Sustainable Entrepreneurship

There has been more interest in sustainability in an entrepreneurship setting. This has been the result of the perceived positive social benefits stemming from sustainable entrepreneurship. One of the fascinating areas of research about sustainable entrepreneurship is to understand how it has changed the nature of business. This will help provide policy insights to encourage more research into sustainable entrepreneurship. Traditionally entrepreneurship was considered purely a commercial activity, but this has changed with the advent of interest in social issues. This chapter furthers our understanding about the nature of sustainable entrepreneurship by providing an overview of emerging research trends. Important topics are discussed in a way that preempts the following chapters in the book.

Entrepreneurship research in Africa has not received much attention from scholars in the past. Therefore, we contribute to this body of knowledge from the perspective of African developing countries. We demonstrate that most of the African developing countries have not yet conducted Global Entrepreneurship Monitor to study entrepreneurship in their country, and we show that the existing datasets are very limited. Utilising the available data, we study entrepreneurial activity and its determinants on a sample of 12 African countries over the years 2001–2016. Using the data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we show that the overall rate of entrepreneurship is higher compared to Europe (on average 31%). Utilising other data from the World Bank, Transparency International and Heritage Foundation, we estimate multivariate regression models to study determinants of early-stage entrepreneurial activity. Although the number of available observations limits our results, we find some empirical evidence showing the importance of GDP per capita, unemployment rate, economic freedom index, corruption perceptions and perceived opportunities as factors influencing the early-stage level of entrepreneurial activity. Our study also offers several directions for future research, regarding both research methods and other potential variables of interest.

The diversity of migration to Australia today and the shift to skilled migration render necessity-driven entrepreneurship an incomplete explanation of the motivations behind new patterns in immigrant entrepreneurship. This chapter presents the findings of a mixed-method comparative case study of entrepreneurial motivation amongst immigrant entrepreneurs in Australia. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were utilised, including face-to-face interviews, thematic coding and descriptive statistics. The study found a preference for opportunity-driven entrepreneurship amongst participants in the study. Other factors included prior entrepreneurial experience, the desire for autonomy and opportunity recognition in the market and level of education. The four small business cases presented found a combination of skilled migration background, cultural and social capital and cultural values contributed to the entrepreneurs’ ability to identify opportunities. While one business catered to their co-ethnics as clientele, others hired their co-ethnics, another business utilised their cultural capital to market cuisine to a broader audience and, lastly, a cultural orientation to business risk and self-employment was identified. The findings of the comparative case study shed light on the black box of entrepreneurial motivation and map a shift in the pattern of immigrant entrepreneurship in Australia from necessity- to opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. New policy initiatives should identify how to serve and support immigrant entrepreneurs more effectively to start up their own businesses. This chapter observes a mindset change amongst skilled immigrant entrepreneurs and recommends strategies to facilitate immigrant entrepreneurship, build innovation and capitalise on diversity.

This paper explores the role of gender in new technology-based firms creation and whether this role differs across developed and emerging countries. By using a sample of 244,471 individuals in 70 countries, the results firstly show a negative relationship between being a woman and setting up a technology entrepreneurial initiative, regardless the stage of the country’s economic development. Secondly, in less-developed countries, there is a positive effect of being a woman on starting non-technology entrepreneurship. Thirdly, in emerging countries, being a woman has an even greater negative effect on technology entrepreneurship than it has in developed countries.

This paper examines ethnic entrepreneurship through a study of Maghrebian entrepreneurs in Canada. The entrepreneurship and marketing literature that focuses on the role of ethnic entrepreneurs in creating sustainable communities is discussed. The methodology is a qualitative study that seeks to examine how does marketing translate into ethnic enterprises in Montreal. The findings have important implications for ethnic entrepreneurship and sustainable economic development.

In order to diminish the shadow economy as an important policy goal in EU countries, it is necessary to be aware of the magnitude and development of the shadow economy, offering to governments the opportunity to elaborate targeted policy measures meant to either discourage shadow economic activities or incentivize their conversion into official ones.

The focus of the paper lies on the “driving forces” of the development of the Romanian shadow economy providing also the most recent estimation of the dynamics and magnitude of the Romanian informal economy for the period 2000–2015. The MIMIC model was used taking into account multiple causes and multiple indicators of the Romanian shadow economy.

The empirical results revealed that the main driving forces are unemployment, regulatory quality, self-employment, and indirect taxation. The size of the Romanian shadow economy had decreased until 2008, reaching the value of about 27.8% of official GDP. During the economic crisis, a slow increase of the shadow economy took place, while for the last quarters, a slow decrease can be observed.

This ‘critical realist’ research paper is an evaluation of collaborative projects between pharmaceutical companies and the British National Health Service (NHS). There is a strong tendency for NHS organisations to regard this industry with considerable caution; nonetheless, the evidence crafted through this undertaking has revealed an environment that is potentially well predisposed towards collaborative partnership. The primary focus of this evaluation is on a single organisation and how this company delivers, and seeks to deliver, Joint Working initiatives. Joint Working represents the most formalised and transparent mechanism for cooperation between the industry and the NHS. The specific aim of this research was to evaluate the level of capability that a specific organisation ‘desires’ to deliver these types of initiatives and the degree to which it possesses the competencies to deliver them. The findings have been developed employing a mixed method approach using secondary data analysis, case studies and a survey.

Nascent entrepreneurs have their own business for several reasons, but one can easily distinguish their motivations in two types: the willingness to be an entrepreneur and the need to be one. Finding a good opportunity in the market is not the only way to start a business; entrepreneurs also start a business because there is no better or no other choice to avoid unemployment (e.g., Evans and Leighton, Small Business Economics 2:319–330, 1990; Masuda, Small Business Economics 26:227–240, 2006). The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor divides entrepreneurs’ motivations in two ways: opportunity and necessity. This research analyzes the motivations of nascent entrepreneurs; more specifically, it identifies the main motivations of entrepreneurs across different countries, presenting the characteristics that most influence the motivations of the individuals either by necessity or opportunity; and finally, it clusters countries in terms of entrepreneurship types and characterizes them. The literature suggests that entrepreneurs by opportunity are strongly associated with developed countries. Therefore presenting a set of characteristics that influences these motivations allows a greater understanding of the entrepreneurship process, where the motivation and the process that influence the business decision-making of individuals are critical. Our results show that motivations for entrepreneurship are strongly correlated with the sociodemographic characteristics of the entrepreneur, e.g., age, education, and family income. Our study also shows that entrepreneurship by opportunity does not necessarily happen in developed countries. In contrast, it should be noted that entrepreneurs by necessity do not seek to start an innovative business, nor do they perceive good opportunities in their context; nevertheless they decide to become entrepreneurs as a way to overcome the lack of employment opportunities, suggesting that they seek to avoid possible risks.