This chapter explores the importance of rural entrepreneurship, which is defined as all activitie... more This chapter explores the importance of rural entrepreneurship, which is defined as all activities directed toward developing businesses in areas with small resident populations. This chapter highlights the ongoing transformation of rural areas from spaces of production to spaces of consumption, including the move toward tourism and leisure pursuits, which creates tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs. It also identifies challenges to entrepreneurial efforts, such as out-migration, limited public services, and lower labor productivity. This chapter critically examines the impact of policy initiatives aimed at encouraging business start-up in rural regions. Furthermore, it reviews academic literature on rural entrepreneurship and provides avenues for future research.
This paper explores how entrepreneurs accumulate and convert different forms of capital. By excha... more This paper explores how entrepreneurs accumulate and convert different forms of capital. By exchanging and converting financial, human, social, and symbolic capital, entrepreneurs can compensate for potential deficiencies and meet the evolving needs of their new ventures. Based on a review of the entrepreneurship literature, this paper presents avenues for future research into the resource management practices of entrepreneurs.
While it is well-established that entrepreneurs benefit from social support, little is known abou... more While it is well-established that entrepreneurs benefit from social support, little is known about how and when instrumental and emotional support from household members facilitate entrepreneurial action and persistence. Through a longitudinal, qualitative study, we develop a conceptual framework that shows how social support from the household becomes an integral part of the everyday activities of entrepreneurs. In contrast to the perception of social support as static, our findings illustrate it as a dynamic, ongoing process which is core to business startup and growth over time. We also challenge the perspectives that households are simply repositories of resources and entrepreneurs passive recipients of support by demonstrating that social support is necessarily interactive, whereby entrepreneurs and households play a collaborative role in entrepreneurship. Finally, we join the debate concerning mechanisms of social support by suggesting that the main effect model and buffering hypothesis are not contradictory, but are instead interdependent.
This study theoretically and empirically examines the important role that goal structures play in... more This study theoretically and empirically examines the important role that goal structures play in new venture teams. Specifically, we examine how creative self-efficacy affects the satisfaction of team members through cooperative and competitive goal interdependence. Relying on social cognitive and social interdependence theories, we contend that new venture teams' creative selfefficacy leads to higher team satisfaction because it promotes the perception of cooperative goal structures among team members. We test our theory on new venture teams in the independent board game industry. Results generally support our hypotheses and we discuss the implications for entrepreneurship research and practice.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 2019
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the extant body of literature on ar... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the extant body of literature on artisan entrepreneurship and to develop a research agenda for future studies based on the identified trends and themes. Design/methodology/approach – A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was undertaken across 96 journals ranked by the Association of Business Schools. The initial search yielded 86 papers. Further scrutiny of these studies led to the development of exclusion criteria, resulting in a refined list of 32 articles which advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship. Using an open coding approach, this SLR then identified seven core themes and 16 sub-themes which the extant literature examines. Findings – This SLR finds that artisan entrepreneurship research contributes to understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour, context, motivation, development, resources, diversity and classification. It provides timely insights into coopetition practices, the reciprocal relationship between place and entrepreneurship and the coexistence of social and economic goals. It also reveals characteristics which facilitate venture development, discovers the mutability of various forms of capital, highlights the necessity of studying diverse experiences and identifies benefits and limits of typologies. Main elements of the resulting research agenda include calls for more quantitative research, further attention to context and more holistic treatment of a wider variety of stories. Originality/value – This paper presents the first systematic literature review of craft and artisan entrepreneurship research. It not only identifies, analyses and critiques the main streams in the literature, therefore providing an overview of the state of the field, but also highlights areas where this scholarship contributes to understanding of entrepreneurship and upon which future research can build. Artisan entrepreneurship is thus established as worthy of investigation in its own right and as an appropriate context in which to explore entrepreneurial processes. Furthermore, this SLR presents an agenda for future research to advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship.
This article explores the effects of embeddedness in communities upon entrepreneurial practices. ... more This article explores the effects of embeddedness in communities upon entrepreneurial practices. Based on the lived experiences of 10 craft entrepreneurs, this study reveals that within certain contexts, such as craft communities, entrepreneurs are expected to exhibit high levels of camaraderie and generosity, which leads them to create social value by supporting their peers and freely sharing their resources. Entrepreneurs achieve 'fitting in' not only by learning accepted norms, but also by performing strategic actions which allow them to temporarily adapt their conduct to meet the expectations of community members. Thus, this study exposes a largely concealed element of social entrepreneurial practice. This article also reveals that embeddedness in communities can lead entrepreneurs to collaborate with potential competitors. Craft entrepreneurs share their economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital in order to support and help revitalise their communities, to perpetuate their respective industries and to sustain a genuine interest in hand-crafted products. They consider such supportive behaviour a social responsibility that is shared among community members and a task that is passed from one generation to the next. Thus, this article reveals that collaboration and social value creation can be embraced in response to community norms and expectations.
This article explores the activities involved in embedding a small firm in its industrial context... more This article explores the activities involved in embedding a small firm in its industrial context. Inductive analysis of longitudinal, case study data collected from a small firm in the creative industries highlights the use of networks and networking as embedding mechanisms. Key emergent themes include the impacts of pre-embeddedness (defined as the sum of all cultural, social and symbolic capital accessible to the founding team prior to business start-up), the vision and network orientation of the founding team and their strategic use of networking. The interplay between these conditions and activities is revealed as important in building legitimacy, which is critical for embedding a firm in its industrial context. This article extends knowledge of embedding beyond the initial phase of new venture creation and highlights the emergent and evolving dynamics behind this process.
A Research Agenda for Entrepreneurship and Context, Sep 30, 2016
In this chapter, we set out a research agenda for extending and deepening our understanding of em... more In this chapter, we set out a research agenda for extending and deepening our understanding of embeddedness in various contexts. Specifically, we advocate Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a conceptual frame for furthering our understanding of entrepreneurial embeddedness. We argue that it is time to question the primacy of economic capital and to, instead, consider in more detail the complex interplays of cultural, social, and symbolic capital. We also propose that future research explore a wider range of non-mainstream contexts, especially those lacking significant endowments of financial resources. Furthermore, we suggest that our epistemology should recognize the inter-subjectivity of entrepreneurial embeddedness and that we enact this through our methods.
A later version of this article has been accepted for publication in IJMR. Festivals are an impor... more A later version of this article has been accepted for publication in IJMR. Festivals are an important sub-field within event studies which, until recently, have not been studied as separate experiences. A systematic review of the emerging literature on festivals reveals several key characteristics. While festivals are diverse in nature and geographical location, scholarly interest focuses on five main themes across these variations: the motivations for organising, funding, and attending festivals; the experiences of festival attendees; the relationship between festivals and their local environments; the economic and socio-cultural impacts of festivals; and the management of festivals. Despite growing interest in festivals as research sites, little attention has been afforded to investigating festival processes. In particular, considerations of how festivals are established, and which individuals are involved in their initiation and regular staging, offer opportunities for research. This article highlights the significant role festivals play within their local communities, including their facilitation of social cohesion and regional identity. Our study reveals that the literature rarely discusses the development of festivals over time and the wider networks in which festivals are embedded. This critical review of festival research identifies various research gaps and directions for future research to develop theory and practical understanding of festivals.
The interplay between different forms of capital is not well understood; this article, therefore,... more The interplay between different forms of capital is not well understood; this article, therefore, explores how and why entrepreneurs convert their available economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. We utilise Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a conceptual framework to explore the lived experiences of 10 craft entrepreneurs. This study reveals that transforming capital is a natural and enjoyable process, with our findings highlighting the convertible, multifaceted nature of different forms of capital. We also uncover previously unidentified forms of capital conversions and demonstrate that the conversion process can involve multiple forms of capital. Furthermore, our findings show that craft entrepreneurs give no primacy to economic capital, whose transformations form part of a larger process of capital conversion.
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Papers by Tobias Pret
Design/methodology/approach – A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was undertaken across 96 journals ranked by the Association of Business Schools. The initial search yielded 86 papers. Further scrutiny of these studies led to the development of exclusion criteria, resulting in a refined list of 32 articles which advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship. Using an open coding approach, this SLR then identified seven core themes and 16 sub-themes which the extant literature examines.
Findings – This SLR finds that artisan entrepreneurship research contributes to understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour, context, motivation, development, resources, diversity and classification. It provides timely insights into coopetition practices, the reciprocal relationship between place and entrepreneurship and the coexistence of social and economic goals. It also reveals characteristics which facilitate venture development, discovers the mutability of various forms of capital, highlights the necessity of studying diverse experiences and identifies benefits and limits of typologies. Main elements of the resulting research agenda include calls for more quantitative research, further attention to context and more holistic treatment of a wider variety of stories.
Originality/value – This paper presents the first systematic literature review of craft and artisan entrepreneurship research. It not only identifies, analyses and critiques the main streams in the literature, therefore providing an overview of the state of the field, but also highlights areas where this scholarship contributes to understanding of entrepreneurship and upon which future research can build. Artisan entrepreneurship is thus established as worthy of investigation in its own right and as an appropriate context in which to explore entrepreneurial processes. Furthermore, this SLR presents an agenda for future research to advance understanding of artisan entrepreneurship.