One of the main characteristics of family businesses lies in their owners’ pursuit of financial and non-financial utility. One core dimension of non-financial utility is emotional attachment. However, we know little about the role of emotional attachment in shaping the owners’ divestment or reinvestment decisions in volatile, uncertain and ambiguous environments. Based on an in-depth case study of a displaced agricultural family that lost its business in Colombia, we investigate the role of family members’ perceived emotional attachment and financial utility in shaping their strategic decisions. Our findings broaden the notion of emotional attachment to comprise the family, the former family business, and the land, identifying six utility patterns. These patterns capture combinations of perceived emotional attachment and financial utility. We label these patterns hybrid family, family control, family splitting, entrepreneurial family, family safety and accommodating family utility, and find that they play a crucial role in each family member’s preference for divestment and/or reinvestment decisions. The experience of trauma influenced two utility patterns favoured by women. This article contributes to the family business literature by advancing our knowledge of utility combinations transcending generations and ownership statuses in their preferred divestment and reinvestment decisions.

A circular economy (CE) addresses the shift in economic systems from an unsustainable linear approach to a sustainable circular approach through start-ups and entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE). A single level of focus on CE research limits an understanding of the mechanisms fostering a transition towards CE. We conduct a systematic review of the macro–meso–micro interconnections between start-ups and EE in CE using bibliometric and content analyses to scope the literature without time boundaries. This exercise led to 90 articles from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. We contribute to literature on entrepreneurship and CE by building an integrative multi-level framework linked to the just and safe planetary boundaries by bridging macro-level explanations (public policies, regulations and infrastructure) and the meso-level (circular supply chains and circular ecosystems) and micro-level (circular start-ups and circular business models). The framework highlights social and environmental sustainability challenges, and just and safe close-loop production patterns.

Many social problems in emerging economies and developing countries remain unsolved. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces social innovation of ventures in emerging economies and developing countries as a relevant concept and a theoretical field. It presents five conceptual and/or empirical contributions that underpin attributes, processes and practices for building social innovation in the Americas. The book introduces the positive deviance approach to the social innovation domain, Victoria Konovalenko Slettli and Arvind Singhal broaden our understanding of processes nurturing distributed and generative problem-solving via cases in the rural Misiones Province of Argentina and in New Hampshire in USA. It relies on the theoretical perspectives of entrepreneurial resourcefulness and bricolage, which are well established within entrepreneurship research, and linking these concepts with the social innovation domain will further stimulate exchange between related scholarly domains..

This paper examines the roles of family in migrant entrepreneurs’ opportunity development. We employ the opportunity development and family embeddedness for theory building purposes. We conducted a longitudinal inductive case study on four cases of migrant entrepreneurs who have established businesses in Sweden and who have their origins in Lebanon and Syria, Cameroon, and Mexico, documented with 29 interviews and field observations. The paper identifies families embedding occurring by means of three norms of reciprocity and obligations that facilitate the opportunity development process. These norms are fulfilling the expectations of family and the existing family business, regularly interacting with family and the existing family business, and deploying family and business loyalty. These norms are connected to specific sub-processes of opportunity development, namely, the generation of an entrepreneurial idea, shaping an entrepreneurial idea, and defining the (new) family venture offering. By identifying these norms in the opportunity development processes, we theorize that migrant entrepreneurs rely on different family members and the existing family business from the home or host country at different moments of the opportunity development process. Such dynamic creates different norms of reciprocity and obligations for migrant entrepreneurs and their families, which influence the opportunity development.

Ethnic minority entrepreneurs navigate between at least two different cultures. This can bring a number of advantages for their entrepreneurial endeavors, not least if those are based on ethnic-specific competences, such as ethnic cuisine. But they can also represent a challenge, for example when peers from the same group expect preferential treatment. Prior research has often pointed at the important role of family involvement for ethnic minority entrepreneurs, but has typically considered the family and/or business as the unit of analysis. In this study, we instead focus on the level of ethnic minority entrepreneurs and explore their perceptions about the role of family for creating and sustaining entrepreneurial activities. Based on an interview study with 34 ethnic minority entrepreneurs in Sweden, we identify three patterns and coping strategies for navigating between different cultures and expectations. These patterns include entrepreneurial ethnic loners, ethnic offspring entrepreneurs and ethnic recourse entrepreneurs.

Drawing on an Entrepreneurship as Practice (EaP) approach, this article examines how next generation members in family owned businesses (FOBs) engage in external venturing. Our study builds on longitudinal qualitative research in two Mexican FOBs where the next generation launched ten ventures. It reveals five different practices of external venturing used by next generation family members: ‘obtaining family approval’, ‘bypassing family’, ‘family venture mimicking’, ‘jockeying in family’, and ‘jockeying around family’. The five practices are combined into three routes for external venturing: ‘imitating the family business’, ‘splitting the family business’, and ‘surpassing the family business’. Building on notions from Michel de Certeau’s practice theory, this study contributes to theorizing the five practices as ways of operating and the routes as modes of sensing to better understand how next generation family members deal with settings featured by dominant orders within the family and the FOB in their attempts to originate and launch their new ventures.

Based on a multiple case study of 19 rural places, we shed light on how entrepreneurs and local government officials engage in rural venturing. We conducted 58 interviews with entrepreneurs, local government officials, and association representatives. We find that entrepreneurs and government officials conduct supplementary processes to renew and preserve rural venturing. The renewal of rural venturing was generated from several embedding processes carried out by entrepreneurs, including belonging, knowing, business networking, resourcing, and business modeling that contribute to building and changing the business community. The preservation of rural venturing was originated when we brought local government officials to the foreground. We identified the embedding processes carried out by municipals officials including advocating others, creating networking arenas, crafting hybridity, crafting suitability and avoiding bureaucracy relevant for sustaining rural venturing. These processes were done in order to conserve and hybridize rural venturing. Our study, therefore, reorients embeddedness and entrepreneurship research from a focus on networks and their outcomes to what critical actors do. We also shed light on rural venturing as a multi-level phenomenon driven by the interaction of multiple stakeholders.

Crowdfunding research to date has mainly focused on the nature and dynamics characterizing platforms containing creative and innovative ideas, while less attention has been given to subsistence entrepreneurship which centers on social, environmental, and economic concerns. This chapter develops a conceptual framework to examine the sustainable crowdfunding process supporting subsistence entrepreneurship, and then using the framework, the case illustration of Kiva is presented to describe how sustainable crowdfunding facilitates the development of ventures created to alleviate poverty and promote sustainability. The proposed framework combines elements of crowdfunding with aspects of sustainability, as well as subsistence entrepreneurship. Subsistence entrepreneurship includes the actions, activities, and processes undertaken by individuals living in the bottom of the pyramid to promoting sustainability. Crowdfunding acts as a key tool to attract financial means relevant for subsistence entrepreneurship. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key implications that arise from this research.

In this chapter, we do a minor close reading of the concept "the other within" (TOW) with the purpose to delineate potential conceptual advancement (MacInnis. J Marketing, 75(4), 136-154; 2018) that TOW as a specific form of entrepreneurial agency for subsistence entrepreneurs bring to entrepreneurship studies in general and subsistence entrepreneurship studies in particular. TOW is here elaborated conceptually upon as an entrepreneurial agency practiced subtly, on-going and insistently in everyday life by entrepreneurs embedded in more constraints (real and/or perceived) relative to the average entrepreneur. Our point of departure is the work of Michel de Certeau (The Practice of Everyday Life, 1988/1984; originally published 1974 as Arts de faire), from which we proceed toward the few other authors who have explicitly used TOW as a concept. After having derived central properties of the proposed conceptual construct (TOW) out of these texts, we sum up the core characteristics for the other within as a specific agency for subsistence entrepreneurs, a form of entrepreneurial agency practiced by necessity due to constraints and limitations imposed upon subsistence entrepreneurs out of their control.

Purpose – This chapter explores the m+eaning and significance of family business social responsibilities (FBSRs) using a metasystem approach, placing emphasis on the role of the family. Design/Methodology/Approach – We employ a revelatory case study to investigate the complexity of family business (corporate) social responsibility. The main case, a German shoe retailer, is supplemented by other case illustrations that provide additional insights into FBSR. Findings – To fully understand social responsibility in a family firm context, we need to include social initiatives that go beyond the actual family business as a unit. This FBSR connects family members outside and inside the business and across generations. As FBSR is formed through individual and family-level values, its character is idiosyncratic and contrasts the often standardized approaches in widely held firms. Practical Implication – Family businesses need to go beyond the business as such when considering their engagement in social responsibility. Family ownership implies that all social initiatives conducted by family members, regardless if they are involved in the firm or not, are connected. This includes a shared responsibility for what family members do at present and have done in the past.

This paper conducts an inductive case study to build a theory on the role of family in both the host and home countries in immigrant entrepreneurs' attempts at creating entrepreneurial opportunities. We used the perspectives of the opportunity creation process and family social capital. We relied on data collected from four cases of immigrant entrepreneurs from Lebanon, Syria, Cameroon and Mexico who have established businesses in Sweden. The paper identified three sources of family social capital: family duties, family trust and family support as being relevant for creating opportunities. While family duties triggered the process of forming an entrepreneurial idea, this process was advanced by the existence of family trust. Family support was then the building block for launching an entrepreneurial idea. By identifying these three sources of family social capital, we show that families in the host and home countries contribute to immigrant entrepreneurs' opportunity creation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to conduct an inductive case study to understand how the opportunity creation process leads to integration.Design/methodology/approachIt examines four cases of immigrant entrepreneurs of Cameroonian, Lebanese, Mexican and Assyrian origins who founded their businesses in Sweden. The study relies on process-oriented theory building and develops an inductive model of integration as an opportunity creation process.FindingsThe suggested model shows immigrants’ acculturation into the host society via three successive phases: breaking-ice, breaking-in and breaking-out. In the breaking-ice phase, immigrants trigger entrepreneurial ideas to overcome the disadvantages that they face as immigrants in the host country. In the breaking-in phase, immigrants articulate their entrepreneurial ideas by bonding with the ethnic community. In the breaking-out phase, the immigrants reorient their entrepreneurial ideas by desegregating them locally. The paper concludes by elaborating theoretical and practical implications of the research.Originality/valueImmigrants act when they are socially excluded and discriminated in the labor market by developing business ideas and becoming entrepreneurs. By practicing the new language and accommodating native customers’ preferences, immigrants reorient their entrepreneurial ideas. The immigrants tailor their ideas to suit their new customers by strengthening their sense of belonging to the local community.

This paper explores sustainability in water project management following a contextual approach. It relies on an exploratory case study with interviews and field visits to three water project sites in Bugesera district in Rwanda. The results show that water project management includes aspects of social, cultural, environmental and economic sustainability driven by a compliant organization logic. This implies that the water project's management is steered by existing policies, regulations and procedures. Cultural sustainability in particular is important for capturing contextual practices in the project delivery process, such as Umuganda meetings and committees. Such practices allow the inclusion of the local community by identifying their water needs, defining their benefits and conveying project ownership to them. This study proposes a model following a contextual approach to sustainability in water project management. The model is useful for identifying new contextual/empirical phenomena and for advancing theory.

Entrepreneurship, Context and History: Western European Entrepreneurship Fundamentals Revealed in Magistral Book by Leo-Paul Dana : Dana Leo-Paul, World Scientific Publishing Europe, London, 2018, p. 544, ISBN: 9781783267934