Governments and non-governmental organisations commit substantial resources to a range of business support interventions for small firms and entrepreneurs. A substantive body of research has investigated such support interventions over recent decades. While important progress has been made, the literature remains fragmented, and critical questions and long-standing concerns remain unaddressed. This article develops a research agenda around access, design, and impacts, focusing the impacts dimension on questions of effectiveness. We also bring attention to novel themes around start-up mobility, artificial intelligence, and risk aversion, which we believe have important implications across the domains of business support research. Consequently, we advance ongoing business support debates and invite new inquiry that can inform the development of more effective and accessible business support interventions.
Governments have increasingly prioritised business support services and innovation intermediaries to stimulate economic growth, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. This article examines which firms access services from publicly funded digital innovation intermediaries, using data from European digital innovation hubs (EDIHs), to compare approximately 15,600 customer firms against the broader European business population across demographics, performance, capital structure and innovativeness. We find that EDIH customers tend to be larger, faster-growing and more active in high-tech, knowledge-intensive and ICT sectors, suggesting stronger pre-existing digital capabilities. These findings indicate that, while EDIHs support innovative and digitally mature firms, less advanced firms may be systematically underserved. Policymakers designing innovation intermediary initiatives should carefully consider the selection mechanisms that shape targeting, to ensure these programmes effectively reach their intended beneficiaries.
Engaging businesses in net-zero transitions is essential; yet, little research explores how governance frameworks shape the climate actions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We address this gap by examining how a multi-level governance (MLG) framework and its interventions support SME climate actions in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on 27 interviews and content analysis of policy documents, we analyse how Melbourne’s existing MLG arrangements influence climate initiatives within hospitality SMEs. Findings reveal a crowded landscape of government agencies and policy delivery mechanisms, frequently duplicated across governance levels, which generated confusion and distrust among SMEs. Additionally, governance actors often faced capacity constraints and could not adequately support SMEs in their climate actions. By analysing the complexities, nuances, and limitations of a four-tiered multi-level climate governance (MLCG) system in Melbourne, this study contributes to the iterative conceptualisation of MLCG and its intersection with SME climate actions. It also identifies five future research themes within MLCG frameworks that foster SME climate actions.
Immigrant entrepreneurs play a crucial role in economic and cultural vitality; yet, they face systemic barriers to social inclusion, manifested in equitable access to markets, services, and societal spaces of the host country. This study explores how immigrant entrepreneurs in Canada improve their social inclusion through strategic communication. Drawing on 24 in-depth interviews, the study used a theory-driven hybrid thematic analysis to examine communicative strategies across the three dimensions of social inclusion: markets, services, and societal spaces. The findings contribute to entrepreneurship and strategic communication scholarship by proposing a framework of Strategic Communication for Social Inclusion, positioning immigrant entrepreneurs as agentic communicators who use various strategies to overcome exclusion. We offer actionable insights for entrepreneurship scholars, ecosystem builders, and policymakers seeking to support inclusive business development.
This article examines how non-market value systems and agentic capabilities shape entrepreneurial opportunity engagement. Drawing on data from four remote Indigenous communities in Australia, we use the capabilities approach lens to examine opportunity engagement through the tension between the availability of choice options and the process through which choices are made. Our findings demonstrate that priorities such as collective wellbeing and ancestral stewardship often supersede conventional economic goals and demonstrate that an individual’s sense of agency is an integral part of a larger relational web. We argue that value systems are directly linked to agentic capabilities, and hence opportunity engagement is often culturally grounded and capability oriented. Our work contributes to entrepreneurship-as-process and human-development scholarship by shifting attention from opportunity availability to the dynamics of engagement, refusal and reshaping. We theorise that agentic capabilities are relationally constituted. By highlighting the interplay of context and relational values, this study extends theoretical understandings of entrepreneurial agency and offers novel insights towards inclusive, place-based entrepreneurship programmes that empower community stakeholders.
This editorial introduces the Special Issue on the darker dimensions of digital entrepreneurship. While digitalization has been widely associated with opportunity, empowerment, and innovation, the contributions in this issue demonstrate how it simultaneously produces constraints, asymmetries, and unintended consequences that complicate these optimistic narratives. Taken together, the five articles explore paradoxes within digital business models, consider the social and economic dimensions of platform-based work, and reflect on the evolving futures shaped by emerging technologies in entrepreneurial ecosystems. This highlights the need for more developed theoretical perspectives capable of capturing both the opportunities and the constraints inherent in digital entrepreneurship. Although the extent to which these darker dimensions are explicitly addressed varies across the articles, each offers important insights into the frictions and contradictions that characterise digitally mediated entrepreneurial activity. In bringing these perspectives together, this Special Issue advances a more critical understanding of digital entrepreneurship, moving beyond celebratory accounts to engage with its socio-technical complexities. The editorial situates the Special Issue within the broader literature, introduces the individual contributions, and outlines a future research agenda.
This article examines how the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine affected the investment and financing policies of small and medium-sized (SMEs) enterprises in Ukraine and neighbouring Russian border regions. Using a matched difference-in-differences framework with SMEs from Belgium and the United Kingdom as comparison firms, we document substantial within-firm changes during the war period. Ukrainian SMEs exhibit lower investment and higher cash holdings, a pattern consistent with precautionary liquidity motives. Short-term debt declined overall during the war period, while long-term debt increased modestly. This pattern is suggestive of a shift in debt maturity among firms that retained access to external finance. Trade credit relative to sales increased, whereas trade credit relative to assets declined, a pattern consistent with tighter supplier exposure despite ongoing obligations. Russian border-region SMEs show higher investment relative to the comparison group and experienced a contraction in trade credit relative to assets, pointing to heterogeneous adjustment patterns across institutional contexts. Older and medium-sized firms show stronger investment adjustment and maturity shifts. Younger and smaller firms rely more on short-term liquidity management and experience sharper contractions in trade credit. JEL classification: G32; D74.
This article explores the responses of women digital entrepreneurs to overlapping social and digital contexts whilst building legitimacy. Using qualitative empirical analysis of 21 in-depth interviews with women digital entrepreneurs in Nigeria, the findings reveal the complex process of legitimacy building. Far from reducing gendered structural barriers, the digital context overlaps with the social context. This overlap is characterised by paradoxical tensions and constraints. Women digital entrepreneurs respond to these by adopting different and multi-faceted legitimation practices, enacting what we propose to call eclectic legitimation work. This article makes two contributions to the understanding of women digital entrepreneurship: first, building on advances from the cyberfeminist perspective, we draw on paradox theory to reframe women digital entrepreneurship as inherently paradoxical in the way it is experienced and navigated by women in their everyday lives as digital entrepreneurs in overlapping contexts. Second, we engage with the under-explored aspect of legitimacy building in women’s digital entrepreneurship revealing the different facets of legitimation work and the different sets of responses adopted by suchwomen; this underpins our conceptualisation of the eclectic legitimation work they undertake to navigate these tensions and build legitimacy.
This article examines the role of business support in addressing the gender-based performance gap among entrepreneurs and whether entrepreneurial legacy from family business backgrounds enhances the effectiveness of such support. Drawing on imprinting theory, we theorise that female entrepreneurs with an entrepreneurial legacy have a greater capacity to leverage formal business support, thereby reducing the gender-based performance gap. Using data on 20,369 U.S. entrepreneurs, we find that female entrepreneurs report significantly lower venture performance than male entrepreneurs and that formal business support alone does not reduce this gap. Notably, entrepreneurial legacy reduces the gender-based performance gap and substantially enhances the effectiveness of formal business support in further narrowing this gap. Our results contextualise the effectiveness of support programmes in addressing gender-based disparities, suggesting that consideration of the entrepreneur’s background can enable them to benefit from support programmes. We contribute to female entrepreneurship and business support literature and offer practical recommendations.
“Failing fast” features prominently in entrepreneurship discourse as a mechanism for reallocating resources and strengthening ecosystem resilience. However, existing research has yet to explain how entrepreneurs decide when to terminate an unviable venture, as failure studies remain focused on individual biases, while ecosystem studies largely overlook the early failure phase. Addressing this gap, this study examines how social, economic, and cultural dynamics within Amsterdam’s entrepreneurial ecosystem shape entrepreneurs’ decisions to discontinue their ventures. While stakeholders adopt a fast-failure rhetoric and entrepreneur-centred support framing to maintain legitimacy, their practices are driven by diverse institutional interests, thereby creating conditions that prolong failing ventures rather than enabling timely exit. These insights shift the locus of entrepreneurial failure from individual decision-making to systemic conditions and challenge the dominant view of ecosystems as entrepreneur-centric, showing instead that they primarily serve stakeholder interests, rendering them in effect Un trepreneurial ecosystems.
This article examines the dynamics of business angel (BA) reinvestment intentions, addressing a critical gap in the entrepreneurial finance literature. Drawing on an ‘Investment Model’ (IM), we examine how BA satisfaction, perception of quality alternative financial investments, and perceived investment size affect the commitment of BAs towards reinvesting in firms they initially funded. Findings from a sample of 124 individual BAs reveal that while BA satisfaction positively influences commitment, it does not directly increase reinvestment intentions; rather, commitment acts as the primary mediator in reinvestment intentions.Interestingly, we noted that BA sense of commitment to an invested firm is tempered by the availability of other attractive investment options, but this does not necessarily deter reinvestment in the firm. Additionally, we observed that investment size as perceived by BAs plays a moderating role, intensifying the effects of satisfaction on commitment and mitigating the negative impact of perceived quality of alternative financial investments on commitment and reinvestment decisions. Such findings offer practical insights for entrepreneurs seeking to cultivate stronger relationships with BAs. The results provide a theoretical extension of IM, indicating that it may have different effects in differing contexts.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are critical to achieving net-zero targets but remain under-engaged in sustainability support programmes. Barriers such as information overload, misaligned offers, and low trust in formal providers limit uptake, while informal, peer-based exchanges are often overlooked. Drawing on a comprehensive set of 47 interviews and two focus groups with UK SMEs and support actors, this study examines how SMEs navigate sustainability-oriented (government-funded) business support. Integrating Social Exchange Theory (SET) with the notion of Sustainable Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (SEE), we show that engagement is shaped by trust, reciprocity, perceived benefits, and power dynamics across ecosystem actors, rather than simply by the availability of resources. Consequently, we propose an exchange-based ecosystem model to explain how knowledge flows within multi-actor sustainability ecosystems, contributing to the SME business support literature by: (1) unpacking the micro-processes inherent in relational engagement; (2) fusing SET and SEE to offer a multi-level lens on SME engagement; and (3) reframing support as a relational exchange problem rather than simply an offer problem. Policy implications include investing in trusted intermediaries, designing flexible and context-sensitive support, and leveraging informal networks to enhance SME sustainability uptake.
In this article, we evaluate the gendered implications of the expansion of part-time self-employment (PTSE) for women who use this option as a form of flexible working. Using panel data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey, we confirm that unsurprisingly, women dominate PTSE, given it enables them to combine household work and income generation. However, we also find that PTSE incurs a significant penalty compared to the incomes of both men and women in full-time self-employment or waged work. Relatedly, in households with women in PTSE, there is also a greater dependency upon state welfare benefits to supplement low incomes. Theoretically, we contribute to current debates by conceptualising this evidence as the ‘housewifization’ of PTSE: a feminised form of work afforded low visibility, value and status leading to greater precarity and poverty, the detriment of which is camouflaged by the socio-cultural positivity attributed to entrepreneurship in the contemporary era.
This article examines Instagram as an external enabler of social media entrepreneurship. Adopting a process-oriented lens, we explore how and when enabling mechanisms are activated to enhance outcomes while also causing significant challenges for entrepreneurs. A flexible pattern matching analysis of 15 case studies reveals that while Instagram embodies many of the enabling mechanisms proposed by the external enabler (EE) framework, venture triggering is often unintentional and serendipitous, challenging agent-centric assumptions. We identify 'market engagement' and 'resource collaboration' as novel emergent mechanisms that shape markets and products while simultaneously creating tensions for entrepreneurs through increased relational and emotional demands, challenges to integrity, and anticipated loss of control over their ventures. This article extends the EE framework by defining these new mechanisms and contributing a process-oriented perspective linking enabling forces directly to the 'dark side' of social media entrepreneurship, illustrating how the drivers of success are inextricably linked to detrimental consequences.
This article explores spousal lived experiences in the broad context of entrepreneurial venture failure, focusing on their emotions, the situations that evoked them and how they were managed. We highlight that there is limited qualitative research on emotions in entrepreneurship, and much of this is focused on the lone entrepreneur. We shift this focus to include an understanding of spousal emotions. Our exploratory inductive study of 13 spouses is critical to building our understanding of entrepreneurship and failure from a relational and socially embedded perspective. Our study illustrates the adaptive functions of distinct emotional responses in shaping how spouses navigate the complexities of loss and transformation following entrepreneurial failure. We articulate the theoretical contributions and delineate the practical implications derived from these findings.
In this article, we examine the experiences of women digital entrepreneurs in navigating anticipated and experienced bias in venture capital and digital entrepreneurship ecosystems. Where prior research has focused primarily on evaluator-side bias and structural barriers, we develop the construct of anticipated bias as a socially produced cognitive filter, demonstrating how expectations of bias circulated through media, peer narratives, and academic discourse shape women's interpretations of interactions with investors and ecosystem actors. Anticipated and experienced bias interact recursively, forming a cyclical process that validates expectations and informs entrepreneurial behaviours. By theorising this recursive loop, we apply stigma consciousness theory to women digital entrepreneurship and suggest lower venture capital uptake is a strategic response to constraint rather than an ambition deficit. Providing empirically grounded accounts from women-founded startups, we counter celebratory narratives portraying digitalisation as a levelling force. Instead, we show how male-centred prototype and routinised practices of othering produce layered role incongruity, positioning women as outsiders.
While entrepreneurial failure (EF) research has focused predominantly on entrepreneurs, the organisational-level responses of entrepreneurial support organisations (ESOs) remain underexplored, creating a critical gap in understanding how support structures adapt to EF. This gap may hinder the evolution of ESOs and limit the potential of university spin-off (USO) creation. Drawing on 52 semi-structured interviews with ESO key informants from nine European countries, this study examines how ESOs adapt to EF. We (1) identify four distinct perceptual ambiguities of EF in ESOs (i.e. typological, temporal, causational and effectual) and (2) document 16 organisational adaptation mechanisms that ESOs implement across six key organisational areas (i.e. offering, staffing, sourcing and selection, network, branding and funding). By showing how ESOs adapt their support practices to perceptual ambiguities of EF, this study deepens understanding of organisational-level responses triggered by EF and advances organisational adaptation theory in university-related, early-stage support contexts.
