International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal最新文献

Despite the limited resources of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), they can still manage to be competitive and survive in the current environment by implementing competitive strategies that lead to innovation and improve their market performance. The aim of this study is to examine and analyse the effect of business strategy on market performance in Spanish small and medium-sized entrepreneurial enterprises, and the mediating effect of innovation is explored as a solution to business crises. In addition, we analyse the moderating effect that the perceived risk of COVID-19 may have on this relationship, as well as whether the commercialisation capacity of SMEs exerts an impact and improves performance based on innovation. Taking 1,842 Spanish entrepreneurial firms with fewer than 250 employees as a reference and using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), our study shows that entrepreneurial SMEs that apply a competitive strategy can achieve enhanced innovation. Moreover, this innovation has a direct and positive effect on the market performance of SMEs, and this effect is greater under higher marketing capability. Our findings suggest a heterogeneous effect on the impact of the perceived risk of COVID-19 on the strategy-innovation relationship. In entrepreneurial SMEs that adopt a differentiation strategy, the perceived risk has an enhancing impact, while in entrepreneurial SMEs that follow cost strategies, the effect is negative.

The resource-based view, signaling, and behavioral perspectives focus on different theoretical mechanisms through which human capital and the behavioral characteristics of nascent entrepreneurs, in combination with insider and outsider financing, may influence the emergence of new ventures. This work tests the relative explanatory power of these different theoretical perspectives. We estimate a mediation model to disentangle the direct effect of nascent entrepreneur personal characteristics on new firm creation from their indirect effects, mediated by the amount of insider financing committed to new ventures and access to greater outsider financing. Our empirical results are based on data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED II) and improve our understanding of the drivers of new firm creation and their underlying mechanisms. Our findings support the resource-based view and the behavioral perspective in our sample of nascent entrepreneurs, but do not provide evidence of the signaling perspective.

The purpose of this research work is to provide a measurement instrument, through the validation of a proposed scale, to determine the relevant factors that affect the motivation of university students, and that can be used as anticipatory indicators of personal entrepreneurship to achieve educational and work success. To carry it out, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have been carried out, based on the principal components’ method, which have been validated through the usual model fit measures in the literature, considering an analysis of reliability and reliability of the measurement instrument. To obtain this purpose, a sample of the university population was selected, through a simple random sampling, considering heterogeneity of courses, subjects, areas, and teaching modalities, of 596 individuals, with a higher percentage of women compared to men, as can be seen from the total number of enrolled in university degrees in the Spanish education system. The scale proved to have good psychometric properties, obtaining good internal consistency and validity. Among the main findings, we can highlight several dimensions for motivation, for instance, emotional self-management and adversity management; and learning strategies, such as: active self-management of study material, study management and self-management of effort, among others. In conclusion, a scale has been validated to determine which dimensions should be considered to promote student motivation as a method of personal entrepreneurship, and which can be used by educational authorities to propose extracurricular training that affects the improvement of students' competence, both in academic and emotional management. The dataset was analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

This study examines whether labor force diversity also matters for entrepreneurship in the context of South Korea, with the aim of evaluating the applicability of previous findings from developed Western countries to the growing Asian nations. The results suggest a clear country variance in labor force diversity effects, revealing negative impacts of demographic diversity and insignificance of cultural diversity on entrepreneurship in South Korea, which is in contrast to prior observations in most Western countries. I propose that South Korea's strong societal hierarchy, historical emphasis on ethnic homogeneity, and existing ethnic polarization reduce the nation's openness towards diversity, resulting in unpromising labor force diversity effects on entrepreneurship in South Korea. This research contributes to the current literature by filling the research gap beyond the regional context of developed Western countries and by suggesting possible country variance in labor force diversity effects according to the nation's varying openness towards diversity.

This study provides new evidence regarding the significance of enrolling in a seed accelerator programme for the performance and prospects of startups. The main novelty and contributions of this work lie in siting the analysis within an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) and exploring the impact of both the business model and technological levels of new ventures. We tested a set of six hypotheses through empirical analysis of a dataset comprising 735 startups located in Valencia (Spain), a region representing the category of an emerging, medium-sized EE. The findings revealed that within this EE, the advantages of being accelerated tended to diminish and were more marginal than expected. Furthermore, the seed accelerator profile appeared to be of little importance to the prospects and attractiveness of firms to investors. Interestingly, their technological levels were strongly correlated with higher investment but not with a higher number of employees. The expected direct relationship between funding and firm size was also confirmed. A particularly noteworthy finding was the direct relationship between a higher technological level and business-to-business (B2B) models, as well as the opposite relationship for business-to-consumer (B2C) models. These findings have several significant implications for management and policymakers, including the apparent lack of advantages for accelerated firms in closing large investment rounds and the recommendation that incubators prioritise new ventures with high technological capacity and focussing on B2B models. Finally, we highlight the profile of startups with strong prospects for attracting investment and scaling up.

The goal of the present research was to assess the role of FinTech progress in the enhancement of entrepreneurial ecosystems at the country level for ten European countries within four-time intervals of 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2021. Thus, the research plan involved an empirical approach that utilized twenty-five and six variables to create the consolidated EE and FinTech indices, respectively. The results revealed significant positive correlations between FinTech (financial and technological dimensions) and EE in all selected countries, exposing the overall effective role of the FinTech index in the EE framework during 2011–2021. This result supported two research hypotheses, revealing that high values of progress in the financial and technological dimensions of FinTech can enhance the EEs in European countries. Additionally, the results revealed the effective role of the FinTech index in the enhancement of EEs through the three enhancing EE elements of “networks”, “demand”, and “intermediate services”, supporting the third research hypothesis. According to our results, the overall status of FinTech in all European countries accelerated from 2011 to 2021. Additionally, the enhancement of the EE in European countries in recent years has transferred from formal and cultural components to technological networks and services. Hence, the technological dimension of FinTech can be defined as a driving power of economic growth in the study area and should be considered in economic programs and revisions of EE structures.

Venture capital firms play a crucial role in entrepreneurial success. Similarly, due to their experience and expertise, serial entrepreneurs have been shown to have positive but diminishing effects on the firms with which they are involved. However, what is the effect of mixing serial entrepreneurs with venture capitalists? This study advances our knowledge of venture capitalists and serial entrepreneurs by adopting a human capital-driven multi-agency theoretical framework for their interplay on performance and process issues. Counterintuitively, we find that serial entrepreneur involvement correlates with lower IPO values, but consistent with MAT theory, it lengthens the time to IPO.