Alan L. Carsrud

Understanding and Measuring Entrepreneurial Leadership Style

Although entrepreneurial leadership is embraced in the popular press and in classrooms, academic knowledge remains underdeveloped. We develop the construct of entrepreneurial leadership and argue that it involves influencing and directing the performance of group members toward achieving those organizational goals that involve recognizing and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. We discuss environmental, organizational, and follower‐specific contingencies that may influence the success of entrepreneurial leadership, and we test the reliability and validity of an empirical measure for this construct (the scale). Using this novel measurement tool, we find that entrepreneurial leadership is more prevalent among founder‐leaders than nonfounder leaders, which indicates construct validity.

Understanding Family Business : Undiscovered Approaches, Unique perspectives, and neglected Topics

Understanding Family Business : Undiscovered Approaches, Unique perspectives, and neglected Topics

Challenging the myths of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship studies started out as a young field, one where a mix of economists, psychologists, geographers and the occasional anthropologist came together to study the wonder and weirdness that is entrepreneurship, in a wide range of fashions and with few a priori assumptions to hold it back. Today, some of this eclecticism lives on in the field, but at the same time we have seen that the field has matured and its popularity has led to the field becoming increasingly institutionalized – and thereby beset by an increasing number of assumptions, even myths. Consequently, this special issue queries some of the assumptions and potential myths that flourish in the field, inquiring critically into the constitution of entrepreneurship as a field of research – all in order to develop the same. Without occasions where a field can question even its most deeply held beliefs, we are at risk of becoming ideologically rather than analytically constituted, which is why we in this special issue wanted to create a space for the kind of critical yet creative play that e.g. Sarasvathy (2004) has encourages the field to engage with.

Exploring the role of Ba in family business context

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the family business succession process using Nonakas theory of knowledge creation and conceptualisation of a knowledge‐creating place, Ba to enhance ones understanding of critical managerial challenges in family business succession.Design/methodology/approach – Based on literature review, Nonakas theory of knowledge creation and knowledge‐creating space is applied to the family business succession process.Findings – Through literature review and synthesis thereof the paper concludes that Nonakas theory of knowledge creation is a highly valid framework for analyzing and supporting the family business succession process. The paper proposes that Ba is a perception of a place – the family firm – and a shared purpose among family members in that firm. It is posited that the absence of Ba can be a significant barrier to a family firm adopting a successful succession process. Creating a Ba is essential for family firms to survive.Research limitations/implicat...

Family Firms, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development

Family firms are usually seen as the cradle of entrepreneurship, as they are the best providers of the entrepreneurial business capital. A growing literature shows that family firms are extremely well-placed to assist economic growth in many activities in the private sectors, as they combine a number of unique sociological and economic characteristics that make them extremely important in the early stage of the growth of the firm. However, the way in which economic development produces changes in dominant family patterns has been advanced much more often than the view that family patterns can affect economic development. Therefore, much research is needed to make family firms a central focus in the theoretical and academic research and a crucial issue at the core of the political agenda.

Women-owned family businesses in transitional economies: key influences on firm innovativeness and sustainability

This research presents an examination of familial influence on strategic entrepreneurial behaviors within a transitional economic context. Utilizing a large sample of women-led family businesses, the study investigates the relationships between risk-taking propensity, entrepreneurial intensity, and opportunity recognition of the entrepreneur and the innovative orientation of the firm and sustainability. A model of the influences on innovativeness and sustainability in family firms is developed, and the potential contribution of the present study is the identification of constructs that facilitate these strategic outcomes and behaviors that drive growth. The degree to which family firms can create new products, services, and processes that add value to their marketplace can strongly influence their sustainability, especially in an emerging economy.

COGNITIVE MAPS AND PERCEPTIONS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL GROWTH: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY IN THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURS, CORPORATE MANAGERS, AND STUDENTS

This paper reports on a comparative quasi-experiment of how perceptions of entrepreneurial growth strategies differ between students, managers and technology entrepreneurs. The differences in perceptions as to what critical factors drive three strategies: no growth, market share growth and annual profit growth across to stages: start-up and take-off are measured. The ranks of the critical success factors are the dependent measures and the strategies and the phases the independent variables. Results show that experience impacts the ability to distinguish between strategies. Results also show that the perceptions of the critical success factors significantly differ between the groups. Hence even experience will yield quite different cognitive maps.

THE ROLE OF PARTNERSHIPS ON THE LEGAL STRUCTURE AND LOCATION CHOICE OF NASCENT SOCIAL VENTURES

Social ventures are organized as nonprofit, for-profit or hybrid organizations whose primary purpose is to address unmet social needs and create social value. Partnerships are one of the key strategies employed by social ventures to gain resources. This study focuses on evaluating the role of partnerships on nascent social ventures participating in business plan competitions. The results suggest that partnerships are more important for nonprofit and hybrid social ventures than for for-profit social ventures. Findings also suggest that partnerships are more essential for social ventures operating in developing regions such as Africa, Asia and Latin America where institutional constraints are greater than in the United States or Canada. This study provides some empirical insight into how partnerships impact nascent social ventures operating with distinct legal structures and in different locations of operation.

Understanding the Myth of High Growth Firms

In this volume, the authors challenge some long held assumptions about entrepreneurial firms held by academics, public policy makers, investors and even entrepreneurs themselves. The first is assumption is that growth is what really differentiates an entrepreneurial firm from a small business. The second is that growth is always good. Third, if growth is rapid, and/or high growth, it is even better. Drawing from a fresh review of the literature, their own primary research and experience in entrepreneurial ventures, the authors argue that the relationship between growth and firm performance is, in fact, inconclusive.

Motivations Matter in Entrepreneurial Behavior: Depends on the Context

Since the original chapter on entrepreneurial motivation by Carsrud et al. (2009), we have seen dozens of citations to the work and to a follow-up article (Carsrud and Brannback 2011) in various conference papers and published research articles. We are gratified to see the motivation of entrepreneurs regaining some of the attention of researchers (Shepherd et al. 2015). In this update to the chapter, we are going to focus on some of the work, which we feel has the most promise of influencing the future direction of research on entrepreneurial motivation. We also have discussed motivations in an earlier update in this volume on a contextual model for entrepreneurial intentions. These specifically focused on our views on the role of motivations and goal setting with respect to intentions. In this update, we will expand on that and other issues, which we feel deserve attention.