Husbands are often presumed to hold back women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, we challenge this frequently voiced preconception and argue that some husbands provide resources to their wives' business development. Building on both social role theory and rational resource allocation theory, we consider the unique context of sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting husbands' influence consists of two dimensions: Husbands as constraints and husbands as resource providers for their wives' businesses. The two dimensions result in four profiles of husbands that are hypothesized to differentially predict women entrepreneurs' business success. Based on interviews with 192 husbands (one wave) and women entrepreneurs (two waves) in Ethiopia, latent profile analysis identified three out of the four postulated profiles: The Indifferents, the Copreneurs, and the Regulators. Husbands' gender role beliefs and their relative contribution to the family income differentiate between the profiles. Our findings indicate that husbands' resource provision improves women entrepreneurs' business success, even in the presence of constraining behavior. We conclude that husbands may make a difference in otherwise resource-poor environments, and they may deserve more attention toward a better understanding of successful women entrepreneurs.

In entrepreneurship research, meta-analysis has been used both for describing phenomena and for drawing inferences. Meanwhile, this study identified 92 meta-analyses that have been conducted in the domain of entrepreneurship. This paper reviews these analyses with two main purposes. First, this paper provides a state-of-the-art summary of meta-analysis findings to show the empirical evidence on concepts, relationships and theories. Such evidence leads to practice recommendations. This paper also points to areas that may need future meta-analyses. Second, this paper provides a state-of-the-art summary on how meta-analyses are conducted, what methodological choices need to be considered, and how meta-analysis results should be interpreted. The authors hope that this paper also provides some ideas and guidelines on how to proceed with rigor into the future of meta-analysis in entrepreneurship research and how to arrive at valid inferences from meta-analyses conducted in the field.

Rapid technological innovation, digitalization, and automation are reshaping how work is performed and understood, raising important questions about well-being in the future of work. Such concerns are especially relevant in entrepreneurial contexts, which are marked by high autonomy, uncertainty, and responsibility for shaping one’s own work conditions. This Special Issue brings together research that advances understanding of entrepreneurial well-being against the backdrop of the changing nature of work. The six articles included in the Special Issue investigate diverse mechanisms and settings through which changes in technology, work design, and social and organizational environments shape entrepreneurs’ experiences, resources, and outcomes related to well-being. We synthesize their contributions and outline promising directions for future research to advance scholarship on entrepreneurial well-being in the changing world of work.

This study introduces a concept and measure of "error tolerance culture" that could advance our understanding of cross-national variations in entrepreneurial activity and risk-related outcomes. Using data from 58 countries of the GLOBE study, we show that the cultural practice of error tolerance constitutes a meaningful measure with dual implications: While positively associated with entrepreneurial activity across nations, it is also linked to behaviors that can lead to reduced longevity, increased accidents, and corruption. The proposed measure of error tolerance holds significant potential as a research tool by facilitating the examination of its benefits and drawbacks, as well as uncovering its relationships with critical economic, institutional, and cultural variables.

Entrepreneurial pitching success (EPS) is a behavioral observation scale consisting of behaviorally anchored items developed to understand behavioral predictors of pitching success; it is based on a scoping review of the empirical literature on pitching, condensed to 13 important aspects. Similar to the elaboration likelihood theory and system 1/system 2 decision-making, we suggest two routes of persuasion in pitching-rational arguments and inspirational and affective approaches. Study 1 (N = 100) on the first version of the scale established interrater reliability and improved the precision of the wording of the items. Study 2 (N = 185) on the criterion validity correlated the predictor items and factors with three success variables: 1) feeling inspired by the pitch; 2) convinced of good market opportunities; and 3) advancing to the next level in the Slush Pitching Competition as "objective" success. Study 2 proves clear criterion validity of the EPS. Thus, EPS can be used to bridge research and practice.

Our study examines the training transfer dynamics of action-oriented entrepreneurship training to understand when and how a positive impact on the alleviation of poverty and unemployment among young adults unfolds. We theorize about the training transfer dynamics in terms of absolute changes and developmental trajectories. To test our hypotheses, we conducted field experiments across seven countries with 6,257 university students who we randomly assigned to a training group or a nonintervention control group. We collected data before the implementation of an entrepreneurship training program (T1), directly after the training program (T2), as well as 9-18 (T3) and 19-32 months (T4) after the baseline, with a total number of 15,660 observations. Results from discontinuous growth curve modeling show that action-oriented entrepreneurship training can increase income and employment in the short and long term. We further demonstrate that training transfer dynamics can unfold in the form of a "catch-up" effect, which is characterized by nonsignificant or even negative short-term absolute changes but positive long-term developmental trajectories in economic effectiveness outcomes. Our results contribute to the literature on training transfer and hold important practical implications for policymakers regarding the evaluation of future entrepreneurship training interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Proactivity is becoming increasingly crucial for employee career success and organizational productivity in the contemporary workplace across various cultures. However, there has been a prevalent perspective that people in the West seem more proactive than those in the East. This paper challenges the prevalent view by selectively reviewing the research findings and proposing a more comprehensive framework that considers the process of proactivity and its various forms that may better explain cultural differences in proactivity. We identify five cultural dimensions relevant to examining the cultural influences on proactivity: power distance, individualism-collectivism, future orientation, assertiveness, and tightness-looseness. Drawing on research on culture, proactivity, and creativity, we theorize that different cultural dimensions may play a role in shaping three different processes of proactivity: proactive goal generation, planning and execution, and feedback processing. We also elucidate the cultural influences on varying forms of proactivity by classifying them into three broad categories: promotive versus prohibitive, pro-self versus prosocial, and radical versus incremental. Our theorizing challenges and complements the current understanding of cultural influences on proactivity, revealing a more nuanced role that culture may play in shaping proactivity processes.

A randomized experiment in Togo found that personal initiative training for small businesses resulted in large and significant impacts for both men and women after two years. We revisit these entrepreneurs after seven years and find long-lasting average impacts of personal initiative training of $91-higher profits per month, which is larger than the two-year impacts. However, these long-term impacts are very different for men and women: The impact for men grows over time as they accumulate more capital and increase self-efficacy, whereas the impact for women is flat or declines, and capital buildup is much more limited. (JEL J16, J24, L25, L26, M53, O12, O14)

Meta-analysis-the statistical analysis of a large collection of analysis results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating the findings substantially contributes to paradigm development in the field of entrepreneurship. Notably, a number of choices are made when conducting a meta-analysis. Many of these choices have implications for the interpretation of the results, affecting one of the core aims of meta-analysis, that is, to generate generalizable best evidence. To better understand meta-analysis evidence in the field of entrepreneurship it is essential to understand how these meta-analyses are conducted, what type of methodological choices have been made and communicated, and how these choices affect the interpretation of findings. To address these issues, we performed a content analysis of 90 meta-analyses up to 2021 and investigate 74 methodological choices made by the authors. We identify and offer suggestions for future practice in seven areas: the study location strategy, the use of a second coding, the assessment of heterogeneity, multivariate analysis, quality checks, the violation of assumptions, and the interpretation of meta-analytical findings. In so doing, we hope to contribute to best practices and to the legitimacy of validity generalization in the domain of entrepreneurship research. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive and evidence-based understanding of the interpretation and implications of meta-analysis practices for theory building and testing and scholarly impact.

Errors may be a safety hazard, yet all organizations and managers have to deal with errors. Error management and high reliability are strategies for dealing with errors. While these strategies originate from different research approaches and have been well studied independently, they have not been directly compared in empirical studies. Based on a theoretical analysis of similarities and differences between these approaches, we developed a training based on each of them. For our High Reliability Approach (HRA) training, we deduced training principles based on the facets of safety organizing. For the Error Management Training (EMT) and the training in the error-avoidant control condition (EAT), we oriented on existing training studies. We trained university students (N = 359) in a relevant skill. Our study revealed that both EMT and HRA training led to better performance than EAT. Exploratory analyses revealed emotion control towards errors to be related to performance only in the EMT group. Our article suggests that in spite of similar effectiveness of EMT and HRA training, there may be differential processes in these two approaches.

Psychological preparedness for entrepreneurial actions helps to connect macro-institutional support for entrepreneurs to actions of entrepreneurs. Action knowledge and personal initiative are part of entrepreneurial preparedness, and there are two training concepts that have been developed to increase the number of entrepreneurs among BA and high school students in low- and middle-income countries and to improve the skills and mindset of entrepreneurs. I discuss large-scale randomized controlled interventions in both of these areas with the STEP and personal initiative training. Showing that psychological preparedness for entrepreneurial actions can be enhanced, the question is whether methods shown to work in low-income countries can inform entrepreneurship research in general. Issues that seem to speak against generalizing are often seen in necessity, survivalist, and informal entrepreneurship. These issues are discussed and are deemed of lower importance for generalization of findings. There are also methodological advantages when doing research in low- and middle income countries. Practical and policy implications are also provided. Entrepreneurship is about taking action and seizing opportunities. People often think of African entrepreneurs as just trying to survive, but there is more to it. In fact, Africa has likely many more entrepreneurs than the West, and these young business people are keen to learn and grow. We have created training programs for university and high school students to boost the number of entrepreneurs and improve their skills. We have tested these programs with over 6000 students across 11 developing countries, and they have been successful: Training participants started 30

In this paper, we transfer the ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation to a cross-cultural context. We develop a configurational model to explore how combinations of opening leadership, closing leadership, and team initiative differently affect team innovation performance in different cultures. Applying an Asia-centric perspective, our study analyzes cross-cultural heterogeneity of team innovation processes across China, India, and Singapore. Our fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) illuminates cultural differences and the configurational nature of how leadership and team behaviors work together in promoting team innovation performance. We found that configurations for team innovation performance differ across countries, such that an innovation-yielding configuration in one country may be ineffective in another country. Moreover, our findings suggest that alternative, equifinal configurations of leadership and team initiative, rather than just one optimal pathway, are associated with high team innovation performance; and high-performance configurations and low-performance configurations are asymmetric and therefore imply non-linearity of the relationships. The findings provide implications for managers in different cultural contexts as they help identify culture-specific action repertoires to manage innovation processes and promote innovation performance.

In this chapter, we draw on the metaphor of dancing to discuss why and in what way structure, action, and interaction are relevant in entrepreneurship. We suggest that the metaphor of dancing can inspire new perspectives on the role of creativity in entrepreneurship. Based on entrepreneurship and innovation literature, we argue that the entrepreneurial process is, like dancing, surprisingly structured, requires action learning, and requires the interaction with the environment. In entrepreneurship as well as in dancing, not yet existent ideas can lead to something new and aesthetic, and this creative process requires structuring. One cannot learn to be a dancer without dancing, and one cannot be an entrepreneur without acting on entrepreneurial ideas and opportunities. Creating a dance, as well as creating a product or organization, is determined by the interaction with the environment. We discuss the implications of those perspectives on entrepreneurship for structuring the entrepreneurial process, designing entrepreneurship education, and navigating interactions with the environment.

We review the research on the psychology of entrepreneurship of the last decade. We focus on two key topics in entrepreneurship research: action and process. Combining action and process in a model of the psychology of entrepreneurship, we present the action theory process model of entrepreneurship and use it as a guiding framework for the review. We discuss theories of action, such as effectuation/causation, bricolage, theory of planned behavior, and action theory. Furthermore, we adopt a process perspective to discuss antecedents of actions in terms of cognition, motivation, and emotion and how they develop during the entrepreneurial process. The process perspective considers recursive relationships and dynamic changes in actions and their antecedents over time. We conclude that the action theory process model is a useful starting point to explain the psychological dynamics of entrepreneurship.