Knowledge that Transforms

…I was a good musician, so I thought, what better thing than to start a music company?

Despite the importance of teams to entrepreneurial activity, few studies have investigated the corporate environment factors that encourage teams to be entrepreneurial. The authors propose a theory-driven model that links the understanding of entrepreneurial thinking to social cognition and the corporate environment. Using lessons from social cognition, they also link corporate entrepreneurship to entrepreneurial thinking. First, the intersection of entrepreneurship and cognition is explored. Next, the intersection of teams and cognition is studied. The last part explores the three-way intersection of cognition, entrepreneurship, and teams using an intentions-based perspective. The proposed intentions-based model of the social cognition of entrepreneurial teams emphasizes the importance of perceptions of desirability and feasibility, perceptions derived both from the individual and the team perspective. The teams' perceptions of feasibility and entrepreneurial intentions are triggered by self-efficacy and collective efficacy, whereas the teams' perceptions of desirability and entrepreneurial intentions refer to a team’s attitude toward entrepreneurial behavior. A number of propositions about entrepreneurial teams are made that will provide a deeper understanding of why known antecedents impact the level of entrepreneurship. Among the recommendations and opportunities of this of this study for future research is the intersection of teams and entrepreneurship.(CBS)

Although numerous countries have developed policies and programs to encourage entrepreneurial behavior in rural areas, there have been few attempts to compare the performance of entrepreneurial development programs in rural versus non rural settings. The existing literature led us to expect that such programs will be more efficient and effective in urban areas. However, in this study, virtually no significant relationships were found between urban and rural states—defined by the proportion of the population living in non-metropolitan counties—on the variables used to measure the performance of an entrepreneurship development program. This suggests that the need for special programs tailored to rural entrepreneurs deserves further, more critical, evaluation.

The premise of this article is that the management team of a small firm plays a key role in internationalization outcomes. Specifically, it is hypothesized that a greater degree of behavioral integration within a small firm's management team enables it to manage the complexity of foreign sales growth more effectively, leading to greater overall firm growth. Findings, based on data collected from two different industries (software products, food processing), support the hypothesis and indicate that the behavioral integration of the management team moderates the relationship between foreign sales growth and overall firm growth.