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This study investigates the impact of socio-emotional wealth (SEW) on family firm entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in in Saudi Arabia, and the moderating effect of generational involvement on this relationship. Our data set comprises 241 privately, wholly owned family firms. We examine EO as a strategic orientation expressed in terms of both firm behavior and how managers approach risk-taking attitudinally. Our study finds that SEW is positively related to firms’ entrepreneurial behavior, but not managerial attitudes toward risk-taking. However, the positive effects of SEW on firms’ entrepreneurial behavior diminish as the number of generations involved in the family business increases. The broader implications for enabling entrepreneurship within Arab transforming economies adhering to strong cultural tribalistic norms are discussed.

This article reviews the literature on entrepreneurship and crises, capturing where we have been and where we are now, and begins to discuss where we might go next. It centres around how we have co...

This chapter examines the recovery strategies of small businesses in the aftermath of a crisis, specifically, the England riots of 2011, and the resources integral to such. Drawing on qualitative interviews with owner-managers of 15 businesses affected by the rioting in London, this chapter builds on resilience research and draws from Conservation of Resources Theory to highlight the importance of devising strategies that both utilise existing resources and invest in new resources. Recovery strategies were found to be social, economic and personal in nature.

This study explores in real time how small businesses adjust to an unfolding crisis in the initial crisis impact period and what kinds of actions they take. A weekly diary study following a group of entrepreneurs in London over the first couple months of the COVID-19 inspired lockdown across the UK beginning March 23, 2020, found that small businesses were knocked down but not out by events. Small businesses were increasing their chances of survival (going the distance) by 1) monitoring business functioning and detecting risks (checking vitals), 2) initiating quick defensive moves to absorb damages and defend against additional risks (blocking), 3) undertaking more skilful moves to avoid further damages (deflecting), and 4) planning the next move and managing expectations (developing tactical awareness). While the unfolding crisis does not literally represent a fight, features of how boxers engage in a fight were borrowed to help explain small business responses.

The aim of this Special Issue is to examine more closely the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and crises. Crises tend to have severe consequences for businesses, generating ambiguity a...

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential influence of friendship on entrepreneurial teams (ETs) and on venture formation and development. The theoretical framework is built on the literature around friendship ties, the interaction of friendship ties and professional ties, and ETs.Design/methodology/approach– Taking an interpretative methodological approach, the authors carried out qualitative interviews with ten business founders in Paris, France.Findings– The authors identified different four profiles or types of ETs according to how friendship ties interact with professional ties among team members, which the authors designate as “fusion” and “separation”, and describe the orientation of this interaction, which the authors label as “affective” or “strategic”. These profiles affect the emergence of the idea and the choice of members in the formation of teams. They also shape the functioning of teams in terms of decision-making processes, recruitment and investment.Research limitations/implications– The findings underline the difficulties of studying friendship in ETs empirically and recommend longitudinal approaches for further research.Practical implications– Findings offer insights in to why and how ETs based on friendship ties approach the pre-launch, launch and development phases of businesses as well as in to the interactions between professional and friendship ties, which is helpful to both practitioners and academics. The authors also discuss the consequences and implications of the different team types in terms of their risks and strategies for mitigating these risks.Originality/value– This is one of the first empirical studies to examine how friendship and professional ties may combine and evolve in ETs, and their influence on the entrepreneurial process as it relates to venture formation and development.

We examine the unique challenges of entrepreneurs and organizations in nascent craft markets in which normative expectations are negotiated, navigated, and sometimes defied. In this collection of p...

This article examines the impact of a crisis on small firms. Taking a phenomenological research approach, qualitative interviews were conducted to capture the experiences of small businesses directly affected by looting, vandalism and/or arson in the London 2011 riots. This study adds to the literature on crisis management by highlighting the different types of losses encountered by small businesses following a crisis and the role individual owner–managers, businesses and the wider community play in enhancing or minimizing losses. A model is developed to capture those factors that influence which small businesses were vulnerable or resilient to the riots.

We offer a critique of conventional approaches to entrepreneurial barriers and point to the neglect of social and emotional processes in their operation. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 25 entrepreneurs in Russia, we suggest that power rituals between entrepreneurs and state officials may impair entrepreneurial motivation. Our main contribution lies in conceptualizing barriers not simply as objective obstacles but as processes of barring, and in exploring how these might emerge. We elaborate a model of the social nature of barriers and the mediating role played by emotions. We discuss the implications of barring for entrepreneurial action more broadly.

A perennial question for management scholars, economists and policy makers alike is why businesses do or do not grow. One way of explaining why so many businesses do not grow is through the notion of `barriers'. In formerly planned European economies in transition, barriers have been used to account for why so few businesses grow and why the SME sector has not developed as widely or rapidly as expected; yet, studies in this context tell us very little about why, how or indeed, if, this is the case.This article explores the limitations of the previous approach to investigating barriers, looking at the research assumptions, definitional issues, conceptualizations, and methodological limitations and challenges present in some of these studies. It begins to develop and integrate the previous approach into a more rounded methodology, shifting the focus away from prediction to understanding, and away from quantifying what kinds of barriers affect growth to exploring how barriers may influence growth intentions and behaviours. It encourages researchers to unpack the meaning of barriers and to take into account the context in which they are perceived. It also aims to overcome some of the challenges encountered by researchers working in transition environments.

This paper examines the role of negative emotions in the social processes of entrepreneurship. Drawing on a study of Russian entrepreneurs, we develop a model of the emotional effects of social interactions between entrepreneurs and state officials. We found that negative emotions were elicited by these interactions and, in turn, fueled three forms of shame–related corrective appeasement behavior (reactive, anticipatory, and sporadic), which served to corrode entrepreneurial motivation and direct attention and energy away from business growth and development.