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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of courses offered to Ukrainian military personnel and their families to facilitate transfer to the civilian society, and to investigate the extent to which transfer to the civilian sector is associated with increased quality of life.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 1,077 former course participants by handing out a structured questionnaire at different locations in Ukraine.FindingsAmong the 40 courses arranged, 15 proved to be effective with regard to the odds of obtaining a civilian job, and 10 with regard to the odds of becoming a business owner. Business owners and civilian employees scored higher than military employees with regard to different indicators of quality of life. Individuals who are unemployed or not members of the workforce score lower on quality of life than any other group.Originality/valueThis study evaluates the courses offered in a large educational program where the Norwegian and Ukrainian government cooperate to facilitate transfer of military veterans in Ukraine to the civilian sector.

Previous research has found that owner/manager growth intention is related to subsequent firm growth, but growth intention alone only explains about 4&ndash, 5% of the variance in actual firm growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors in addition to growth intention that may help us to explain a higher proportion of the variance in firm growth. We selected three factors for our study: Entrepreneurial orientation, versatile human resources and labor productivity. We tested the hypotheses in a sample of small Norwegian accounting firms. The findings indicate that, after controlling for growth intention, versatile human resources and labor, productivity contributed to the explanation of the variance in sales and employment growth, while entrepreneurial orientation has no such additional effect.

The present research focuses upon new businesses which are started from scratch. The theories of reasoned action and planned behavior are used to formulate hypotheses concerning self-employment intentions and subsequent entry into self-employment. The hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from 297 Norwegian business founders. The results suggest that salient beliefs concerning self-employment determine attitudes toward self-employment, that attitude and subjective norm determine intentions to become self-employed, and that intentions to become self-employed determine actual entry into self-employment. The findings strongly support the theory of reasoned action, but provide no support for the extension of the theory represented by the theory of planned behavior.

Many farm households rely on income from multiple sources, a phenomenon known as pluriactivity. The present survey investigates whether this is a deliberate strategy rather than a situation forced upon the farm household by external conditions. This study explores the relationship between four income diversification strategies reported by farmers and household income. Data from a representative random sample of 901 Norwegian farm households is analysed using multiple regression. External employment and holding additional non-farm-related businesses is significantly positively related to household income. This shows that diversification into other economic sectors has a positive effect on income. Moreover, diversification within the farm sector has no effect on household income. The findings imply that future policy should consider pluriactivity as a deliberate strategy contributing to farm family wealth.

This study focuses on three different milestones in the business gestation process, i.e. becoming an aspiring entrepreneur, a nascent entrepreneur, and a founder of a fledgling new business. Moreover, this study uses a combination of both individual and regional (or environmental) factors in predicting individuals’ success or failure to reach each of these three milestones. Hypotheses are developed to test the effect that human and environmental resources have on the odds of reaching the different milestones in the business start-up process. The study is based on interviews of a representative sample of 9533 Norwegians aged 18 years or older. From this group, 197 respondents qualified as nascent entrepreneurs. These were subsequently interviewed in follow-up interviews conducted in 1996, 1997 and 1999. In addition, regional data at the municipality level is included to measure the available pool of environmental resources. The results indicate that entrepreneurial experience is the single most important f...

Entrepreneurship has become a widely taught subject in universities and business schools. However, only a very small number of studies have investigated the effect of entrepreneurship education. The present research compares the behaviour of business graduates with a major in entrepreneurship and graduates with other majors from a Norwegian business school. The results indicate that graduates with an entrepreneurship major are more likely to start new businesses and have stronger entrepreneurial intentions than other graduates.

In this, the second volume of the Handbook of Research in Entrepreneurship Education, leading international scholars highlight the unique characteristics and rich variety of research in entrepreneurship education. They adopt several different perspectives, focusing on key issues and significant developments in the field, and highlighting emergent new insights.

Despite an increasing trend in the number of females who start businesses in Western countries, the proportion of female compared to male entrepreneurs is still relatively low. Moreover, past research has found that females tend to start businesses with less potential for profitability and growth than men. Investigates gender differences among Norwegian entrepreneurs in the process of starting a new business. Tests the following three hypotheses: H1 ‐ during the business gestation process female entrepreneurs stress personal expectancies while male entrepreneurs stress economic expectancies; H2 ‐ during the business gestation process women perceive stronger social support than men do, and women put more emphasis on such support than men do; H3 ‐ female entrepreneurs perceive having less control and lower entrepreneurial abilities than their male counterparts. In support of H1 and H2, females were found to emphasize independence as a reason for start‐up, and to perceive a high degree of social support during the business gestation process. However, contrary to H3, females were found to perceive themselves as possessing higher entrepreneurial abilities than men.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the Norwegian Royal Ministry of Industry and the Bodø Graduate School of Business for the financial support that made this research possible. We would also like to thank the Society of Associated Researchers in Entrepreneurship under whose auspices the data for this study was collected. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 3rd Annual Global Entrepreneurship Conference, Lyon, France, March 1993. The present research investigated: (1) the relationship between entrepreneurs’ growth intentions and actual firm growth, (2) the stability of growth intentions, and (3) the relationship between changes in intentions and actual firm growth. Using a longitudinal design, data were collected from Norwegian entrepreneurs for 1990 and 1992. The results indicate that growth intentions may be used to predict actual growth, that past intentions are related to later intentions, and that changes in growth intentions are associated with changes in growth patterns.

The present research studied the strategy for new ventures using data from Norwegian and Swedish entrepreneurs. Strategy archetypes were developed based upon the firms’ choice of strategic means and scope. The study further investigated whether the choice of strategy was dependent on the stage of development of a new venture, and the extent to which strategy was related to profitability and growth in different stages of a new venture’s development. The findings generally support the hypotheses, suggesting that new firm strategic archetypes can be identified and that firms in different stages of development follow different strategies. Moreover, strategy was found to be particularly important for growth in the early implementation stage, and for profit in the stabilization stage of a new firm's development.

While growing new firms receive considerable attention in the literature, most firms are born small to stay small. Microeconomic and stage-of-development theories of growth generally assume that growth is a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with the entrepreneur's priorities. More recently, this assumption has been questioned by a number of authors. If the decision to start a business is a choice made by the founder, it may also be assumed that the decision to grow the business is a choice made by the entrepreneur. The present research investigates the relationship between the founder's motives to start the business, education, experience, industry, localization, characteristics of the organization and its environment, the firm's history of growth, and the entrepreneur's growth aspirations. The hypotheses are tested using data from 250 Norwegian entrepreneurs in four different counties of Norway who started their businesses in 1986. The entrepreneur's motives to start the business are found to be related to his or her growth aspirations, but this relationship does not appear to be very strong. Significant relationships are also found between education, industry, and a number of organizational variables, including past growth in turnover and past growth in the number of employees, and the entrepreneur's aspirations to grow the firm in the future. However, growth aspirations are not found to be significantly related to experience, sex, location, or the size of the firm as measured by the number of employees. Entrepreneurs who want their firm to grow and intend to hire additional employees seem to have started their businesses to achieve something, more so than other entrepreneurs. They also tend to have a higher level of education than other entrepreneurs. Moreover, entrepreneurs with strong growth aspirations tend to have started manufacturing firms rather than service firms, and their businesses are found to have fewer and more distant customers and a higher number of competitors than other firms. Almost 40% of the respondents answered that they do not want to grow the firm. This percentage is significantly higher for Norway than for a comparable sample of British and New Zealand entrepreneurs, suggesting that the widespread reluctance to grow found in Scandinavian research may be a cultural phenomenon. Future research should attempt to clarify the relationship between growth aspirations and actual growth, and seek to identify the cultural peculiarities that promote growth unwillingness among Scandinavian entrepreneurs.

The present survey focuses on independent baby businesses, defined as a de novo entries that are started from scratch. A total of 1,044 new businesses were identified using the Norwegian central coordinating register for business entities. The results indicate that the majority of businesses are born small to stay small. Important implications for policy makers and future research are indicated.