Growth has been described as the essence of entrepreneurship. Organizational ecologists theorize an inevitable progression from growth through maturity, revival, and eventually decline. During the organizational life cycle entrepreneurs choose between growth, stability, or retrenchment strategies to overcome deteriorating trends in performance. Using survey data, this study tests a contingency ...

Objectives The study considers how online home-based businesses offer opportunities for ethnic entrepreneurs to ‘break out’ of the traditional highly competitive and low margin sectors they are often associated with. Prior Work Previous studies have found a positive association between ethnic minorities high levels of entrepreneurship (Levie, 2007) and between home computer use and entrepreneur...

This paper outlines the development of a high-tech industrial cluster through the efforts of entrepreneurs who adapted to both constructive crises and new opportunities, creating the factors and conditions that facilitated their business interests. We examine the initial factors influencing individual decisions to become entrepreneurs and how external factors influence the formation and locatio...

Many scholars see entrepreneurs as action-oriented individuals who use rules of thumb and other mental heuristics to make decisions, but who do little systematic planning and analysis. We argue that what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful entrepreneurs is precisely that the former vary their decisionmaking styles, sometimes relying on heuristics and sometimes relying on systematic analy...

Mobile phone is one of a few technologies in the world that have created immediate and widespread of an impact mobile phones. The impact of the mobile technology for development has been seen from many different perspectives, but few empirical studies have investigates the technology in relation to human development perspectives and in particular Capability Approach. The present study fills thi...

Does entrepreneurial optimism affect the credit availability to small firms and their cost of financing? Using a large sample of U.S. small businesses and a new measure of optimism, we find that higher levels of optimism result in significantly higher leverage. In addition, we find that firms with optimistic entrepreneurs tend to use more short-term debt. We do not find evidence that banks curt...

We study entrepreneurs’ start-up financing from banks and local financiers. An informal network, whose membership cannot be observed by outsiders, conveys the good signals it gets about the hidden types of network entrepreneurs to local financiers, which are then reflected in different loan terms. We show that there are winners and losers as a result of the network even among its members. Becau...

Economic profit is produced by entrepreneurs, those special individuals able to detect and seize as yet unexploited market opportunities. In general capitalist firms manage to deliver positive profits even in the most competitive environments. They can do so thanks to internal entrepreneurs, a subset of their employees able to drive change and develop innovation in the workplace. This paper arg...

The purpose of this article is to empirically analyze how different forms of proximity influence interactive learning and ease of knowledge transfer among entrepreneurs, in order to advance the knowledge-based theory of clusters. Making use of ego-network data, gathered among entrepreneurs from the Amsterdam IT and new media-cluster and analyzed using structural equation modeling, the data lead...

In a large sample of entrepreneurs, 2D:4D (second-to-fourth digit) ratio and managerial performance are studied. Entrepreneurs with lower ratio manage larger firms, manage larger firms when acquire control and experience faster average growth. Firms run by high prenatal testosterone entrepreneurs have lower profitability as measured by return on assets and return on sales. Prenatal testosterone...