This paper explores the link between culture and tailored entrepreneurial education, addressing how cultural differences, influenced by Hofstede's dimensions, impact entrepreneurial behaviour. The study involves 772 students from higher education institutions in the Asian, Baltic, and Eastern European regions, utilizing factor analyses and statistical methods to identify entrepreneurial qualities from Likert-scale evaluations of 13 items. Findings reveal notable regional differences, highlighting traits like courage in Japan and China, and risk-taking in the USA. This research underscores the need for context-sensitive strategies in entrepreneurship education, advocating for tailored support to overcome cultural barriers. Ultimately, it enriches understanding of how culture shapes entrepreneurial behaviour and informs strategies for multinational corporations and education curricula.
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The purpose of this study is to evaluate qualities that are needed for effective entrepreneurship in a variety of national cultures. The sample represents 731 business students from several countries from Asia, Baltics, USA, Nordic, Middle, South and East Europe. College students completed a questionnaire that identified qualities they would need to start their own entrepreneurial business. Results indicated statistically significant entrepreneurial qualities between cultures. Starting a business in a specific cultural environment requires unique entrepreneurial qualities. Our results also found support for universally endorsed entrepreneurial qualities. Country-specific strategies for enhancing entrepreneurship are discussed at the end of the paper.
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Educational programs teaching entrepreneurial behaviour and knowledge are crucial to a vital and healthy economy. The concept of building a Communities of Practice (CoP) could be very promising. CoP’s are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder, 2002). They consist of a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. Normally CoP’s are rather homogeneous. Saxion institute Small Business & Retail Management (SB&RM) started a CoP with entrepreneurs September 2007. Typical in the this community, are the differences between the partners. The Community consists of students, entrepreneurs and members of an institution for higher education. They have different characteristics and they don’t share the same knowledge. Thus, building long-lasting relations can be complicated. Solid relations for longer periods are nevertheless inevitable in using CoP as a mean in an educational concept that takes approximately 4 years. After one year an evaluation took place on the main aspects of a lasting partnership. The central problem SB&RM in Deventer faces is to design the CoP in a way possible members will join and stay for a longer period and in a way it ensures entrepreneurial learning. This means important design characteristics have to be identified, and the CoP in Deventer has to be evaluated to assess whether it meets those design characteristics in an effective and efficient way. The main target of the evaluation is to determine which key factors are important to make sure continuity in partnership is assured and entrepreneurial learning is best supported. To solve the problem, an investigation on how a CoP works, what group dynamics take place, and how this can be measured has to be conducted. Furthermoreusing the CoP as a tool for entrepreneurship means key aspects of entrepreneurial learning have to be identified. After that the CoP in Deventer has to be examined on both aspects. According to literature CoP’s define themselves along three dimensions: domain (indicating what is it about), community (defining how it functions), and practice (indicating what capabilities it has produced) (Wenger, 1998). This leads to meaningful, shared and coordinated activities (Akkerman et al, 2007): Key aspects of a successful CoP lie in both hard and soft sides of creating a partnership. It means on one hand a CoP has to deal with defining their own overall vision, formulating long term goals and targets on the short term. They have to formulate how to achieve those targets and create meaningful activities (reification). On the other hand a CoP has to deal with relations, trust, norms and values (participation). Reification and participation as design characteristic can provide indicators on which the CoP in Deventer can be evaluated. A lasting partnership means joining the CoP and staying. Weick provides us with a suitable model that enables us to do research and evaluate whether the CoP in Deventer is successful or not, Weick’s model of means convergence. To effectively ensure entrepreneurial learning the process in the CoP has to provide or enable actionoriented forms through Project-based activity, accompanied by reflection, with high emotional exposure (or cognitive affection) preferably caused by discontinuities to be suitable as a tool in entrepreneurial learning. Furthermore it should be accompanied by the right preconditions to work effectively and efficiently. The evaluation of the present CoP in Deventer is done by interviewing all participants at the end of the first year of the partnership. In a structured interview, based on literature studies, all participants were separately questioned
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Sustainability and economic growth—the integration and balance of social, environmental, and economic needs—is a salient concern for sustainable development and social well-being. By focusing on a sustainable innovation project, we explore how entrepreneurial ecosystems become sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems and investigate the interactions of entrepreneurial actors. We conducted an inductive, single-case study of a specific collaborative innovation project in the denim industry specialized in a specific geographic location. From our data, we show that the presence of four conditional aspects foster sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. These include sustainability orientation of actors, recognition of sustainable opportunities and resource mobilization, collaborative innovation of sustainability opportunities, and markets for sustainable products. We make two observations that contribute to the literature. First, we see that in a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurial experimentation is a highly interdependent and interactive process. Second, we see that recognition of sustainable opportunities is distributed among different actors in the ecosystem. Our findings also have implications for practitioners and policy-makers.
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Young people and generation Z bring new values and appreciations into the business world. Entrepreneurship is more appreciated, and plenty of countries try to encourage young people for entrepreneurial paths. Here the interest is to see what kind of entrepreneurial qualities are needed with young business students from different cultures. Entrepreneurial qualities needed were measured with Courage, Willingness to take Risks, Motivation, Self-Esteem, Optimism, Resilience, Persistence, Decisiveness, Innovativeness, Mentor to Help Me, Team to Build Up the Business, More Knowledge of Entrepreneurship, Good Business Idea. Data was analyzed with SPSS-program and results concerning entrepreneurship education are discussed at the end of the paper.
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Workshop summaryIn this workshop we work together with the participants towards concrete steps that educators could take to promote inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems. Nowadays, entrepreneurial ecosystems do not provide all entrepreneurs equal access to opportunities, resources, and support. Specifically, entrepreneurial ecosystems remain heavily male-dominated with women and other underrepresented groups facing challenges to access resources and grow their ventures due to a range of (institutional) barriers. This lack of inclusivity is problematic as it limits the release of untapped entrepreneurial potential necessary to maximize the societal and economic benefits of entrepreneurship. During this workshop we want to engage in discussions and propose actions to be undertaken by educators and HEI’s to foster the inclusivity of their institutional and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem in which they are embedded. By using the ‘inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem framework’, we want to raise awareness of this topic and share actionable ideas that participants can implement in their daily practices.
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The aim of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the entrepreneurial intention (EI) of university students. In order to do so, EI, individual entrepreneurial orientation, self-efficacy, perceived educational support, perceived relational support, perceived structural support, knowledge sharing, and gender were used within the proposed model, and the constructed hypotheses were evaluated using SEM. The findings of a survey of 268 students show that self-efficacy is the strongest influencer of students’ EI. The findings also show the mediating influence of self-efficacy on the environmental components. Additionally, male students are more likely than female students to have EI.
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This report contains an analysis of the AMP1’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. It aims to assess the external perceptions about the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Metropolitan Area of Porto and the key variables to work on. We systematically analyse the perception of Porto as entrepreneurial ecosystem in the AMP itself, based social media analysis and on interviews with entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in the Porto ecosystem. As a reference case, we also conducted a survey and interviews in Amsterdam. This helps to compare the situation in AMP with that in Amsterdam. The analysis helped to understand the current strengths and weaknesses of the AMP’s ecosystem, seen from the eyes of insiders and outsiders. In particular, we focused on two key features: internationalisation and the role of the wider region.
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Our paper investigates the microfoundations of sustainable entrepreneurship and aims to shed light on trade-offs made in decisions about social, ecological and economic sustainability. Balancing the three dimensions of sustainability (social, ecological and economic) inherently requires choices in which one dimension or another has less optimal outcomes. There is not much known about the rationale that sustainable entrepreneurs use for making such trade-offs. Thus, we ask how does entrepreneurial orientation affect decisions and trade-offs on sustainability impact? Our study is an exploratory, qualitative study of 24 sustainable entrepreneurs. We collected data about entrepreneurial orientation and sustainability trade-offs and held in-depth interviews with a subsample of six firms. We conducted a cluster analysis based on four entrepreneurial orientations (innovativeness, proactiveness, riskiness and futurity) and three sustainability trade-off dimensions (environmental, social and economic). From the findings, we derive a typology of three types of sustainable entrepreneurs: green-conflicted, humanitarian-oriented and holistically-oriented. We uncover salient characteristics and aspects of entrepreneurial orientation in relation to trade-off decisions. We find that the entrepreneurs accept slower economic growth or lower performance in order to maintain the integrity of their social and ecological principles and values.
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The purpose of this study was to investigate entrepreneurial intentions and cultural differences. The sample represents 1,110 business students from ten cultural clusters. The students completed a questionnaire that focussed on various dimensions of entrepreneurial intentions. Results indicated various statistically significant differences between the cultures. Country specific strategies related to enhancing entrepreneurship are discussed at the end of the paper.
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