This thesis aims to develop a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship education as a type of entrepreneurship support. We study the overall entrepreneurship support systems, the pedagogical models developed for students with different level of entrepreneurship experience, and the long-term influences of entrepreneurship education on students. Entrepreneurship education and training has become very popular in universities, colleges, and business development centers world-wide, and has been of great interest in academia also. However, the entrepreneurship teaching is usually not informed by solid theories, and students’ different learning needs are not taken into consideration. In addition, the long-term influences of entrepreneurship education on students are unclear. This thesis consists of four manuscripts, each of which is a co-authored paper that presents an individual study. Study 1 is a comprehensive literature review of 122 journal articles that disentangles multiple conceptualizations used to research entrepreneurship support and examines the effectiveness of each source and type of support. We present our theorizations found and explore how three prevailing management theories could motivate theoretical refinements in the field. We also identify areas for future research and offer guidance on how to improve the relevance of entrepreneurship support studies. Study 2 develop a set of conceptual models anchored in learning theory regarding how entrepreneurship education should be taught to students. These conceptual models are built on the techniques of entrepreneurship pedagogy such as experiential learning. They are developed for three groups of students: students without any entrepreneurship experience, students with previous entrepreneurship experience, and students who are currently running their start-ups. A set of potential variables that could be used for course evaluation purposes is also included. Choosing a model pertinent to students’ attributes, lecturers could hence design entrepreneurship courses suitable for the students. This study also provides novel insights into educators’ design of entrepreneurship programs. Study 3 is an approximately four-year quantitative longitudinal study examining the stability of students’ attitude, perceived behavior control, subjective norm, and intention to entrepreneurship over time, and the role of entrepreneurship education in this process. Findings have implications for interpreting extant entrepreneurial literature, and policy and practice related to nascent entrepreneurship development and support. The results support our argument that the theoretical and practical value of entrepreneurship literature should hinge on the temporal stability of the attitudinal and intentional constructs used. Study 4 is a qualitative study exploring what are the important knowledge/skills students learned from the entrepreneurship courses they took on average five years previously, which pedagogical approach seems most effective, whether the courses are useful for entrepreneurs and company employees. The results show that the experiential learning approach is the most effective pedagogical approach, and entrepreneurship education can be useful for entrepreneurs and certain types of company employees. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Yes / The international entrepreneurship literature has revealed that entrepreneurs’ psychological characteristics drive a firm’s degree of internationalization. However, drivers that relate to entrepreneurs’ passion are not well developed in the international entrepreneurship literature. To fill this gap, this study uses a sample of 233 small firms to examine how entrepreneurs’ passion is related to small firms’ degree of internationalization and it also investigates whether this relationship is affected by levels of the home country’s institutional voids. The results show that passion is positively related to firms’ degree of internationalization and this relationship is positively moderated by levels of institutional voids. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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The efficiency of business incubators is disputed, but they have attracted significant attention from policy-makers and are a part of economic policies worldwide. To ensure their efficiency, it has been suggested that more involvement in the ventures by the incubator management would be beneficial. The purpose of this thesis was to inquire into the relationship between entrepreneurial processes and managerial practices in business incubation. Drawing upon research about entrepreneurial processes and the management of entrepreneurship and creativity in other organizational contexts, the thesis problematizes the suggestions of increased managerial interventions in entrepreneurial processes in business incubation. The purpose was achieved through an analysis of entrepreneurial narratives from two Swedish incubators with different levels of managerial involvement in their ventures. The theoretical frame of reference used for the narrative analysis was based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts for studying varying possibilities and groundings for becoming in narratives. Entrepreneurship is understood as a creative process characterized by dialogue, polyphony and carnival, which has implications for our understanding of business incubation as a phenomenon. The narrative analysis generated four genres of entrepreneurial narratives and two models of incubation with different conceptualizations of entrepreneurship, the role of the incubator management and the incubation process. The result from the analysis of the incubator management from a creative process view was that the managerial approaches to coaching and clustering favored by the two incubators had different implications for entrepreneurship by providing varying possibilities for creativity due to aspects such as control, standardization and specialization. This study shows that business incubation, regardless of the model, includes a larger variety of entrepreneurial processes than previously recognized. This study contributes to our understanding of how managerial involvement in business incubation is conducted in practice and how it is understood from the entrepreneur’s perspective. The theoretical contribution of this study is a Bakhtinian framework, which allows us to observe and to understand business incubation differently. The study shows how the Bakhtinian concepts can be adapted and be made useful in studying the relationship between entrepreneurship and management in business incubation by emphasizing entrepreneurship as the product of social interaction.

Meng Lingsheng. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-35). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Institutional Background --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1 --- Private Businesses in China since1978 --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2 --- PC and CPPCC --- p.6 / Chapter 3 --- Hypotheses --- p.7 / Chapter 4 --- Data and Variables --- p.13 / Chapter 5 --- Econometric Specification --- p.16 / Chapter 6 --- Empirical Results --- p.17 / Chapter 6.1 --- Conditional Probability Analysis of Political Participation --- p.17 / Chapter 6.2 --- Multinomial Logit Analysis of Political Participation --- p.18 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.22 / Appendix 1: Institutional Indices --- p.24 / Tables --- p.25 / References --- p.32

Tian Xiaoli. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-147). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Contents / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction / Chapter 1. --- Introduction / Chapter 2. --- Social Background / Social Structure Change After Mid-1990s / Free Resources and Free Opportunities / Chapter 3. --- Research Question / Chapter Chapter 2 --- History of Chinese Private Entrepreneurs / Chapter 1. --- First Period (1978-1992): Out of the System / Chapter 2. --- Second Period (1992-1997): Intertwine with the System / Chapter 2. --- Third Period (1997-now): New System in Form / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Literature Review / Chapter 1. --- Market Transition Debate / Market Transition Thesis / Political Economy / Political Market / Summary / Chapter 2. --- New Class Theory / Dominating Cultural Capital / Dominating Political Capital / Dominating Teleological Knowledge / Reunification of Cultural Capital and Political Capital / Chapter 3. --- Clientelism / Dependent Clientelism / Symbiotic Clientelism / Organizational Clientelism / Chapter 4. --- Summary / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Principled Clientelism-Preliminary Evidence from In-depth Interviews / Chapter 1. --- Local Government as Agent / Incentives / Resources and Services / Who Are Chosen? / Chapter 2. --- Private Entrepreneurs as Client / Personal Background / Strategy / General Attitude / Agent-client Relationship / Chapter 3. --- Principled Clientelism / Chapter 4. --- From Symbiotic Clientelism to Principled Clientelism / Transformation in Clientelism Spectrum / Transformation in Clientelism Exchange / Transformation in Clientelism Network / Comparison of Different Clientelism / Chapter 5. --- Principled Clientelism Hypothesis / Chapter Chapter 5 --- "Data, Measurement and Methods" / Chapter 1. --- Method / Chapter 2. --- Data / Chapter 3. --- Measurement / Chapter 4. --- Statistical Model / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Empirical Analysis / Chapter 1. --- The Changing Profiles of Private Entrepreneurs / Initial Occupation / Trends of Political Credits / Chapter 2. --- Regression Analysis / Results / Test of Hypothesis / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Conclusion and Discussion / Tables / Appendix 1 List of Interviewees / Appendix 2 About the Field Site / Bibliography

Univ., Diss.--Regensburg, 2007.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.