensions of the industry – for example, client methodologies, information technologies and infrastructures, transparency and performance monitoring, product and service portfolios, funding structures, human resource management, health and environmental amelioration, and regulations – significant barriers remain to achieving the broad vision of microfinance as a major contributor in fighting global poverty.

This chapter examines the relationship between the gender gap in labor force participation, intensive growth and economic welfare in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) from 1981 to 2020 under the framework of the classical production function. The generalized method of moment (GMM) technique was employed in analyzing the data. The empirical result showed a negative and significant effect of the gender gap in labor force participation on intensive growth. It was also found that the gender gap in labor force participation had a negative and insignificant effect on economic welfare in SSA. Other findings showed that male labor force participation had a positive and insignificant effect on both intensive growth and economic welfare, while female labor force participation had a negative and significant effect on intensive growth and a negative and insignificant effect on economic welfare. Trade openness had a positive and significant effect on both intensive growth and economic welfare. Based on the findings, narrowing the gender gap in labor force participation has to be given more considerable attention in the SSA region.

Women Entrepreneurship has received increasing attention over the past decade. In particular, a new area dealing with women entrepreneurs in the developing societies. The aim of this study is how is women entrepreneurship in developing economies? More specifically, we are excavating various questions at the individual and institutional level. The results of this study contribute to understanding the importance of the context on women entrepreneurs’ activities. Additionally, it systematically provides a comprehensive framework at multilevel analyses to cover all aspects of women entrepreneurship in developing countries. Ultimately, knowing women entrepreneurship in developing countries helps policymakers provide a firm ground for self-employment of women.

This chapter summarizes existing empirical literature on German gazelles and draws on a large new sample of high-growth firms for a description of the regional and sectoral distribution of gazelles in Germany. In addition, the regional distribution of gazelles is juxtaposed with the occurrence of regional cluster initiatives. In sum, our results are in line with major former findings. We find gazelles in all sectors and many regions with some specificities for young and urban gazelles. We do not find significantly more gazelles in regions, though, which pursue a targeted cluster policy. Finally and consequently, we call for more granular studies on types and characteristics of gazelles in the future.

This study is a response to the paucity of research into early internationalising firms based in India. We seek to explore the internationalisation of small and new Indian firms and the decision-making process of their entrepreneurs/managers.

The study uses original, primary data gathered from in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with the managers of six such firms to explore the factors that might facilitate, motivate, or impede the efforts undertaken by young Indian firms to embark upon a process of early internationalisation.

Our findings suggest that, in line with their counterparts from other countries, the early internationalisation of small firms from India is driven primarily by the search for more favourable demand conditions overseas and is facilitated by new technologies. However, we find no evidence suggesting that the emergence of early internationalising firms from India is driven by the search for more favourable production conditions or by the direct international experience and exposure of their founders. In line with prior scholarly work, our research suggests that government support is an important facilitator of early internationalisation of small firms.

The study provides insights into the internationalisation process of INVs from India and contributes to broadening our understanding of the behaviour of firms under a set of specific institutional conditions. Based on our findings, we develop a conceptual framework which can be useful for further empirical testing. Our study is also one of the few to be conducted on a sample of INVs from India.