Search Results (1,767)

Research on social commerce, influencer marketing, consumer–brand engagement, and CEO social media communication has rapidly expanded. However, less is known regarding how entrepreneurial leaders’ personal short-video accounts operate as platformized interfaces that organize consumer interaction. This study examines how CEO short-video communication produces an observable, collectively sustained commercial persona and connects executive visibility with fan labor, consumer–brand engagement, and consumption imagination. Using the Douyin account of a leading Chinese technology entrepreneur as a case, this study analyzes 372 short videos posted up to 15 August 2024, and 185,561 valid first-level comments. It combines structured content analysis, intercoder reliability testing, BERTopic-assisted topic location, manual thematic validation, and text-based emotional intensity analysis. Work footage, scenes of everyday life, casual presentations, and product props translate entrepreneurial authority into an approachable, platformized commercial persona. In comment sections, users perform informational, relational, affective, memetic, mobilizing, and defensive labor through product requests, familiar address, emotional identification, memes, consumption mobilization, and brand defense. These practices stabilize CEO personas, circulate product meanings, and create consumption imagination, understood as public projections of saving for, ordering, using, or affiliating with products rather than evidence of actual purchases. Emotional identification, consumption mobilization, and brand defense display higher observable emotional intensity than product requests. This study contributes a case-derived conceptual framework demonstrating how CEO identity capital, platform affordances, fan labor, and product-centered imagination are assembled in short-video social commerce. Full article

Financial crises severely constrain entrepreneurs’ access to traditional financing, increasing the need for alternative funding mechanisms. Venture capital (VC) represents one such financing alternative and may also provide strategic and managerial support. However, evidence concerning how entrepreneurs perceive VC financing in crisis-affected economies remains limited. This study examines the associations between perceptions of equity-based VC financing, entrepreneurs’ willingness to launch new ventures, and perceived firm financial performance while assessing the moderating roles of risk aversion and perceived VC coaching and mentoring. This study draws on cross-sectional survey data from 392 Lebanese entrepreneurs and entrepreneurially oriented individuals. The findings indicate that perceptions of equity-based VC financing are positively associated with entrepreneurs’ willingness to launch new ventures, with this association becoming stronger at higher levels of respondent risk aversion. Perceptions of equity-based VC financing are also positively associated with perceived firm financial performance, with this association being stronger at higher levels of perceived VC coaching and mentoring. These findings represent perception-based associations and should not be interpreted as evidence of causal effects, temporal progression, or objectively measured financial performance. Full article

Access to finance remains a significant challenge for women entrepreneurs, even as new financial alternatives and technologies have emerged. This study examines how research on women’s entrepreneurial finance evolved between 2006 and 2026. Using Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny, 327 articles retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science were analyzed in terms of scientific development, intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and international collaboration, including network centrality, density, and comparisons across economic-development groups. The results show that the field has moved from a primary focus on gender and access to capital toward a broader agenda in which financial inclusion, crowdfunding, microfinance, and digitalization have gained prominence. At the same time, traditional research streams on gender and finance coexist with research on alternative mechanisms for accessing capital. Three complementary intellectual foundations were identified: gender-related mechanisms in financing decisions, crowdfunding and alternative entrepreneurial finance, and structural and institutional conditions shaping access to financial resources. International collaboration also differs across economic contexts, with high-income economies showing denser and more internationally connected research networks. The findings reveal an expanding field in which new financial opportunities coexist with persistent gender inequalities and provide an integrated basis for future research on AI-enabled financing, cross-context institutional differences, and green and sustainable finance. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly acknowledged as a strategic asset for enhancing innovation and competitiveness among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Nevertheless, limited research has focused on the experiences of women entrepreneurs regarding AI adoption within established SMEs, particularly in emerging economies. This study investigates the knowledge, attitudes, skills, perceived barriers, and business-process applications associated with AI adoption among women entrepreneurs in Chile. Employing an exploratory multiple-case study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen women leading established SMEs across various industries. The cross-case analysis indicates that resilient leadership, social intelligence, and managerial knowledge were frequently mentioned characteristics alongside diverse patterns of AI adoption. The findings reveal that participants identified strategic-planning and management-control knowledge, resilient leadership attitudes, and social intelligence skills as recurring competencies associated with AI adoption into business activities. Participants reported utilising AI primarily to support customer relationship management (CRM), while also describing limited AI readiness as a constraint associated with learning needs and experiences of AI adoption. To distinguish between AI adoption and broader digitalisation and automation, the study defines the following adoption profiles: non-adopter, AI experimenter, substantive AI adopter, and integrated AI adopter. Further cross-case analysis suggests that participants experienced knowledge, attitudes, and skills as mutually reinforcing during AI adoption rather than as isolated competencies. This study contributes to the literature by providing an empirically grounded understanding of how a group of established women entrepreneurs perceive and experience AI adoption in their SMEs. Instead of identifying causal determinants of successful adoption, the findings highlight recurring patterns and relationships that may inform future theory development and comparative research on AI adoption in entrepreneurial contexts. The study also offers practical insights for policymakers, educators, and SME support organisations aiming to enhance AI capabilities among women-led businesses. Full article

This study examines how distinct dimensions of financial literacy relate to the business performance of rural female micro-entrepreneurs in a transition economy. Drawing on the Resource-Based View, Human Capital Theory, and Entrepreneurial Capability Theory, financial literacy is conceptualized as four separable capabilities: financial education, cash forecasting, bookkeeping practice, and financial self-efficacy. Survey data were collected from 200 women micro-entrepreneurs sampled at random in Shovot District, Khorezm region, Uzbekistan, and 173 usable responses were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). After validation and refinement of the measurement model, the results show that bookkeeping practice (β = 0.407) and financial education (β = 0.294) are positively and significantly associated with business performance, as is financial self-efficacy (β = 0.155), whereas cash forecasting shows no significant unique association. The findings are robust to alternative construct and outcome specifications and to endogeneity checks, and they suggest that, where formal financial infrastructure is thin, record-keeping and foundational financial knowledge appear to be the capabilities most closely associated with micro-enterprise performance; because the measurement model was refined on these data, these associations are exploratory and await confirmation on independent samples. Full article

Rural entrepreneurship is increasingly recognised as a critical driver of economic resilience and regional development, particularly in developing regions such as the Eastern Cape, South Africa. This exploratory study examines how entrepreneurial activities stimulate local economic growth, job creation, innovation, and community empowerment in Mnquma Local Municipality, where persistent unemployment and poverty remain significant challenges. Adopting an exploratory research design underpinned by a positivist philosophy, this study synthesises existing literature on the relationships among employment generation, economic contribution, innovation promotion, economic diversification, community engagement, and local supply chain development. Data were collected from 349 respondents drawn from a population of 3750 formally registered rural entrepreneurs. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests, correlation analysis, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) in SPSS and SmartPLS, to examine the relationships among employment generation, economic contribution, innovation promotion, economic diversification, community engagement, supply chain development, and economic resilience. The findings suggest that strong rural entrepreneurship enhances local adaptability and supports sustainable economic performance in the face of external shocks. The study emphasises the importance of inclusive, evidence-based policies that promote rural enterprise development through improved financial mechanisms, infrastructure investment, and strengthened stakeholder networks; thereby providing localised insights to inform policy and sustainable development in South Africa. Full article

Our environment deteriorates primarily due to the emissions of carbon dioxide. Scientists and entrepreneurs promote carbon offset to reduce the emissions. Scientists and investors explore the investments of carbon offset. Some scientists encouragingly construct portfolio selection models but do not completely optimize them. Some scientists encouragingly construct capital asset pricing models (CAPM) but do not completely justify them. Under such contexts, this paper proposes a model of multiple-objective portfolio selection (MOPS) and preliminarily explores multiple-objective capital asset pricing models (MOCAPM). By the classical transition from portfolio selection to CAPM, we introductorily conjecture the extended transition from MOPS to MOCAPM. Specifically, we prove mathematical properties for the model. For instance, its minimum-variance surface is convex, and its feasible region is bounded by the convex surface. We examine whether a point on the minimum-variance surface is nondominated. By the properties, we heuristically prove different tangent planes for MOCAPM (instead of the unique tangent line for CAPM). We tentatively hint the conditions for a unique tangent plane. This paper acts as a footstep of the introductory conjecture. Full article

This article examines the cartographic design of nano-scale productive systems led by women nano-entrepreneurs, understood as family-based productive arrangements embedded in everyday domestic spaces. In rural contexts, many women-led ventures operate at a nano-scale and are organized around household dynamics, where entrepreneurial leadership, family labor, and productive activities intersect. Drawing on a qualitative territorial research approach, the study combines semi-structured interviews, fieldwork, and cartographic design to identify productive actions and the spaces in which they take place. The findings show that these nano-scale productive systems function through the articulation of multiple actions rather than formal organizational structures, and that women exercise entrepreneurial leadership by coordinating family-based activities within and beyond the home. As a result, everyday spaces, particularly the household, are resignified as workshops, points of sale, and centers of management, giving rise to locally embedded family-based enterprises in emerging rural economies. Using cartographic design as an analytical tool, the article contributes to research on family entrepreneurship and leadership by highlighting how women-led nanoenterprises reshape spatial organization, and productive practices within emerging family firms. Full article

Artificial-intelligence-enabled agri-food entrepreneurship is the creation of new ventures and the entrepreneurial renewal of existing firms, whose value propositions and business models are built around learning-based computational systems applied across the food value chain, from primary production and processing to distribution, consumption, and the recovery of losses and by-products. The core enabling technologies are machine learning and computer vision, generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models, and AI-enabled robotics and predictive analytics, deployed with complementary digital infrastructure such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud and edge computing, blockchain, and digital twins. The concept is broader than technology adoption because its subject is the entrepreneur: how opportunities are recognised or created, how business models convert them into revenue, and why so few technically capable solutions become durable businesses. This entry makes four contributions: It specifies a mechanism—because AI lowers the cost of prediction but not of judgement, opportunities concentrate in decisions that are prediction-intensive, recurrent, and attached to an outcome that the customer already measures. It provides a taxonomy of business-model archetypes that separates value creation from value capture. It establishes the boundary conditions under which digital-entrepreneurship theory transfers to food systems—seasonality, fixed adoption costs, contested data governance, and liability. Finally, it converts the synthesis into seven testable propositions and an evidence calibration separating controlled benchmarks, field pilots, and commercial deployment. Full article

Structural and sociocultural constraints have long shaped African immigrant entrepreneurship in South Africa. The organised anti-foreigner campaigns of 2025–2026 echoed the earlier expulsions in Ghana (1969) and Nigeria (1983). What made the South African campaigns different was that the host society itself became the organised source of existential threat. This article aimed to develop a theoretical framework accounting for how entrepreneurial agency changes when organised political mobilisation simultaneously threatens physical safety, legal presence, and venture survival. The framework was developed as a conceptual model by drawing on constrained agency theory alongside scholarship on institutions, social movements, scapegoating, and moral panic. Rather than being tested with primary data, it was illustrated through historical and contemporary African cases. CAT-ET suggests that when constraints become existential, agency tends to shift towards either adaptive persistence or strategic exit. Two interacting mechanisms were specified: functional institutional inaccessibility under violence, whereby protective institutions remained operational but selectively inaccessible, and the entrepreneur-as-symbol dynamic, whereby immigrant ventures became politically constructed as emblems of economic grievance. CAT-ET reframed organised expulsion as a recurring political-economic process and offered a basis for comparative research across the Global South. Full article

This study examines how learning disability (LD) relates to entrepreneurial pathways by comparing correlates of entrepreneurial propensity and sustained engagement among entrepreneurs with and without LD. Guided by Social Cognitive Career Theory, we surveyed 392 entrepreneurs, including 58 with LD, and used hierarchical regressions and Wald tests to compare patterns across groups. The findings show that creativity and age were associated with outcomes in both groups, but the pattern differed by LD status. Among entrepreneurs with LD, creativity and personal control were more strongly associated with outcomes, while among those without LD, formal education and early exposure were more strongly associated with propensity. Maternal education and adolescent interest in technological entrepreneurship were particularly associated with sustained engagement in the LD group. These findings suggest that entrepreneurship may represent an inclusive vocational pathway for some individuals with LD, while also highlighting the importance of reducing systemic barriers and strengthening neurodiversity-responsive supports. Full article

Digital transformation is now one of the key engines of entrepreneurial behavior and company development, but there is still a lack of empirical evidence on the creation of digital ecosystems, especially in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. This paper examines how digital capabilities affect the sustainable development of entrepreneurial ventures and how the relationship changes depending on the three emerging digital ecosystems of Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Data were collected through a structured online questionnaire developed using Google Forms and distributed via email, WhatsApp, and the Prolific research platform to owners, managers, and key decision-makers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 250 questionnaires were distributed, yielding 131 responses, of which 22 were excluded after screening for completeness and eligibility. The final analytical sample comprised 109 valid firm-level responses from Egypt (n = 51), Lebanon (n = 34), and Iraq (n = 24). The study quantitatively assesses digital capabilities on several dimensions, including digital infrastructure adoption, data and analytics capabilities, digital product development, and digital revenue integration, and attributes those capabilities to sustainable business growth indicators (the revenue stability, scalability, profitability, and long-term resilience). The results showed that more robust digital capabilities have more significant impacts on sustainable business growth outcomes, whereas basic digitalization has no significant effect. Further, the analysis found no statistically significant moderating effect of ecosystem contextual factors, including institutional quality and digital maturity, on the relationship between digital capabilities and sustainable business growth across Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. This study contributes to the body of knowledge of entrepreneurship and sustainability in emerging markets by integrating Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Digital Ecosystem Theory. The findings have practical implications for entrepreneurs and policymakers who aim to use digital transformation to attain sustainable entrepreneurship in the vulnerable and dynamic digital ecosystems. Full article

As religious tourism expands across Asia, it remains unclear who benefits from its growth and who is overlooked in policy and industry accounts. Drawing on fieldwork in the temple-towns of Jejuri and Tuljapur in Maharashtra, India, this paper aims to make a timely and original contribution about the significance of informal, family-run and ritual-linked enterprises to the centre of debates on entrepreneurship and inclusive tourism development. The study combines visitor surveys, detailed enterprise mapping and entrepreneur interviews to reveal a dense but precarious local economy which is sustained by religious retail (a term articulated for sale of items related to rituals), street vending and small-scale service provision. These micro-enterprises are culturally central but economically fragile, low-margin and weakly recognised in policy. The paper argues that entrepreneurship is constrained by traditional religious authority, informality, seasonality and limited innovation capacity, while rising visitor numbers are creating opportunities in travel, accommodation and food. It shows that sustainability in temple-towns depends on livelihood durability, socio-cultural continuity, participatory governance and distributional justice. By foregrounding actors often omitted from formal economic analysis, the paper reframes religious tourism as an embedded entrepreneurial ecosystem and calls for policies that strengthen local enterprise capability, resilience and participation. Full article

Consumers have become more interested in leading better and higher quality lives, and have become more aware of the health effects nutrition has on their body, stimulating the development of functional foods (FF), recognized for their ability to provide physiological benefits that go beyond conventional nutritional function. The evolution of this product category is supported by the progress of research on bioactive compounds and changing consumer preferences, but empirical evidence regarding the level of knowledge, acceptance and purchasing behavior of Romanian consumers remains insufficient. Meanwhile, technology in the food industry has evolved significantly in recent decades, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and consumers. Using empirical evidence from a survey carried out on the consumers in the region of Transylvania, the study uses a cross-sectional observational design and investigates the awareness of and the population’s differences in perception and attitude on FF products depending on the generations and socio-economic situations consumers belong to, and the impact FF have on the market. The analysis focuses on food choice behaviors, degree of trust in health benefits and factors influencing the decision-making process. The results show that consumers are not aware of the FF concept, but understand the relation between food choice behaviors and personal health and act accordingly. Results also show that older consumers are more aware of their health, and younger consumers are more influenced by trends. This paper can be of importance to consumers, entrepreneurs, food and technological industries, governments and universities. Full article

This study examines how Moroccan women reconcile entrepreneurial endeavors with domestic and social responsibilities. Adopting a qualitative relational framework, the research draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 17 female entrepreneurs across three regions. The findings indicate that entrepreneurship is positively associated with expanding women’s economic participation and enhancing their social status. However, the persistence of entrenched societal skepticism, disproportionate domestic responsibilities and exclusionary male-centric business networks constitutes a structural barrier to both policy designs and outcomes. The study concludes that women’s entrepreneurship in Morocco represents a social activism that requires a restructuring of intersectional realities to challenge the gendered status quo. Full article