Researching Entrepreneurship at Different Levels: Micro, Meso and Macro

Dear Colleagues,

Almost two decades have passed since Shane and Venkataraman (2000) united scholars from a variety of research disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, management, and economics in the field of entrepreneurship. For these two decades, we have been witnessing considerable progress in research, both from the theoretical and empirical perspectives. One of the most important questions for the policymakers and stakeholders is related to the relationship between entrepreneurship and regional development.

As we know from the literature (Bjørnskov and Foss, 2016), this relationship may vary over time, across regions, and even with respect to different kinds of entrepreneurial activity (high-growth entrepreneurship/business companies vs. solo-entrepreneurs/freelancers). We are missing up-to-date empirical studies, and especially those focusing on emerging, developing, and transition economies.

Once we understand this crucial link, we need to dive deeper and study determinants and drivers of entrepreneurship and self-employment at different levels of analysis in order to provide stakeholders with information on factors that encourage and discourage entrepreneurship. Davidsson and Wiklund (2007) encouraged scholars to study determinants of entrepreneurial activity and self-employment at the micro (firm or individual), meso (industry or region), and macro (country or group of countries) levels. Studies related to the investigation of effects and outcomes of different start-up, entrepreneurship, and innovation policies are also very important (Acs et al., 2016).

This Special Issue on “Researching Entrepreneurship at Different Levels: Micro, Meso, and Macro” encourages a diverse set of submissions, and we will welcome papers that, inter alia, refer to (but are not limited to) themes such as:

• Entrepreneurship, innovation, and regional development
• Sustainable entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurial activity
• Determinants of entrepreneurship and self-employment
• Entrepreneurial economics
• Entrepreneurial finance
• Entrepreneurship policies and their evaluation
• Entrepreneurship in emerging, developing, and transition economies

Therefore, we invite your inputs into this ongoing debate, and we kindly ask you to take this Special Issue as an opportunity to contribute to this research gap, especially from an empirical point of view.

Literature

Acs, Z.; Åstebro, T.; Audretsch, D.; Robinson, D.T. Public policy to promote entrepreneurship: A call to arms. Small Bus. Econ. 2016, 47, 35-51.

Bjørnskov, C.;Foss, N. J. Institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth: what do we know and what do we still need to know? Acad. Manag. Perspect. 2016, 30, 292-315.

Block, J. H.; Fisch, C. O.; Van Praag, M. The Schumpeterian entrepreneur: a review of the empirical evidence on the antecedents, behaviour and consequences of innovative entrepreneurship. Ind. Innov. 2017, 24, 61-95.

Davidsson, P.; Wiklund, J. Levels of analysis in entrepreneurship research: Current research practice and suggestions for the future. In Entrepreneurship. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007; pp. 245-265.

Evans, D. S.; Leighton, L. S. Some empirical aspects of entrepreneurship. Am. Econ. Rev. 1989, 79, 519-535.

Leitch, C. M., & Harrison, R. T. (2016). Identity, identity formation and identity work in entrepreneurship: conceptual developments and empirical applications. Entrep. Reg. Dev. 2016, 28, 177-190.

Shane, S.; Venkataraman, S. The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Acad. Manag. Rev. 2000, 25, 217-226.

Dr. Ondřej Dvouletý
Guest Editor

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