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This study investigates income among salaried employees who were self-employed between 2005 and 2015 and returned to salaried employment in 2016. We argue that salaried employees who experiment with self-employment are likely to suffer a short-term income penalty when they return to wage employment. The hypotheses are tested in a large sample of Norwegian full-time employed non-entrepreneurs who became self-employed between 2005 and 2015 and returned to paid employment in 2016. The findings indicate that the relationship between the number of years as self-employed and income is U-shaped. The findings also show that the income penalty associated with former self-employment can be reduced by returning to the initial employer and by taking advantage of industry experience obtained from business ownership when choosing employer. JEL Codes: J01, J30, J31

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.

This study concerns the relationship between individual characteristics, the propensity to become owners of incorporated firms, and endurance as business owners. We start with a large sample of non-entrepreneurs in 2004 and identify those individuals in this cohort who became and remained majority owners of incorporated businesses between 2005 and 2016. The results indicate that individual characteristics can explain a significant proportion of the variance in the propensity to become owners of incorporated firms as well as business owner endurance. One important finding is that prior income is strongly positively related to becoming and remaining owners of incorporated firms. Unit Licence Agreement

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between three central dimensions of quality in small accounting firms and firm performance. The three dimensions of quality investigated are: human resource (HR) quality, information technology (IT) quality and service quality. Firm performance is measured in two different ways: perceived performance and return on sales (ROS). We tested the hypotheses in a sample of 506 small Norwegian accounting firms. The results indicate that service quality relate positively to perceived performance and ROS. Human resource quality is positively related to perceived performance, but not ROS. IT quality is not related to perceived performance and negatively related to ROS. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence for a positive relationship between service quality and firm financial performance and has important implications for accounting firms and their clients.

The preference for self-employment varies much between countries. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the preference for self-employment, new business start-up intentions and actual start-up efforts. This research is an application of the theory of planned behaviour. Data were collected using telephone interviews from a representative sample of Norwegian adults aged 18–64 years. The results support the theory, showing that the preference for self-employment, together with measures of subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, predicts business start-up intentions. These intentions, in turn, together with perceived behavioural control, predict involvement in business start-up efforts. This study has important implications for policymakers and future research.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of business growth expectations and subsequent accumulated sales revenues and employment costs. Hypotheses are derived guided by the theory of planned behaviour.Design/methodology/approachThe authors followed a sample of 207 incorporated businesses started in May/June 2002 over a ten-year period. The hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regression analysis.FindingsThe results suggest that the entrepreneurs’ need for social cohesion, subjective norm with regard to business growth and perceived self-efficacy with regard to opportunity recognition are positively and significantly associated with business growth expectations. These expectations, reported at the time of business registration, accurately predict subsequent short-term as well as long-term accumulated sales revenues and labour costs, but this is not the case for entrepreneurs with novel business ideas.Practical implicationsSince entrepreneurs’ attitude, subjective norm and self-efficacy are possible to change, the findings should interest policy makers and educators. Measures aimed at enhancing the antecedents of entrepreneurs’ growth expectations should be considered. The findings that growth expectations have a long-lasting effect on sales and employment stress the importance of entrepreneurs’ subjective expectations for outcomes in new businesses.Originality/valueThere is a lack of studies using a longitudinal design when investigating the link between initial business growth expectations and subsequent firm outcomes. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature in this regard by using high-quality secondary data to examine firm achievements.

Purpose – The purpose of the present empirical study is to investigate the relationship between education in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviour and compare the effectiveness of frequently used entrepreneurship education teaching approaches. Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses are derived from the “Theory of Planned Behaviour” (“TPB”), which suggests that education in entrepreneurship is positively related to attitude (“A”), subjective norm (“SN”) and perceived behavioural control (“PBC”); that the effect on A, SN and PBC is stronger for extensive courses in entrepreneurship than for more superficial forms of educational efforts; and that education only influences entrepreneurial intentions indirectly through the effect on A, SN and PBC. The hypotheses are tested using data from two different surveys, one from Belgium and one from Norway. Findings – None of the hypotheses are supported. However, the findings from the study indicate a strong direct relationship between participation in extensive education programmes in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intention. Research limitations/implications – Additional empirical evidence would be required to confirm these results and help to improve our understanding of the validity bounds of the TPB in the field of entrepreneurship. Practical implications – The findings indicate that educational programs or events of limited duration have a rather limited usefulness and that efforts should rather be directed on programs of longer duration. This would, for instance, speak for a re-orientation of some policies like those financing short seminars on venture creation for unemployed people. Originality/value – Using data from two different surveys, one from Belgium and one from Norway, this study raises questions about the sufficiency of the TPB.

This qualitative study among 591 business students from four European countries investigated cross-country differences in the kind of barriers people perceive to business start-up. In line with institutional theory, the most important perceived barriers in all countries related to regulative structures (lack of money) and cognitive conditions (lack of skills). Normative structures, defined as national culture, did not explain cross-country differences in perceived risk as start-up barrier. In Norway and The Netherlands, students reported risk perceptions more often than in Romania and Russia, whereas the latter countries are known to be more uncertainty avoidant. These results aid in developing a theory of entrepreneurial barriers, which could be used to extend current entrepreneurial intentions theories in order to predict actual start-up behaviour better. Concerning practical implications, results indicate that business start-up can be stimulated through improving regulative and cognitive institutional structures, but national differences need to be taken into account.

Purpose – This paper aims to explore whether an integrated conceptual model (ICM) relating to factors drawn from entrepreneurial event theory (EET) (i.e. perceived desirability and perceived feasibility) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (i.e. attitudes toward the behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control) explains more of the variance relating to the intention to become an entrepreneur than individual EET or TPB models.Design/methodology/approach – Survey information from 192 students from three universities in the Ukraine was hand collected. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses presented.Findings – Models relating to EET, the TPB and the ICM explained 40 per cent, 55 per cent and 60 per cent of the variance in the entrepreneurial intention dependent variable, respectively. Students reporting higher levels of perceived desirability, perceived feasibility, attitude toward the behaviour (i.e. enterprise) and perceived behavioural control were more likely ...

PurposeThis study proposes to use the Theory of Planned Behaviour to predict entrepreneurial intentions among students in five developing and nine developed countries. The purpose is to investigate whether entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents differ between developing and developed countries, and to test the theory in the two groups of countries.Design/methodology/approachA total of 2,225 students in 13 countries participated in this study by responding to a structured questionnaire in classrooms. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.FindingsThe findings indicate that respondents from developing countries have stronger entrepreneurial intentions than those from developed countries. Moreover, the respondents from developing countries also score higher on the theory's antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions – attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control – than respondents from developed countries. The findings support the Theory of Planned Behaviour in both developing and developed countries.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings strongly support the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The measure of subjective norms used, a multiple‐item index encompassing the views of other people and motivation to comply with these, seems to have advantages over other measures of this concept.Practical implicationsDeveloping countries need to focus on the development of institutions that can support entrepreneurial efforts. At the same time, developed economies may need to accept that entrepreneurial intentions are dependent on the dynamism of an economic environment and possibly on risk‐perceiving behaviours.Originality/valueWhile multiple‐country studies on entrepreneurship in developing and developed countries have been called for, no previous study has compared entrepreneurial intentions between developing and developed countries. The inclusion of developing countries provides a unique quasi‐experimental setting in which to test the theory.

The level of self-employment varies significantly among immigrants from different countries of origin. The objective of this research is to examine the relationship between home-country national intelligence and self-employment rates among first generation immigrants in Norway. Empirical secondary data on self-employment among immigrants from 117 countries residing in Norway in 2008 was used. The relevant hypothesis was tested using hierarchical regression analysis. The immigrants’ national intelligence was found to be significantly positively associated with self-employment. However, the importance of national IQ for self-employment among immigrants decreases with the duration of residence in Norway. The study concludes with practical implications and suggestions for future research.

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...

Two competing models of innovation behavior in organizations are tested. The first model is derived from the corporate entrepreneurship literature, suggesting that the extent to which the organization has a deliberate entrepreneurship strategy determine employees' involvement in innovation and change (Kanter, 1984). The competing model is derived from the intrapreneurship literature, primarily Pinchot (1985) and Pinchot and Pellman (1999), where the emphasis is on the employee's individual personality measured by items derived from Pinchot's (1985) test: "Are you an intrapreneur?" Both models are compared to a base model that contains relevant control variables. Finally, a fourth model, which combines all variables are compared to the other three. The models are tested using a sample of 634 business graduates employed in a diverse set of occupations and organizations. The results indicate that both the strategy and personality models outperform the base model. Moreover, the model that combines the personality of the individual and the strategy of the organization performs even better than the each of the two models separately.

Hybrid entrepreneurs are people who start businesses whilst they have salaried jobs. About fifty percent of all new businesses are started by hybrids. Hybrid entrepreneurship is a low-risk way of testing business ideas, gaining entrepreneurial experience and developing business management skills.

The present research investigated employment status choice intentions, defined as the decision to enter an occupation as a waged or salaried individual as opposed to a self-employed one. Hypotheses based on tracking models and the theory of planned behaviour were tested on a sample of 512 Russian students from three different universities in St. Petersburg. The results showed that the theory of planned behaviour, not tracking models or demographics, determined employment status choice intentions.

This article explores the new business gestation process among three types of entrepreneurs: novice founders, serial founders (i.e., those individuals who have previously owned a business but sold it or closed it down), and parallel founders (i.e., those individuals who own at least one business while trying to start another). Founders were identified from a random sample of 9,533 Norwegian adults. Data were collected during 1996. One hundred and sixty respondents were classified as nascent entrepreneurs (i.e., those individuals starting a new business from scratch). One year later, information was collected from this group of nascent entrepreneurs surrounding their current activities. Detailed analysis revealed several differences with regard to the activities carried out during the gestation process among the three types of founders. Most notably, parallel entrepreneurs where found to have a higher probability of venture implementation than novice and serial founders.

The present research investigated pre-start ventures using an expectancy theory model of organisational formation. The dependent variable was the fate of the venture idea, whether it was abandoned or implemented. The suggested model focuses on three predictors of new venture implementation: motivation to start businesses, venture valuation, and finance. Data was collected from users of an entrepreneurial hot line in Norway. The findings illustrate that financial expectancies, finance, and risk expectancy are related to implementation of new ventures. Moreover, people who are motivated to start businesses in order to create employment opportunities or to achieve self-realisation are found to be less likely to implement their plans.

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.

The present research applied the theory of planned behavior to predict employment status choice, defined as the intention to enter an occupation as a wage or salaried individual or as a self-employed one. The role of family background, sex, and prior self-employment experience was also investigated. Using a sample of 128 Norwegian undergraduate business students, the findings strongly support the theory of planned behavior as applied to employment status choice intentions. Moreover, demographic characteristics were found to influence employment status choice intentions only indirectly through their effect on attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control.

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.

This research developed a classification scheme of reasons given for preferring self-employment versus organizational employment. Using an open-ended approach, data were collected from persons who had obtained a master's degree in business from a Norwegian business school during the 1987–1994 period. The classification scheme that emerged questions the relevance of earlier models, which have been used to explain and predict occupational status choice.

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.

Describes a research project to identify an information search pattern among entrepreneurs so that agencies devoted to the promotion of new business might allocate their resources more effectively. Sources of information used by entrepreneurs were divided into five categories: family and friends, business relations, public agencies, professional advisers and books and other written sources of information. Suggests in light of the findings that professional advisors and public agencies should actively seek information and contact their target group rather than passively supply information when approached.

PROFESSOR LARS KOLVEREID IS WITH the Bodo Graduate School of Business, Bodo, Norway, and Krzysztof Obloj is with the School of Management, University of Warsaw, Poland. The main aim of this research was to investigate similarities and differences between entrepreneurs and their businesses in an emerging market economy represented by Poland, and in mature, developed economies, portrayed by Great Britain and Norway. Because Polish entrepreneurs are new entrants in the developing market economy, the authors did not have a body of theories, or models or even empirical research that could be used to develop hypotheses or research questions. Therefore, the study is primarily of an exploratory character and focused on four questions: 1) How supportive and resourceful are the environments of entrepreneurs in these countries; 2) To what extent are policy and support services available to new businesses; 3) What are the reasons leading to new firm formation; 4) What attitudes to entrepreneurship do the owners of new ventures have? The results indicate that Polish entrepreneurs, in spite of different backgrounds and starting conditions, are surprisingly similar to those in developed countries, face similar problems and resource constraints.

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.

The Norwegian PSED (NO-PSED) was designed to explore the prevalence and characteristics of potential and actual business founders in Norway, as well as attitudes towards entrepreneurs in the Norwegian context. The focus emphasized business-gestation activities, their sequences and frequencies, and how they are related to the propensity of actually starting a new business. The original objective was to examine the relationships between activities in the start-up process and performance of new businesses in terms of profitability and growth. For reasons to be explained later, these issues received limited attention.

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.

INTRODUCTION The formation and growth of new firms is a complex process and many factors associated with this process can only be identified by in-depth investigation at the microlevel of the new firm and the new firm founder(s). A wide range of models have been proposed to explain why businesses are formed (Cooper 1970, 1971; Shaper

The present research investigates whether the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) and the model of the entrepreneurial event (Shapero and Sokol, 1982) can be integrated into one model of entrepreneurial intentions, and clarifies the differences between different types of entrepreneurial intentions. The model is tested using data from 324 Russian university business students. The results indicate that the two intentions models can be successfully integrated into one, where attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control determine desirability-feasibility, which in turn, determines intentions.

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.