To capture the talents of the next generations in new venture creation and to maintain the levels of entrepreneurship in our society, a vibrant "pipeline" of potential entrepreneurs is required. Previous research has shown this pipeline may still be weak, especially for women entrepreneurs. This paper explores the relationships between gender, entrepreneurial education, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors using the data from different sample groups in three different stages of education and career development: middle and high school students, MBA students, and early career adults. The results of our analyses underscore the importance of entrepreneurial self-efficacy as a key component in understanding entrepreneurship interest and actual career choice. The positive influence of entrepreneurship education on self-efficacy proved stronger for women than for men. Implications for entrepreneurship educators as well as study limitations and areas for future research are discussed.

When firms compete in the managerial labor market, the choice of corporate governance by a firm affects, and is affected by, the choice of governance by other firms. Firms with weaker governance offer managers more generous compensation packages to incentivize them. This behavior forces firms with good governance to pay their management more than they would otherwise. This externality reduces the value to firms of investing in corporate governance and produces weaker overall governance in the economy. The effect is stronger the greater the competition for managers. The need to raise external capital by firms can improve governance levels not just in the firms that are directly affected by these mechanisms, but also in the competing firms. However, poor governance can also be employed by incumbent firms as a strategic deterrent to entry by new firms. We discuss the implications of this externality view of corporate governance for regulatory standards, ownership structure of firms, and the market for corporate control.

In environments where information asymmetries and changing market conditions are ever-present, discerning between different macro-level and contextual factors that stimulate or inhibit entrepreneurial activity still needs to be validated. Utilizing our own primary data ( N = 1473 across 10 countries) as well as secondary data (World Bank Economic Forum, Global Financial Data, and Transparency International), we investigate the role that several contextual indices (e.g. perceptions of an entrepreneurial culture) and macro-level indices (e.g. government corruption, GDP per capita, and ease of doing business indices) have on entrepreneurial intentions. Results reveal the impact government corruption and the concomitant transactional impediments have on the degree of entrepreneurial interest across countries. Entrepreneurship interest and behavior is important in many of these emerging countries to fuel new economic growth, social stability and overall prosperity.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the governmental, economic, and technological factors contributing to a country's innovation ecology that have an impact on sustainable economic growth.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper investigates governmental, economic, and technological supports that comprise the innovation ecology of 34 nations using ordinary least squares, discriminant analysis, and mediated regression. It is proposed that the strength of a country's innovation ecology is associated with greater sustainable entrepreneurial growth opportunities. Innovation indicators and trend analyses were collected from Eurostat Yearbook 2007, Science and Technology, and Global Financial Data over the 1995-2005 period.

Findings – The results reveal that while the influence of government and the economic environment encourage innovation ecology, having resources at the research and development levels, human capital, and early seed funding were key indicators of innovation. The greater the degree of research and development, the availability of a highly skilled labor force, and the amount of private and public venture capital funding, the more likely it is that a strong national innovation ecology will emerge leading to the creation of new business ideas and growth opportunities.

Originality/value – The results contribute to the understanding of the significant role of innovation investment for new business development and growth.

This study examines the impact of corporate philanthropy growth on sales growth using a large sample of charitable contributions made by U.S. public companies from 1989 through 2000. Applying Granger causality tests, we find that charitable contributions are significantly
associated with future revenue, whereas the association between revenue and future contributions is marginally significant at best. We then identify the mechanism underlying our findings. Our results are particularly pronounced for firms that are highly sensitive to consumer perception, where individual consumers are the predominant customers. In addition, we document a positive relationship between contributions and customer satisfaction. Overall, our evidence suggests that corporate philanthropy, under certain circumstances, furthers firms’ economic objectives.

We hypothesize that CEO compensation is optimally designed to trade off two types of agency problems: the standard shareholder-management agency problem as well as the risk-shifting problem between shareholders and debtholders. Analyses in this setup produces two predictions: (1) the pay-for-performance sensitivity of CEO compensation decreases with the leverage ratio; and (2) the pay-for-performance sensitivity of CEO compensation increases with the intensity of outside monitoring on the firm's risk choice. We test these two hypotheses for the banking industry where regulators and nondepository (subordinated) debtholders provide outside monitoring on the risk choice. We construct an index of the intensity of outside monitoring based on three variables: subordinated debt rating, non performing loan ratio and examination rating assigned by regulators. We find supporting evidence for both hypotheses.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how extending social innovation and impact learning to the field was accomplished.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses how experiential learning can be adapted to social entrepreneurship education and how to structure the course and deliverables. It highlights the importance of students' selection and preparation.

Findings – The paper shares some students' reflections on their fieldwork and how they dealt with new ideas. It also provides three central lessons – “go real”, “go deep”, “get feedback” – that were learned through the experience.

Research limitations/implications – Since information from only one course offering has been reported, a simple generalization should be made cautiously. For this reason, the transferability of this experiential learning course to other regions of the world is discussed and recommendations are offered for educators who want to engage in a successful “boundary-less classroom.”

Originality/value – Initial evidence is provided that the success of experiential learning in social innovation and impact can be guaranteed by a number of elements, including students' preparation to assist them as they confront challenges found in the field experience. Experiential learning would not be transferable without deep intercultural understanding and a well-chosen selection of social enterprises and social entrepreneurs with whom to collaborate.

We provide evidence for the effects of social norms on markets by studying ‘‘sin’’ stocks—publicly traded companies involved in producing alcohol, tobacco, and gaming. We hypothesize that there is a societal norma gainst funding operations that promote vice and that some investors, particularly institutions subject to norms, pay a financial cost in abstaining from these stocks. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that sin stocks are less held by norm-constrained institutions such as pension plans as compared to mutual or hedge funds that are natural arbitrageurs, and they receive less coverage from analysts than do stocks of otherwise comparable characteristics. Sin stocks also have higher expected returns than otherwise comparable stocks, consistent with them being neglected by norm-constrained investors and facing greater litigation risk heightened by social norms. Evidence from corporate financing decisions and the performance of sin stocks outside the US also suggest that norms affect stock prices and returns.

This paper touches upon some ethical dilemmas involved in inter-organizational relationships, specifically the ones between clients and consultants. Consultants often use unclear language and practices to convince clients of their views (often without substance). On the other hand, internal client departments recognizing this unethical behavior among consultants can use it for power plays. For example, an IT department manager drew more resources to her pet projects arguing that consultants (who were recommending not to sponsor these projects) should not be listened to. In this case, the consultants were actually right, but their prior unethical behavior hurt their credibility and allowed the power play of the IT manager.

Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of a consulting project, we examine how conditions of novelty and ambiguity on interorganizational engagements produce inconsistent norms and expectations for guiding project interaction. Clients and consultants attempt to resolve the resulting discursive tensions while also increasing their organization’s influence on the project. As diverse institutional contexts offer multiple legitimate ways of practicing, agents draw on such alternatives to renegotiate power relations. We develop a theoretical framework and empirical approach for understanding how discursive resources from diverse institutional contexts can be used to transform power relations within and between organizations.