Search results

Through utilizing social capital as an overarching concept, the purpose of this article is to investigate cross-country rates of business formation in the formal vs informal sectors. Plus, empirically assess the impact of social capital constructs on the national rates of entrepreneurship.

Adopting a regression-oriented methodology, partial least squares (PLS), the study used a sample comprising 50 nations. National rates of registered and nonregistered business creation were utilized as endogenous variables. To determine the indigenous variables, constructs of social capital were measured which is consistent with the World Value Survey (WWS).

The results of this study show that in the formal and the informal sectors, social networking enables business creation with varying levels of impact. It establishes that institutional trust has a negative effect on informal business creation and a positive effect on business registration; interpersonal trust drives entrepreneurship in the informal sector but has less impact on business registration; norms of trustworthiness are related to business registration than informal business creation.

The findings of this research have theoretical and practical implications. They stimulate academic debate on the application of social capital constructs at the national level. The indications that social capital promotes business formation in both the informal and formal sectors can influence entrepreneurship policy development in many countries.

The originality of the results of this study lies in how it conceptualizes social capital as having direct impact on business creation in the informal vs formal sector. Thus, the findings elevated the conceptualization of social capital to the national level thereby enhancing knowledge on the entrepreneurship process as well as developmental economics.

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.

This paper offers new conversations on entrepreneurial ecosystems as contested communities through a critique of extant work that relies uncritically on social capital. It offers new directions for theorizing and studying entrepreneurial ecosystems guided by a critical perspective of social capital (i.e., arriving from several intellectual traditions including political economy, intersectionality, critical race theory, and feminisms). In doing so, the paper offers insights around how continued structural and relational inequalities based on gender, race and/or immigrant status within the domain of entrepreneurship can be brought to the forefront of ecosystem frameworks. Doing so produces new approaches to the conceptualization and study of entrepreneurial ecosystems as more than sites of economic activity between and among actors, but rather it allows for consideration of how being differentially embedded in social structures matters for entrepreneurship. Differences in social structures within ecosystems reflect broader societal patterns and analyzing them can yield insights about the configuration of institutions. To understand the complexity of how different institutional configurations may lead to different forms of entrepreneurial ecosystems, it is necessary to have different conceptual starting points on social capital (informal) and exchange relationships (formal) as foundational aspects of entrepreneurial activities. Consequently, the paper provides these new analytic starting points, thus providing better explanatory and empirical power to demonstrate how and why inequalities persist in entrepreneurship.

As a consequence of global changes, the landscape of immigration is changing. This brings opportunities for researching more nuanced aspects related to immigrant entrepreneurship in new contexts. The purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which Africa-to-African immigrants leverage their social capital and human capital towards improving the success of their entrepreneurial ventures.

First-generation immigrant entrepreneurs within the Johannesburg area in South Africa were surveyed (n = 230). Instrument validity and reliability was first established, and then the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analyses.

Hypotheses are supported insofar African immigrant entrepreneurs in South Africa rely on their structural and resource-related dimensions of social capital to achieve entrepreneurial success. Furthermore, human capital in terms of both work experience and entrepreneurial experience was found to be a significant predictor of entrepreneurial success.

There is value in developing policies that promote African immigrant entrepreneurs with higher levels of human and social capital. These African immigrants have the potential to increase the national skills base and knowledge required for successful entrepreneurship development in South Africa.

While both human capital and social capital have been associated significantly with the generic entrepreneurship literature, this paper provides an empirical contribution by focusing on the relevance of these constructs in the context of immigrant entrepreneurship from an African emerging market perspective.

This paper aims to address the research question of whether family social capital affects the degree of engagement in the entrepreneurial process in the case of hospitality and tourism (H&T) new ventures, and how this relates to environment-related motivations. In particular, drawing on a process-based approach of individuals’ engagement in entrepreneurship, this paper provides new insights into the relationship between the perception of support by the family through the provision of bonding and bridging social capital and the decision to engage in the entrepreneurial process. The main contribution consists in the role of “following an environmental mission” that emerges as a motivation mediating the relationship between family resource provision and entrepreneurial engagement in the H&T industry.

For this exploratory study, we rely on cross-sectional observations from 2,923 individuals gathered through the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students Survey, which collects information on career choices and preferences of university students around the globe. Given our focus on the early engagement process in entrepreneurship and the role of embeddedness in family structures, the use of a sample of young potential entrepreneurs such as students is particularly appropriate.

This study suggests that the family acts as a fundamental institution fostering entrepreneurship, both through the provision of bonding and bridging social capital, and the nurturing of attitudes toward the environment. The results indicate that, in the H&T industry, entrepreneurship can be a valuable means to pursue such attitude and is perceived as a way to proactively contribute to undertake responsible environmental activities.

The study provides some implications for researchers, educators and policymakers interested in fostering entrepreneurial initiatives in the field, considering the role of a social-oriented mission as a vehicle to encourage profit-oriented entrepreneurial initiatives, and the importance of the family as a resource provider that fosters entrepreneurial engagement. The paper also discusses the strengths and limitations of this unique and broad cross-national sample.

Becoming entrepreneurs is depicted as climbing an entrepreneurial “ladder”, whereby each individual’s engagement along this process depends on a number of antecedents. Family bridging and bonding social capital, as well as following an environmental mission, emerge as important factors in the H&T industry, thus extending previous literature on the distinctiveness of this industry.

The present study investigates the role of social capital in promoting sustainable livelihood amongst indigenous women in India. The study further analyses the mediation effect of women entrepreneurship between social capital and livelihood promotion.

Structure equation modeling has been used to empirically examine the effect of social capital in promoting sustainable livelihood. The study has collected 612 samples from indigenous women entrepreneurs across Sundargarh and Koraput districts in Odisha.

The result highlighted the extensiveness of indigenous women entrepreneurs, who utilized their social capital to improve enterprise performance and livelihood conditions. It is witnessed that social capital has a direct and positive effect on uplifting the living standards of indigenous women. Furthermore, women entrepreneurship mediates the relationship between social capital and livelihood promotion of indigenous women.

The decision-makers, policy practitioners and government agencies must encourage more women's self-help groups to participate in entrepreneurial activities by utilizing social capital through government welfare programs.

The present study adds value to the existing literature on social capital, women entrepreneurship and sustainable livelihood by measuring the importance of social capital in achieving sustainable livelihood. This study will add knowledge to the existing theories and literature of social capital on its use and importance towards the benefit of society.

The social capital used to access ethnic community resources is widely recognized in the literature as being important for immigrant entrepreneurship. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the extent to which immigrant entrepreneurs' agency, specifically their motivations, influence their use of, and contributions to, their ethnic social capital. In this paper, the authors explore this relationship.

Based on a qualitative approach, this research utilizes semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to identify the motivations, sources and effects of ethnic social capital.

This research indicates that immigrant entrepreneurs have mixed motives when engaging with their ethnic communities. The findings suggest that the immigrant entrepreneurs' social capital–mediated interactions within their ethnic community are driven not only by the social structure but that their agency, specifically their motivations, play an important role in them. While entrepreneurs hold mixed motives, they recognize the importance of business success. Thus, they make concessions to their ethnic community and utilize its resources if doing so benefits their business.

This research explores the role that immigrant entrepreneurs' motivations play in how they use and contribute to immigrant community social capital. By doing so, this study brings agency to the forefront of the discussion on immigrant entrepreneurship and social capital.

This study provides insight into the connection between the extent to which immigrant entrepreneurs utilize and contribute to their ethnic community's social capital, their motivations for doing so and the effect that these factors have on the businesses as well as their ethnic communities. This understanding might be useful for organizations seeking to foster immigrant entrepreneurship as well as for entrepreneurs themselves.

Individuals' motivations as they relate to social capital involve a variable that is rarely, if ever, considered – that is, individual agency. Thus, this research contributes this perspective to the immigrant entrepreneurship literature but also more broadly to the social capital and entrepreneurship fields. This research can be extended to understand the impact of entrepreneurs' motivations on the communities in which they are embedded.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insights to understanding trust as a relational form of social capital, and its effects on entrepreneurial processes, in small- and medium-sized family businesses.

This paper adopts a qualitative case-study approach, with data from fieldwork interviews, observations, and secondary sources analysed by using interpretative methods.

Although multiple types of trust exist concurrently in small- and medium-sized Chinese family businesses, it is interpersonal trust on the basis of goodwill and competence that prevails, while contractual trust is weak and marginal. Three patterns of trusting relationships are identified, each of which has both positive and negative effects on entrepreneurship and innovation in family businesses. There is a potential “dark side” of trust, which incurs extra cost and commitment to small- and medium-sized family businesses in their entrepreneurial processes.

Future research with larger sample sizes is suggested to generalise the insights, by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. More empirical work is needed to further clarify the antecedents of trust as a social capital and the potential “dark side” of trust in small- and medium-sized family businesses, particularly across generations.

Family business owner-managers should try to avoid relying on a single type of trust, which may incur extra costs to the entrepreneurial processes. They need to better understand why they trust certain actors in their business and social networks before assigning resources to specific business activities. Policy makers are suggested to recognise the “benefits” of the traditionally family-oriented values and that kinship-based trust is also a relational form of social capital and can produce entrepreneurial outcomes.

The paper critically reviews existing literature on social capital, trust, entrepreneurship, and family business at their point of intersection and identifies gaps and oversights. Drawing on case studies from China, the paper explores different patterns in which trust develops in second-generation small- and medium-sized Chinese family businesses and their varying effects on entrepreneurship.

The root of urban poverty and inequality often results from limited economic opportunity. Yet, often this perception of lack of opportunity is centered on the early stages of new venture formation, with only limited attention to venture growth and expansion. In this study, we explore the intersection of social venturing and community economic redevelopment to address this gap in the literature. We examine how venturing under conditions of limited economic opportunities occurs not just at the formation stages but also throughout the venturing life cycle. Specifically, we examine how ventures formed in distressed, urban neighborhoods face unique challenges when scaling up their operations. These challenges relate to securing and leveraging four types of capital: financial, physical, human, and social. We employ a case study methodology to examine these scaling challenges and the strategies the organization employed to overcome location disadvantages.

Refugee entrepreneurship is increasing because of the increased influx of refugees around the globe. This leaves us with the question that how refugees integrate economically in the host country in the presence of all social, emotional and economic constraints. Existing literature suggests looking into the role of social capital to address refugee economic integration, particularly in developing nations. To acknowledge this call, this paper aims to explore the impact of family social capital on the economic integration process. Particularly, this study has investigated the Afghan refugee entrepreneurial activities and the integration process of Afghan refugees in economic and social spaces in Pakistan.

The study is rooted in 18 in-depth interviews with five participants that run small businesses in the city of Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

The findings revealed Afghan refugee entrepreneurs, develop a different type of family social capital i.e. horizontal and vertical social capital. Afterward, when the acculturation pace up across refugees’ generations then they accumulate bridging social capital gradually. The process of economic integration happens in different stages as also shown in the existing literature. Based on (Berry, 2003; Evansluong et al., 2019; Khulman, 1991) economic integration process this paper has discussed three main stages (entry in labor market, gradual integration and gradual sub-merging in host society) of Afghan refugee economic integration in Pakistan and further this study has shown how different steps are arranged within these stages to smoothen the integration process.

With this research, this paper calls for a more nuanced approach to address the challenges that are faced by refugees during their economic integration. Future research on Afghan economic and social integration can contribute to a better understanding of refugee settlement, well-being and self-sufficient status in host countries. One of the limitations of the study is the focus on male participants because female Afghan refugees do not work mostly because of strong patriarchal structures observed in refugee Afghan groups.

Most Afghan entrepreneurs consider them as Pakistani and do not want to repatriate to Afghanistan. This provides an opportunity for Pakistani policymakers to provide regulations and opportunities to Afghan entrepreneurs who want to stay in Pakistan and contribute to their family well-being and economic income generation and employment in Pakistan.

The role of the family acts as a means to refugee entrepreneurs’ integration in the host country. Strong migration networks and dense family configurations are a source of pride, responsibility, resilience and self-esteem for Afghan refugees to start and expand their businesses.

This study provides the opportunity to explore the under-researched role of family social capital in the migrant and refugee entrepreneurship literature.