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This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing literature concerning the domains of accreditation and quality assurance in various sectors. Accreditation and quality assurance play vital roles in ensuring the credibility, transparency, and effectiveness of educational institutions, healthcare facilities, industries, and other domains. This paper synthesizes the findings of numerous studies, focusing on the conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and outcomes associated with accreditation and quality assurance processes. The review encompasses a wide range of perspectives, including historical context, best practices, challenges, and advancements in accreditation and quality assurance. Through a systematic analysis of these scholarly works, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of the evolving landscape of accreditation and quality assurance across diverse sectors and shed light on potential future research directions.

This paper presents data from two international projects focused on the interaction between changemaking and digital making in university students. The data is drawn from the contributions of 63 university students located in the United States, Romania, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and England. Using a design thinking methodology and a thematic analysis of student responses, the aim was to understand how the creative use of immersive technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality, might create an environment for changemaking practices in an international context. Findings suggest that students demonstrated not only enhanced digital skills and student engagement but increased cultural competence and global mindfulness. International digital collaboration can create conditions for students to develop changemaker attributes and identify as changemakers within the spheres of entrepreneurship and education, preparing them to be a force for change in the world.

This paper examines the current state of social innovation and entrepreneurship programming, courses, and centers within schools of public health through a survey data analysis. This report presents a cross-sectional survey conducted among faculty members of public health schools in the United States. The survey aims to determine the availability and current state of student-centered programs and courses centered around social innovation and entrepreneurship within schools of public health. Insights were drawn from 19 professionals across 15 schools of public health. Uncertainties surround the sustainability of current programs, with insufficient funding, human resources, and the need to teach more pressing topics identified as the most significant obstacles. Key areas identified as opportunities for growth were faculty engagement, expertise, and funding to expand more structured programming., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Hyde, Khoshnood, Chahine and Basrai.)

The Stanford Biodesign program was first introduced in Japan in 2015 at three national universities to develop medical technology innovation and its talent. This study aimed to (1) show the outcomes of leadership talent development, (2) indicate the educational results of the program, and (3) objectively analyze the ways in which the program executed in Japan, effectively promoted entrepreneurship orientation and the origination of new businesses. The latter is especially relevant as Japan has low entrepreneurial awareness and new business entry rates compared to the United States and Europe. Herein, fellows were subjected to questionnaires, interviews, and a survey based on academic papers, extant literature, and treatises issued by the Nihon Biodesign Gakkai (Academic Society of Japan Biodesign). Overall program performance showed notable results, despite indicating a need to improve business-related programs and team learning which is greatly influenced by Japanese culture. An externship program, planned and developed in Japan, was most inspiring and served to expose participants to role models. Comparing Japan Biodesign education elements to factors of general entrepreneurship promotion in Japan, sampled and organized from relevant White Papers, proved its educational effectiveness in entrepreneurship promotion from an objective viewpoint. Within the 4-year timeframe, the results indicated that leadership talent was indeed developed. Medical device innovation should progress through the stages of establishing new ventures, followed by contriving medical devices with novel, impactful value. This study revealed that Japan Biodesign education provides a platform for achieving these goals, despite the challenging Japanese new business environment., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (measured by total cases and deaths per 100K people) on the early-stage entrepreneurship activity (measured by the Kauffman Early-Stage Entrepreneurship indicators) in the United States. The empirical analyses are based on the panel dataset of 51 States between 2020 and 2021. The findings show that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affects early-stage entrepreneurship activity. Further analyses indicate the positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the startup's early survival rate. However, new entrepreneurs' rate and opportunity share are negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications for the post-COVID-19 era are also discussed., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Kang, Guo, Lu and Zhu.)

This paper examines debates about the "planning of science" that took place in the 1930s and 1940s in the United States and Britain and argues for their enduring relevance to today's philosophical literature on scientific pursuitworthiness. In addition to proposing desiderata for scientific pursuit that retain philosophical interest, such as social utility, coordination between branches of science, and the comprehensive development of science as a whole, advocates of the planning of science shared a sense of the inextricable relationship between the philosophy of scientific pursuit and the political economy of science, including the structure of science funding and scientific institutions. Critics of the planning of science were alarmed by the movement's socialist political orientation and developed a rival account of scientific pursuit framed by the economic metaphor of the independent businessman or entrepreneur. Taking advantage of the red scare in the United States in the early years of the Cold War, advocates of scientific entrepreneurship seized the upper hand over advocates of science planning during the shaping of the postwar American science policy regime. According to the science-as-entrepreneurship view, the role of science policy was only to make judgments about which individuals seemed best equipped, due to their personal intellectual or moral virtues, to make decisions about pursuitworthiness. The ultimate triumph of this view over the planning of science opened up a gap between the philosophy of pursuit and the political economy of science that persists to the present day., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In fragile communities where a high proportion of residents have limited opportunities for economic and social mobility, self-employment and entrepreneurship are possible pathways to economic and social mobility. If, for example, individuals perceive policing and offender sentencing as racially discriminatory and/or untrustworthy, criminal justice in fragile communities could potentially be a barrier to an individual's decision to start a business, as such a decision can be sensitive to whether the legal system will protect individual property rights. This paper considers how, in fragile communities, individual fairness assessments and perceptions of the criminal justice system condition nascent entrepreneurship abandonment—individuals who considered starting a business but did not. With data from the Center for Advancing Opportunity Fragile Community Survey on over 5,000 individuals in the United States, we estimate latent variable specifications of abandoned individual aspirations to start a business as a function of several measures of their fairness assessment/perception of the criminal justice system. Parameter estimates reveal that the likelihood of abandoned nascent entrepreneurship increases with respect to increases in an individual's assessment/perception that the criminal justice system is unfair in their community. Our results suggest that the criminal justice system is a barrier to entrepreneurship for residents of fragile communities, and that criminal justice reforms that promote fairness in policing and the courts could enhance economic and social mobility in fragile communities by increasing the likelihood of individuals starting businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been extensive research and examination dedicated to the advantages and disadvantages of entrepreneurship, both in general and specifically for African Americans. Significant research has been devoted to understanding the economic outcomes of African American men, and there is an area of opportunity to study how African American men, specifically, can leverage entrepreneurship to increase the probability of successful economic outcomes for themselves and their families. Entrepreneurial research has the potential to be leveraged to combat waning labor force participation rates and heightened unemployment rates among African American men. Leveraging the theories of Trust, Goal-Orientation, Logotherapy, and Social Identity Theory, a study was conducted among United States-based business owners. The sample size was forty-one African American male business owners. The results demonstrate how these African American men have leveraged entrepreneurship to build social capital and wealth, while improving their standard of living, as well as highlight the hurdles and barriers they have endured during the process of business ownership. The majority of African American owned business are owned by African American men, and this study provides insights into the phenomenology of African American male entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs are hailed as economic heroes and drivers of job growth. Yet an analysis of Current Population Survey data of U.S. residents between ages 50--64 demonstrates that entrepreneurs disproportionately lack health insurance and workplace retirement savings program coverage. Finding that nearly 1 in 10 adults in this age range are self-employed, this study documents disparities by self-employment incorporation status, gender, and race and ethnicity. Using a financial capability perspective, program and policy actions to reduce these disparities are highlighted. If enacted, more entrepreneurship could be unlocked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the relationship between unpaid housework and business ownership in the United States. To examine this empirically, it uses Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data from 1985 to 2019 to document patterns in household production among business-owning households, with a special focus on Black and White opposite-sex couples in the United States. Descriptive evidence suggests that in married White couples, husbands face lower housework hours when owning a business compared to those who do not. However, this result does not hold for Black men. In fact, among Black couples, results suggest positive associations between wives' business ownership and their housework hours. These results suggest the presence of patriarchal social norms allows White entrepreneurial men to extract rents: White men's entrepreneurship may be propped up by their unique ability to recede from domestic responsibilities, a notion consistent with theories on patriarchal rent seeking. Among US couples, less time spent on housework may provide advantages for entrepreneurs. White businesses-owning husbands are afforded reduced housework relative to peers. This phenomenon is unique among White men. Black businesses-owning wives do more housework than non-entrepreneuring peers. Industry selection does not explain away this trend among Black women. Race and gender hierarchies allow White men more resources in entrepreneurship. Small-business policymakers should work to alleviate inequities in unpaid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal institutions, for example, regulations, are considered crucial determinants of entrepreneurship, but what enables regulatory change when there is a regulatory void, meaning entrepreneurship clashes with existing regulations? Drawing on public choice theory, we hypothesize that regulatory freedom facilitates the introduction of legislation to fill such voids. We test this hypothesis using unique data documenting the time for ridesharing to become legalized at the state level across the United States following its local (and often illegal) rollout. Results suggest states with greater regulatory freedom passed ridesharing legislation quicker, highlighting an underappreciated way that extant regulatory freedom facilitates the accommodation of entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically examine the relationship between business regulation and total (i.e., formal and informal) entrepreneurship using a unique panel data set. We estimate separate regressions for opportunity-driven and necessity-driven nascent entrepreneurship as well as young business entrepreneurship based on two different estimation methods (pooled OLS and system GMM). Our results show that business regulation generally rather hinders entrepreneurship. If we additionally consider the development stage of countries, we find different results for high-income and lower-income countries: first, we surprisingly find that stricter employment protection legislation positively affects entrepreneurship in lower-income countries where the informal sector is larger. This might be because more rigid employment laws make waged employment less attractive to employers, who thus push employees into dependent or informal self-employment. Second, we find that stricter insolvency regulation hinders entrepreneurship only in high-income economies. In lower-income economies, where there are more unregistered businesses, insolvency laws might be more difficult to enforce, so entrepreneurship rates are less affected. Third, we find that government intervention in the form of high-quality governmental support programs stimulates opportunity nascent and young business entrepreneurship. This relationship is apparent only in high-income countries, where the formal sector is larger, as such programs typically address formal rather than informal entrepreneurs. Governmental support programs may thus reach the goal of facilitating entrepreneurship only in high-income economies. Plain English Summary: How does regulation affect entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurial activity is seen as a major driver of economic growth, as it turns knowledge into economic output. This justifies the interest of policy makers around the world in promoting entrepreneurship. While the United States, well-known for their entrepreneurial spirit, have achieved global dominance in the innovation-driven information and communication technology industry, Western European nations failed to catch up in terms of new business creation. This may be due to the different approaches in terms of new business regulations. Nevertheless, our study suggests that a combination of both the low regulation route pursued by the United States and the high support route favored in Continental Europe may best promote the creation of new firms. However, the impact of regulatory measures depends on the development stage of countries and thus on the size of the formal and informal sector. The simultaneous deregulation of firm entry and provision of government support programs might be most fruitful to facilitate entrepreneurial activity, particularly in highly developed economies. However, policy makers in developing economies should consider that some measures, such as improving the labor market regulation, may push people into informal entrepreneurship, which might not be desirable from the policy maker's perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate underlying sources of the US entrepreneurial ecosystem's advantage compared to other innovative economies by assessing the benefits that Israeli startups derive from migrating to the United States. Addressing positive sorting into migration, we show that migrants raise larger funding amounts and are more likely to have a U.S. trademark and be acquired than nonmigrants. Migrants also achieve a higher acquisition value. However, their patent output is not larger. We conclude that the United States entrepreneurial ecosystem's advantage vis-à-vis other innovative economies arises from several sources producing sizeable gains for startups. These sources are investor availability as well as large consumer and acquisitions markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship research, as with most organizational research, almost always adopts a race neutral lens through which racial inequality is understood as exogenous to organizational theories. This approach is problematic because entrepreneurship is an embedded process and cannot be understood independent of its contexts, and the contexts in which it unfolds are often marked by racial inequality despite the apparent absence of overt racial antipathy. We examine more than 100 articles that address entrepreneurship and race, with a focus on underrepresented minorities in the United States: African, Hispanic, and Native Americans. From these articles, we not only derive why minority entrepreneurs continue to be disadvantaged despite widespread support for their entrepreneurship, but we also elevate themes of racial agency endemic to entrepreneurship from marginalized racial positions. We argue that entrepreneurship research needs to consider race; that is, scholars need to incorporate racialized structures into their theorizing. Doing so not only will highlight the structural underpinnings of racial disadvantage for underrepresented minority entrepreneurs, but it also casts entrepreneurship as an essential mechanism for racial agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persons with disabilities (PWDs) are disproportionately unemployed, underpaid, and underemployed despite their desire and capacity to work. The U.S. federal/state vocational rehabilitation (VR) program, under the supervision of the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), is charged with providing services to assist eligible PWDs (VR consumers) in achieving employment. Despite research showing that VR consumers closed to self-employment (vs. non-self-employment closures) have better outcomes, self-employment is often considered as a last resort. Moreover, some evidence suggests self-employment (like non-self-employment) outcomes are associated with VR consumers' gender and racial/ethnic identity. The objective of this study was to determine trends of case closures in self-employment among PWDs within the VR program from 2011–2013 to 2017–2019 and to examine the effects of gender and race/ethnicity on self-employment outcomes. Variables of interest were obtained from RSA's Case Service Report (RSA-911) data set for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Data were recoded and analyzed. The number of closures in self-employment declined significantly. Weekly earnings in self-employment increased. Time from application to closure in self-employment decreased. Differences in VR self-employment outcomes by race/ethnicity and gender were noted. Efforts should be made to increase competency in self-employment of VR counselors and promote self-employment within the VR program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how Peruvians in Paterson, New Jersey, have utilized entrepreneurship and informality to establish the first and most visible enclave of Peruvians in the United States since the 1960s. Central to this story is the concept of recurseo, a slang word used to describe the informal and creative means in which Peruvians utilize their labor experiences and kinship ties for self-employment. By using informality and recurseo, they were able to leave their factory jobs and establish their own businesses. These entrepreneurs opened restaurants, insurance offices, and small corporations that created an emergent market for products and services that contributed to the development of a thriving ethnic enclave. The informal economic practices introduced by Peruvians altered the social and economic landscape of Paterson and helped to revitalize the local economy. Through the use of oral histories from Peruvian entrepreneurs, archival material from local newspapers, and memoirs declassified by the Peruvian consulate of Paterson, this article challenges the oversimplified portrayal of Peruvians and other Latino immigrants as factory or farm workers with few opportunities for socio-economic advancement. It demonstrates that Latinos use informality and other alternative avenues to achieve wealth and ethnic empowerment in the process of adjustment and community building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Investigate the connection between broadband and new business activity. • Instrumental variables approach based on development of the Internet by the U.S. military. • Broadband availability was associated with an increase in new business activity. • Broadband was associated net creation of new businesses. • Broadband may have crowded out business activity in the manufacturing industry. Research investigating the linkages between broadband and new business activity in countries around the world produce mixed results related to important nuances in this relationship pertaining to industry characteristics, geography, and the skill level of the workforce. Given these nuances, the goal of this study is to investigate the connection between broadband availability and new business activity, building on regional and rural-focused studies within the United States. Specifically, our paper conducts a nationwide assessment of the relationship between broadband and new business activity, in the early years of broadband in the late 1990s/early 2000s when it had the most potential to disrupt industries and open up new entrepreneurial opportunities. Using an instrumental variables approach based on the development of the Internet by the U.S. military, we estimate the impact of broadband availability on total and net new business creation. Results suggest that access to broadband was associated with an increase in new business activity and net creation of new businesses. We also find evidence that access to broadband was important in the creation of businesses in knowledge- oriented industries who benefited from the rise of the Internet. At the same time, we also find broadband may have crowded out business activity in the manufacturing industry. Combined, our results suggest disruptive innovations related to broadband Internet connections are important for small business creation in many, but not all industries. Given these linkages, expanding access to broadband may help generate new business activity and business growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relationship between ethnicity, occupational choice, and entrepreneurship. Immigrant groups in the United States cluster in specific business sectors. For example, Koreans are 34 times more concentrated in self-employment for dry cleaning than other immigrant groups, and Gujarati-speaking Indians are 84 times more concentrated in managing motels. We quantify that smaller and more socially isolated ethnic groups display higher rates of entrepreneurial concentration. This is consistent with a model of social interactions where nonwork relationships facilitate the acquisition of sector-specific skills and result in occupational stratification along ethnic lines via concentrated entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female entrepreneurs in rural America are rarely studied, despite local economic context likely shaping their (self‐) employment choices. Development literature suggests entrepreneurship is most prevalent at the lowest and highest income levels, creating a U‐shaped relationship between economic development measured with per capita income on the x‐axis and the entrepreneurship rate (startups) on the y‐axis. At the county level in the United States, we find that female‐led startup rates vary with per capita income in the predicted U‐shape. Results provide support for place‐based entrepreneurship policy and highlight challenges women face while trying to contribute to the rural economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to study inequality in innovation? Often, the focus has been gender gaps in patenting. Yet much is missing from our understanding of gendered inequality in innovation with this focus. This review discusses how gender and innovation are intertwined in durable academic inequalities and have implications for who is served by innovation. It summarizes research on gender and race gaps in academic entrepreneurship (including patenting), reasons for those longstanding inequities, and concludes with discussing why innovation gaps matter, including the need to think critically about academic commercialization. And while literature exists on gender gaps in academic entrepreneurship and race gaps in patenting, intersectional analyses of innovation are missing. Black feminist theorists have taught us that gender and race are overlapping and inseparable systems of oppression. We cannot accurately understand inequality in innovation without intersectionality, so this is a serious gap in current research. Intersectional research on gender and innovation is needed across epistemic approaches and methods. From understanding discrimination in academic entrepreneurship to bringing together critical analyses of racial capitalism and academic capitalism, there is much work to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of biomedical research is funded by public, governmental, and philanthropic grants. These initiatives often shape the avenues and scope of research across disease areas. However, the prioritization of disease-specific funding is not always reflective of the health and social burden of each disease. We identify a prioritization disparity between lung and breast cancers, whereby lung cancer contributes to a substantially higher socioeconomic cost on society yet receives significantly less funding than breast cancer. Using search engine results and natural language processing (NLP) of Twitter tweets, we show that this disparity correlates with enhanced public awareness and positive sentiment for breast cancer. Interestingly, disease-specific venture activity does not correlate with funding or public opinion. We use outcomes from recent early-stage innovation events focused on lung cancer to highlight the complementary mechanism by which bottom-up "grass-roots" initiatives can identify and tackle under-prioritized conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how individual factors moderate the impact of bankruptcy exemption levels—that is, the amount of wealth individuals can keep in case of bankruptcy—on entry into self-employment. Conceptually, we combine Prospect Theory's axiom of diminishing sensitivity with insights from research on entrepreneurial failure. We hypothesize that individuals who face higher financial, social, or psychological costs because of bankruptcy will be less sensitive to higher exemption levels than will those who face lower costs across these dimensions. Our empirical results, which are based on a quasi-natural experiment in the United States, support our theoretical predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Career paths are formed over time from interactions between individuals, organizations, and labor markets within and across geographic locations. What are the prototypical career paths thus formed? Who are the likely incumbents of these career paths? What are the consequences of pursuing these career paths? This study combines micro-level perspectives on personal agency and macro-level institutional factors to explain how careers unfold over time and space. The juxtaposition of micro- and macro-level factors contributes to career research and practice, which have traditionally examined careers as movements across organizations and occupations over time, but almost exclusively within specific geographic locations. We make a significant contribution to theory and practice by analyzing sequences of jobs and residence locations for 2836 individuals drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The analyses reveal eight prototypical career paths, some commonly found across geographic locations and others idiosyncratic to specific geographic locations. The profiles of the career path incumbents vary regarding gender, ethnicity, and education attainment. We find that the objective career success associated with prototypical career paths is more a function of human capital accumulation and career choices than geographic locations. We close by discussing our findings' implications for career research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]