Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship

This study analyzes the effects of national cultural practices on gender gaps in entrepreneurial entry in developing countries. We conducted a multilevel analysis based on Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) data from 22 countries for 2013–2017. Our findings suggest that while women are less likely than men to create a new business, they are much less likely to enter opportunity-based entrepreneurship. Moreover, we find that cultural practices of gender egalitarianism have a positive moderating effect on gender gaps when it comes to entry into both total and opportunity-based entrepreneurship. By contrast, our results show that cultural practices of assertiveness and power distance increase gender gaps in entry into both total and opportunity-based entrepreneurship. Policy makers should implement policies that promote women’s access to the necessary resources and improve the visibility of successful female entrepreneurs to change the perception of entrepreneurship as a masculine activity.

The widespread recognition of new business formation as a facilitator of economic development has generated interest in examining its relevant determinants. In this paper, a rudimentary framework is proposed and empirically tested in which undervaluation of the real exchange rate incentivizes the establishment of new businesses. The goal of the paper is to establish the effect of real exchange rate undervaluation on the formation of new businesses. Using a broad sample of 40 developing countries observed between 2010 and 2018, results from a fixed effects Poisson model finds the evidence supportive of our hypothesis. The results particularly confirm a positive and sizeable effect of real exchange rate undervaluation on the number of newly registered businesses. Additionally, we find this positive effect stronger in countries with reliable energy, human capital, access to finance and efficient transport systems. These findings suggest that exchange rate policies that maintain undervalued exchange rates have an important bearing on business start-ups in developing countries and more so when accompanied by policy efforts to improve human capital, access to finance, efficient transport systems and the supply of reliable energy.

We analyze the effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on the demand for new loans across a nationally representative sample of over 10,000 firms in 45 countries. Loan demand decreases in response to the COVID-19 outbreak; however, this effect is heterogeneous across firms and countries. Small firms increase the demand for new loans whereas firms in economically more developed countries with better institutions make less loan applications following the start of the pandemic. Small firms face higher rejection rates resulting in less reliance on bank loans as a source of financing cash flow shortages. The implications of these findings together with future research directions are discussed.

Although informal entrepreneurship has attracted attention from entrepreneurship scholars, it remains under-theorized. This systematic review critically analyses, evaluates and integrates data on informal entrepreneurship gathered from studies published in eight (8) leading entrepreneurship journals. Although this form of entrepreneurship is practiced across the globe, it is generally perceived as an activity occurring in the peripheries of mainstream economics and inferior to formal entrepreneurship. This review develops essential knowledge for entrepreneurship research by theorizing informal entrepreneurship as a potent process in business formation and it establishes a future research agenda.

Research on social entrepreneurship (SE) has increased significantly over the past ten years, with growing interest in the ecosystems that support initiatives to address social problems with innovative solutions. Such ecosystems can facilitate solutions to society’s wicked problems on a much larger scale. However, there is a lack of research on the nature of such ecosystems, the essential players in them and the factors driving their development and sustainability. The current study aims to fulfill this research gap. Based on a systematic literature review, the study analyzes 43 peer-reviewed papers related to SE ecosystems and SE efforts that address environmental problems. It is found that there are at least 24 patterns/ types of SE ecosystems classified into five general groups. Moreover, a diverse set of factors support SE ecosystems and facilitate them to thrive faster and more sustainably. These ecosystems often develop around particular social problems. Using environmental challenges as an example, four groups of significant environmental problems solved by SE ecosystems and SE are identified. The key findings are presented as a comprehensive study framework, which is the basis for a recommended research agenda.

This study aims to understand performance of social enterprises and assess the most influential factors affecting this performance based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The study extracted data (articles) from three prominent databases (Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar). Four main determinant groups of performance are identified, namely, technology and innovation, investment considerations, overall organization orientation and a general category of other influential factors. The results indicate that fiscal, environmental, social contexts, creative methods and employee contributions have a major influence on the performance of social enterprises. It was also revealed that strategic and business orientation has proven to be a significant contributor as well. The findings contribute to social entrepreneurship literature in terms of performance improvement of hybrid enterprises. Future research suggestions are provided based on the findings.

Discussions on entrepreneurial ecosystems have been a relatively recent addition to the corpus of entrepreneurship literature and have focused heavily on fostering aggressive growth, often technology-based, ventures. Here, we tune the ecosystem model to fit the non-technologically innovative entrepreneurial spaces of emerging economies. We propose a new framework for viewing the cultural effect on entrepreneurship through interactions between the individual entrepreneur’s identity, and networks within specific infrastructural and institutional regimes wrought by predominant culture. In applying the model to mid-twentieth century Bangladesh, we find a culturally predominant negative perception of entrepreneurial activity. We show this contributed to the growth of certain types of entrepreneurship in the country that were rife with (i) higher risk-tolerant behavior among entrepreneurs and (ii) the rise of entrepreneurs having strong links with specific social networks, which together led to an increase in institutional decay and the rise of corruption.