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Small Business and Entrepreneurship: Contextualizing Research

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (23 September 2023) | Viewed by 2577

Special Issue Editors

Institute of Sociology, University in Klagenfurt, 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria
Interests: society and economy; self-employment; history of economic thought; sociology, management and economics; consumption and life-styles; work and occupation; social stratification; labour markets
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Institute of Innovation Management, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria
Interests: entrepreneurship; innovation; technology management; business model innovation; quantitative research methods
Institute of Sociology, University of Klagenfurt, 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria
Interests: SME research; entrepreneurship; corporate governance; innovation management; business model; industrial management; business administration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue takes up the topic of small business(es) and entrepreneurship in a contextualizing perspective related to sustainability. We are searching for different aspects of this contextualizing perspective by employing historical, sociological, economic, psychological, geographical and other lenses. As diverse as the faces of entrepreneurship are the sustainability aspects in terms of the sizes of business enterprises, their sectors and specific activities as well as businesses run by an individual or by a team with or without further employees (Bögenhold 2019 a). In addition, varying philosophies regarding pursuing business as well as in combination with various intentions and preferences in life (Parastuty and Bögenhold 2019), ambitions or lack of ambitions regarding growth, and historical and geographical variations (Breitenecker et al. 2017, Breitenecker and Harms 2010) of those factors complement this view. That is how diverse small businesses, their forms of entrepreneurship and their integration of and impact on sustainability are.

Different topic boxes (family, gender, social networks, migration, ethnicity, higher education, technology, agriculture etc.) create specific contexts (Hytti 2010) which address and reflect the different phenomena in the small business sectors (Baker and Welter 2018, Welter and Baker 2021). One particular interest is the discussion of specific contexts of individual careers leading to self-employment and their connectedness to different entrepreneurial opportunities (Davidsson 2015). In other words, we call for a specific discussion on the "how, why, when and where" (Shane and Venkataraman 2000) self-employment, new occupational settings, and new organizations (Aldrich 2009) integrate or support sustainability in their activities. Further, we are interested in questions concerning how the actors as human agents are socially embedded to partners and/or family contexts and linked to their health relations and aspects of well-being, as it is a focus on social variables defining the actors (religion, migration careers, education patterns, etc.) (Bögenhold 2019 b). Finally, this special issue addresses characteristics of small businesses and entrepreneurial activities in different socioeconomic fields, starting with the integration of new digital markets and creative sectors to more traditional sectors like agriculture or fishery.

We welcome all kinds of papers either with conceptual focus, literature reviews articles and empirical studies. In short, the special issue tries to collect papers linked to the following topics:

  • Roads to small business depending upon different specific contextual factors and backgrounds
  • Sequences of social processes towards self-employment
  • Occupational steps towards small business and entrepreneurship combined with different settings in other forms of employment (hybrids)
  • Specifications of the discussion above with specification upon migration, gender or regions
  • Implications of contextual conditions in small businesses for an adequate understanding of entrepreneurship, its nature and conceptual understanding
  • Business model innovation and context based factors influencing or supporting it

Papers will be reviewed immediately after they are submitted but must be submitted at the latest by November 30, 2022.

Reference:

Audretsch DB, Lehmann EE, Schenkenhofer J. A (2021) Context-Choice Model of Niche Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice,45(5), 1276-1303

Aldrich, H. (2009). Lost in space, out of time: Why and how we should study organizations comparatively. In: King, B., Felin, T. and Whetten, D. (Eds.) Studying Differences between Organizations: Comparative Approaches to Organizational Research (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 26, Emerald Group, 21-44.

Baker, T., Welter, F. (2018). Contextual Entrepreneurship. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship, 14(4), 3-55.

Bögenhold, D. (2019 a). Changing Ideas and Contours of Entrepreneurship in the History of Thought: On the Fluidity and Indefiniteness of a Term. International Review of Entrepreneurship, 17(2), 145-168.

Bögenhold, D. (2019 b). From Hybrid Entrepreneurs to Entrepreneurial Billionaires: Observations on the Socioeconomic Heterogeneity of Self-employment. American Behavioral Scientist, 63(2), 129-146.

Breitenecker, R. J., & Harms, R. (2010). Dealing with spatial heterogeneity in entrepreneurship research. Organizational Research Methods, 13(1), 176-191.

Breitenecker, R. J., Harms, R., Weyh, A., Maresch, D., & Kraus, S. (2017). When the difference makes a difference–the regional embeddedness of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 29(1-2), 71-93.

Davidsson, P. (2015). Entrepreneurial Opportunities and the Entrepreneurship Nexus: A Reconceptualization. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(5), 674-695.

Dawson, C., & Henley, A. (2012). “Push” versus “pull” entrepreneurship: An ambiguous distinction? International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 18(6), 697–719.

Hytti, U. (2010). Contextualizing entrepreneurship in the boundaryless career. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 25(1), 64–81.

Parastuty, Z., Bögenhold, D. (2019). Paving the Way for Self-Employment: Does Society Matter? Sustainability, 11, 747. 1-16.

Shane, S., Venkataraman, V. (2000). The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 217-226.

Welter F, Baker T. (2021) Moving Contexts Onto New Roads: Clues From Other Disciplines. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 45(5), 1154-1175

Inquiries may be directed to dieter.boegenhold@aau.at; zulaicha.parastuty@aau.at; or robert.breitenecker@jku.at

Prof. Dr. Dieter Bögenhold
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Breitenecker
Dr. Zulaicha Parastuty
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • self-employment
  • small business
  • contextual entrepreneurship

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 1186 KiB  
Article
Sustained Social Entrepreneurship: The Moderating Roles of Prior Experience and Networking Ability
by Happiness Ozioma Obi-Anike, Chikodili Nkiruka Okafor, Cross Ogohi Daniel, Ifeoma Joanes Onodugo, Wilfred I. Ukpere and Ben Etim Udoh
Sustainability 2022, 14(21), 13702; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142113702 - 22 Oct 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1500
Abstract
The intention to set up social ventures remains an unpopular choice for intending entrepreneurs due to its obvious limitations of resource constraints. Yet it remains a vital means of making social goods available to disadvantaged people, especially in developing countries. Our study aims [...] Read more.
The intention to set up social ventures remains an unpopular choice for intending entrepreneurs due to its obvious limitations of resource constraints. Yet it remains a vital means of making social goods available to disadvantaged people, especially in developing countries. Our study aims to investigate how prior experience and networking ability interacts with empathy, moral obligation, self-efficacy, and social support to induce social entrepreneurial intentions in budding entrepreneurs in Nigeria. Using simultaneous linear regression, we analyzed data from a collection of 315 respondents enrolled in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC)—a one-year mandatory national service scheme for graduates of higher institutions who are on the verge of making critical career choices. Our findings show that the main effects were statistically significant, while networking ability, more than prior experience, moderated the main effects. Conclusively, budding entrepreneurs need to hone their networking skills in order to exploit their social networks and complement the benefits of prior experiences as they contemplate social entrepreneurship. Future investigations can focus on determining how other environmental factors such as government/institutional support, technological adoption, and infrastructure would affect social entrepreneurial intentions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Small Business and Entrepreneurship: Contextualizing Research)
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