Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur entreprenöriell orientering kan mäta entreprenörskap inom branschen för mobiltelefoni. Förhållandet mellan entreprenörskap och ekonomiska utfall mäts med utgångspunkt i Millers resonemang om entreprenöriell orientering. Hur kan entreprenörskap operationaliseras? Hur ser förhållandet ut mellan entreprenörskap och ekonomiska utfall? Studien baseras på tidigare forskning, facklitteratur, vetenskapliga artiklar, årsredovisningar, branschartiklar, avhandlingar och andra relevanta underlag som belyser entreprenörskap. Både kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod tillämpas för att åstadkomma triangulering. Entreprenörskap kan mätas utifrån hur pass radikal innovationen är. Den nya och tidigare okända innovationen kan resultera i positiva ekonomiska utfall som också mäter graden av entreprenörskap. Entreprenörskap kan mätas genom grad av riskaversion. Risktagande kan ge både positivt och negativt ekonomiskt utfall. Entreprenörskap kan mätas genom proaktivitet och begreppet first mover. Proaktivitet kan bidra till högre grad av entreprenörskap som i sin tur kan ge positiva ekonomiska utfall. Att vara proaktiv idag utgör ingen garanti för positiva ekonomiska utfall i framtiden. / The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge concerning how entrepreneurial orientation can measure entrepreneurship within the cellphone business. The relationship between entrepreneurship and economic outcomes is measured using Millers arguments about entrepreneurial orientation. How can entrepreneurship be operationalized? How does the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic outcomes look like? The study is based on prior research, nonfictional literature, scientific articles, annual reports, business articles, theses and other relevant sources, which highlight entrepreneurship. Both qualitative and quantitative method is used to achieve triangulation. Entrepreneurship can be measured by how radical the innovation is. The new and earlier unknown innovation can result in positive economic outcomes, which can be used as a tool for measuring entrepreneurship as well. The level of risk aversion can measure entrepreneurship. Risk taking can result in both positive and negative economic outcomes. Proactiveness can be measured by using the term first mover. Proactiveness can contribute to higher level of entrepreneurship causing positive economic outcomes. Being proactive today does not guarantee positive economic outcomes in the future.

Pentecostalism has grown from its founding days in 1900 in Topeka, USA and has extended its reach to most parts the world including Africa where it took off in the 1970s and continues to grow with many mega churches being established. In addition to their main role of taking care of the spiritual development of their followers, many Pentecostal churches have begun to get involved in provision of social and economic goods and services. This has however attracted attention to the churches with some of them being labelled as businesses, their founders being considered as entrepreneurs hiding under the guise of churches and seen as exploiting their followers. The purpose of the thesis is to explore, through research questions, if entrepreneurial activities are carried out in the Pentecostal churches in Uganda and if so, whether such activities can be considered productive, unproductive or destructive entrepreneurship and what their implications are. This qualitative study employed qualitative methods of data collection and deductive approach with primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with 6 members of Pentecostal churches in Kampala and 1 non-member that regularly goes to Pentecostal churches to get a feel of their activities. The findings show that there the Pentecostal churches carryout a number of entrepreneurial activities that address spiritual, social and economic aspects of the church members and the community. The study further shows that some of these entrepreneurial activities have a positive impact on the church members and the community and by extension the state whereas some activities do not improve the church members and the community and others have a negative impact on the church members and the community. It is shown through this thesis that determining the implication of the entrepreneurial activities is complicated when such activities are lumped together and not considered individually since some of the activities in the Pentecostal may be productive while some may be unproductive or destructive. The contribution of this thesis is by proposing a matrix as an alternative tool for analysis of the various entrepreneurial activities in the Pentecostal churches by considering their effect on different stakeholders to determine if the activity achieved the reason for its establishment.

Notre projet de thèse de doctorat a pour objet de présenter une meilleure compréhension du rôle de la culture d’entreprise et du profil psychologique du dirigeant dans l’orientation entrepreneuriale (OE) des PME françaises. La nature de la problématique de recherche reste original dans la littérature francophone. En effet, les travaux de recherches sur l’OE ont eu tendance à se concentrer essentiellement dans la littérature anglo-saxonne. Les principaux intérêts de notre thèse tiennent : 1) à faire ressortir des actions spécifiques qui permettraient de développer une culture favorable à l’entrepreneuriat ; 2) de susciter la vocation des dirigeants dans leur démarche entrepreneuriale ; 3) de mieux percevoir les déterminants de la performance économique et financière des entreprises entrepreneuriales ;4) de spécifier les caractéristiques des PME françaises à travers l’approche des configurations.Pour répondre à ces objectifs, nous avons construit une question principale spécifique : Dans quelle mesure la culture d’entreprise et le profil psychologique du dirigeant affectent-ils l’orientation entrepreneuriale des PME françaises et leur performance ? Pour réaliser cette recherche, nous avons opté pour une étude empirique quantitative à travers un questionnaire administré auprès des dirigeants de PME de deux chambres de commerce : la Chambre Régionale de Commerce et d’Industrie du Nord- Pas- de Calais et la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie du Beaujolais. Nous avons pu recueillir 123 réponses complètes. Pour réaliser les traitements d’analyse, nous avons utilisé l’approche des régressions linéaires avec le logiciel STATA.11 pour tester la nature des relations entre les variables clés de notre étude. Dans une deuxième partie d’analyse, nous avons utilisé l’approche des configurations avec la méthode des composantes ascendantes hiérarchiques. Concernant la première hypothèse, les résultats de l’étude empirique quantitative montrent que la culture entrepreneuriale et la culture de groupe sont associées à la capacité d’innovation, de proactivité et de prise de risque de l’entreprise. Inversement, la culture hiérarchique est associée négativement à cette triple capacité. La deuxième hypothèse concernant le profil psychologique du dirigeant donne des résultats plutôt inattendus, quant à l’effet du champ de contrôle externe du dirigeant sur l’OE. Les dirigeants qui ont un champ de contrôle externe semblent contribuer positivement au processus de l’OE. Nous avons pu montrer également que ces dirigeants conduisent leurs entreprises à réaliser de meilleures performances. Le besoin d’accomplissement du dirigeant est également lié à l’orientation de l’entreprise vers les activités entrepreneuriales. Quant à la troisième hypothèse, nous avons pu montrer dans notre recherche que les activités entrepreneuriales de l’entreprise contribuent à l’amélioration de ses performances économiques et financières. Dans un deuxième volet de cette étude, nous avons testé notre modèle conceptuel avec l’approche des configurations. Notre objectif était de proposer une classification d’entreprises selon le degré d’intensité de l’OE. L’analyse des composantes ascendantes hiérarchiques, nous a permis de faire apparaître trois formes de configuration d’entreprises : 1) entreprises entrepreneuriales, 2) entreprises traditionnelles et 3) entreprises émergentes. / Our proposed PhD thesis aims to provide a better understanding of the role of corporate culture and the psychological profile of the leader in Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) of French SMEs. The nature of the research remains in the original french literature. Indeed, the research work on the EO have tended to focus mainly in the Anglo-Saxon literature.The main interest of our thesis are:1) to highlight specific actions that would develop a culture conducive to entrepreneurship;2) to encourage the vocation of the leaders in their entrepreneurial approach ;3) to gain insight into the determinants of economic and financial performance of entrepreneurial firms;4) to specify the characteristics of french SMEs through the approach of configurations.To meet these goals, we built a specific key question: How corporate culture and psychological profile of the leader affect the entrepreneurial orientation of french SMEs and their performance?To conduct this research, we opted for a quantitative empirical study through a questionnaire administered to managers of SMEs of Chambre Régionale de Commerce et d’Industrie of Nord-Pas-de Calais and Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie of Beaujolais. We have collected 123 complete responses. To achieve the treatment analysis, we used the approach of linear regression with the software STATA.11 to test the nature of the relationship between key variables in our study. In the second part of analysis, we used the approach of the configurations with hierarchical ascendant components method, in order to specify the caracteristics of french SMEs.Regarding the first hypothesis, the results of the quantitative empirical study shows that entrepreneurial culture and the group culture are associated with innovation, proactive and risk-taking activities. Conversely, the hierarchical culture is negatively associated with the entrepreneurial activities. The second hypothesis about the psychological profile, the leaders who have a locus of external control appear to contribute positively to the process of OE. We have shown that these leaders lead their firms to achieve better performance. The need for achievement of the leader is also related to the orientation of the firms to entrepreneurial activities.Regarding the third hypothesis, we have shown that the entrepreneurial activities of the SMEs contribute to the improvement of its economic and financial performance.In the second part of this study, we tested our conceptual model with the approach of configurations. Our objective is to propose a taxonomy of SMEs according to the intensity of the EO. The analysis of hierarchical ascendant components have shown three types of SMEs: 1) entrepreneurial SMEs, 2) conservative SMEs and 3) emerging SMEs

Submitted by Nadir Basilio (nadirsb@uninove.br) on 2016-05-31T20:29:38Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Franklin Jean Machado.pdf: 2176212 bytes, checksum: b5c612ca0e69f93cee2e84e4dc48f8f7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-31T20:29:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Franklin Jean Machado.pdf: 2176212 bytes, checksum: b5c612ca0e69f93cee2e84e4dc48f8f7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-16 / Project development and so its management, is a strategy commonly used by companies while working on search of their goals. The large use of this strategy evolves parallel to an awareness of the importance of achieving success over the strategy application, in other words, projects success. This awareness is clearly visible over the number of studies concerning the understanding of variables affecting projects success. Similarly, entrepreneurial orientation is a research topic with consolidated significance in the entrepreneurship research field, and with significant developments over the last decades. This study aimed to analyze the effects of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) of organizations over the project’s success (PS) developed by them. The methodology that grounded this research is the quantitative analysis, through the structural equation modeling (SEM) method, and using survey as the data-gathering tool to find 100 valid answers. The main result observed was the positive relation between the Entrepreneurial Orientation of organizations and the project’s success developed by them, allowing the development of this research subject in the academic area, as well as the deduction of corporative practices that could contribute to projects success. In the practical way, it was possible to recognize one more benefit that will join the team of benefits generated by EO, among others that were already been verified in other researches. / O desenvolvimento de projetos, e sua consequente gestão, é uma estratégia comumente adotada por empresas na busca por seus objetivos. O grande uso desta estratégia evolui de forma paralela à preocupação com a importância de se obter sucesso no seu desenvolvimento, ou seja, o sucesso em projetos. Esta preocupação é claramente visível considerando o número de estudos que abrangem a compreensão das variáveis que afetam o sucesso em projetos. De forma semelhante, a orientação empreendedora é um tema de pesquisa com importância consolidada no campo de pesquisa englobado pelo empreendedorismo e com evoluções importantes nas últimas décadas. Este estudo buscou propor um modelo que relacione a orientação empreendedora (OE) de organizações sobre o sucesso em projetos (SP) por ela desenvolvidos. A metodologia desenvolvida esteve pautada na análise quantitativa, valendo-se do método de modelagem de equações estruturais (MEE) e tendo como ferramenta de coleta de dados uma survey, que obteve 100 respostas válidas. O principal resultado observado foi a verificação de uma relação positiva entre a orientação empreendedora das organizações para com o sucesso dos projetos por ela desenvolvidos, permitindo tanto o desenvolvimento desta temática de pesquisa do ponto de vista acadêmico, como a dedução de práticas corporativas que possam contribuir para o sucesso dos projetos. No contexto prático, foi possível reconhecer mais um benefício gerado pela EO, que se unirá aqueles já verificados em outras pesquisas.

[pt] A Orientação Empreendedora (OE) reflete a propensão de uma empresa a se engajar em comportamentos inovadores, proativos e de correr riscos para atingir seus objetivos. Em um contexto cada vez mais competitivo e globalizado, este campo foi se consolidando como um dos mais férteis na literatura de gestão estratégica, atraindo o interesse de pesquisadores dispostos a investigar como as empresas devem explorar essa postura empreendedora para aprimorar seu desempenho. Dentro deste contexto, um recurso relevante para PMEs, é a utilização da rede de relacionamentos (network) criada em volta da empresa para aprimorar seus negócios. Em vista disso, a presente pesquisa se propôs a analisar empiricamente o impacto da orientação empreendedora no desempenho financeiro e operacional de pequenas empresas, avaliando também a moderação do network de negócios nessa relação. Para tanto, foram coletados dados de 155 pequenas empresas do Rio de Janeiro cadastradas no SEBRAE/RJ, para posterior análise através do método de regressão hierárquica. Os resultados do estudo demonstraram que a orientação empreendedora contribui para melhorias tanto no desempenho financeiro quanto no operacional. Além disso, verificou-se que o network de negócios não exerceu papel moderador em nenhuma dessas duas relações. Com base nestes achados, contribuições acadêmicas e implicações gerenciais foram elaboradas, assim como limitações e sugestões para pesquisas futuras. / [en] The Entrepreneurial Orientation (OE) reflects a company s propensity to engage in innovative, proactive behaviors and to take risks in order to achieve its goals. In an increasingly competitive and globalized context, this field has been consolidated as one of the most fertile in the strategic management literature, attracting the interest of researchers willing to investigate how companies should explore this entrepreneurial stance to improve their desempenho. Within this context, a relevant resource for SMEs is the use of the network created around the company to improve their business. In view of this, the present research proposed to empirically analyze the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on the financial and operational desempenho of small companies, also evaluating the moderation of the business network in this relationship. For this purpose, data were collected from 155 small companies in Rio de Janeiro registered in SEBRAE, for further analysis using the hierarchical regression method. The results of the study demonstrated that entrepreneurial orientation contributes to improvements in both financial and operational desempenho. In addition, it was found that the business network did not play a moderating role in either of these two relationships. Based on these findings, academic contributions and managerial implications were elaborated, as well as limitations and suggestions for future research.

No description available.

Youth unemployment is one of the key global challenges facing the world today. Statistically, the global youth unemployment rate is 13.1%. Youth entrepreneurship is viewed as a possible solution to youth unemployment. Interestingly, the world has adopted entrepreneurship as a strategic approach to facilitate economic participation among the youth. Youth entrepreneurship has gained importance in recent years in many countries, as a way of fostering employment opportunities, boosting economic competitiveness, and promoting local and regional development. Youth involvement in entrepreneurship assists in boosting their confidence, achieving economic independence, and alleviating poverty. Some researchers describe entrepreneurial orientation as innovativeness, pro-activeness, risk taking, and competitive aggressiveness. Other researchers see entrepreneurial orientation as being pushed or pulled into entrepreneurship. In this study, push and pull factors to become entrepreneurs were used to determine the entrepreneurial orientation of the respondents. The objectives of the study were to investigate whether there is a relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and the business performance of youth entrepreneurs in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. A descriptive research design within a quantitative research approach was adopted using online surveys and physical administration of questionnaires. The study used a census method to sample 555 youth entrepreneurs in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. A low response rate was achieved as only 96 respondents fully completed the questionnaires, which were used in the analysis. The collected data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The findings of this study revealed that push factors had a significant influence on the business performance of youth businesses in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality; whereas there was no statistical evidence to suggest that pull factors predicted the business performance of youth businesses in the study area. The research found that entrepreneurship among young individuals is essential to enhancing young people’s economic development. The study discovered that most TMM youths were pulled in to starting their own businesses. The research also suggested that, EO could encourage TMM youth entrepreneurs to continue to become innovative, take- risk, be pro-active and competive aggressive in the businesses. / Business Management / M.A (Business Management)

Few female farmers are participating in the sector due to various gender-based challenges that they face. The purpose of this study was to investigate prospective farmers’ motivation and their personal attitude to starting their own businesses, as well as their perceptions of barriers to successful business start-ups in the sector. The Prospective Farmers Profile Questionnaire was distributed to 421 prospective farmers (agricultural students at six institutions of higher learning in South Africa). There was an estimated 3,486 students enrolled for various agriculture-related qualifications in the country when this cross-sectional, quantitative study was carried out. The aim of the study was to investigate perceived gender-based barriers to business start-up amongst prospective farmers in SA. The study found perceived barriers to be either intrinsic, (such as, risk aversion, innovation and self efficacy) and extrinsic, examples being, social cultural, political skills and access to land among others factors. The study also intended to find out if (1) motivation to start a business (2) taking responsibility (entrepreneurial orientation) and (3) entrepreneurial intention, were predicted by a number of select business start up factors. The findings were that motivation was predicted by only one business start up factor, socio-cultural forces; while four key factors; motivation, proactiveness, creativity and socio-cultural forces did predict taking responsibility (EO). Entrepreneurial intention (EI) is predicted by three key factors, namely socio-cultural forces, motivation and creativity. It is recommended that prospective farmers be introduced to the importance of social networking and socio-cultural forces in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, entrepreneurial education is required from government, institutions of higher learning and other organisations to educate prospective farmers on the influence of barriers to business start-up.The study was conducted on undergraduate agricultural students and should be extended to post-graduate farmers in South Africa, that is practising farming. A comparison between prospective farmers and prospective entrepreneurs from other disciplines should also be undertaken.This is a South African study and the results cannot be generalised. Therefore, the study could be expanded to other regions and future comparative studies could be done. / Applied Management / D. Phil. (Entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Management Sciences)

The primary objective of this study was to examine how and to what extent entrepreneurial orientation, firm internal resources and capital structure decisions affect growth of small enterprises, following the resource- based view on determinants of growth and static trade-off theory of capital structure as theoretical frameworks. Regardless of the number of earlier study, there is no consensus among scholars on determinants of growth due to the existence of different theories and metrics of growth. Moreover, as the earlier studies were undertaken in developed countries, their research findings could not permit generalization on the effect of the explanatory variables on growth in less developed countries like Ethiopia. Therefore, this research tried to fill the gap in the existing body of knowledge on determinants of growth by contextualizing the association of growth with firm specific factors and EO from the Ethiopian context, more specifically from the context of Tigray Regional State. Besides, extra variables that were either not considered or might have been tested separately in earlier studies in Ethiopia were integrated into the regression model. In this mixed explanatory cross-sectional research, systematic random sampling techniques and structure questionnaire were applied to collect primary data from 333 small enterprises operating in five urban towns of Tigray region. Dependent variable of the study was growth of small enterprises, defined as logarithm of change in number of employees at the time of establishment and time of survey. The explanatory variables comprise of entrepreneurial orientation with three dimensions, tangible and intangible resources under the control of a given enterprises, capital structure decisions, external factors such as marketing related problems cost and accessibility of infrastructure, government policies and bureaucracy, business development services were also included in the regression model. Descriptive statistics, statistical difference tests, multiple regression analysis and Propensity Score Matching were applied for the purpose of data analysis with the help of Stata version 12 software. Majority of the small enterprises demonstrated moderate degree of entrepreneurial orientation and location nearer to major customers, entrepreneurial orientation, strong financial position, access to credit and leverage have statistically significant positive effect on growth of small enterprises which support the resource based view and static trade-off theory of capital structure as well as the perceived hypothesis. On the other hand, consistent to the hypothesis, age and size of small enterprises showed negative significant effect on growth, that supports Jovanovich’s learning model but against the Girbat’s law of proportionate effect. Moreover, the relationship between education and growth was found to be non-linear or volatile-growth of SEs tend to declined until certain level, reached a minimum level after which SEs with more educated owners tend to grow faster. This implies that unless owners’ years of education reach a very high level of schooling, a given increase in years of schooling could not necessarily result into higher growth rate. Based on the findings, the researcher suggests (i) in order to solve financial constraints of SEs, stakeholder need introduction of National Credit Guarantee Fund, Promotion of non-bank financial services, introduce Mandatory Minimum Bank Loan to small enterprises, establish specialized banking system that specifically support the small enterprise sector, (ii) provide working premises such as shades at concessional cost, (iii) facilitate establishment of small enterprise commercial centers, (iv) strengthen the clustering practices,(v) facilitate provision of adequate infrastructure at reasonable price, (vi) as TVET completed individuals outperform in growth rate, educational institutions in Ethiopia need to incorporate competence based training system and entrepreneurship into their syllabus by strengthening the industry university linkages / Business Management / DBL

The primary objective of this study was to examine how and to what extent entrepreneurial orientation, firm internal resources and capital structure decisions affect growth of small enterprises, following the resource- based view on determinants of growth and static trade-off theory of capital structure as theoretical frameworks. Regardless of the number of earlier study, there is no consensus among scholars on determinants of growth due to the existence of different theories and metrics of growth. Moreover, as the earlier studies were undertaken in developed countries, their research findings could not permit generalization on the effect of the explanatory variables on growth in less developed countries like Ethiopia. Therefore, this research tried to fill the gap in the existing body of knowledge on determinants of growth by contextualizing the association of growth with firm specific factors and EO from the Ethiopian context, more specifically from the context of Tigray Regional State. Besides, extra variables that were either not considered or might have been tested separately in earlier studies in Ethiopia were integrated into the regression model. In this mixed explanatory cross-sectional research, systematic random sampling techniques and structure questionnaire were applied to collect primary data from 333 small enterprises operating in five urban towns of Tigray region. Dependent variable of the study was growth of small enterprises, defined as logarithm of change in number of employees at the time of establishment and time of survey. The explanatory variables comprise of entrepreneurial orientation with three dimensions, tangible and intangible resources under the control of a given enterprises, capital structure decisions, external factors such as marketing related problems cost and accessibility of infrastructure, government policies and bureaucracy, business development services were also included in the regression model. Descriptive statistics, statistical difference tests, multiple regression analysis and Propensity Score Matching were applied for the purpose of data analysis with the help of Stata version 12 software. Majority of the small enterprises demonstrated moderate degree of entrepreneurial orientation and location nearer to major customers, entrepreneurial orientation, strong financial position, access to credit and leverage have statistically significant positive effect on growth of small enterprises which support the resource based view and static trade-off theory of capital structure as well as the perceived hypothesis. On the other hand, consistent to the hypothesis, age and size of small enterprises showed negative significant effect on growth, that supports Jovanovich’s learning model but against the Girbat’s law of proportionate effect. Moreover, the relationship between education and growth was found to be non-linear or volatile-growth of SEs tend to declined until certain level, reached a minimum level after which SEs with more educated owners tend to grow faster. This implies that unless owners’ years of education reach a very high level of schooling, a given increase in years of schooling could not necessarily result into higher growth rate. Based on the findings, the researcher suggests (i) in order to solve financial constraints of SEs, stakeholder need introduction of National Credit Guarantee Fund, Promotion of non-bank financial services, introduce Mandatory Minimum Bank Loan to small enterprises, establish specialized banking system that specifically support the small enterprise sector, (ii) provide working premises such as shades at concessional cost, (iii) facilitate establishment of small enterprise commercial centers, (iv) strengthen the clustering practices,(v) facilitate provision of adequate infrastructure at reasonable price, (vi) as TVET completed individuals outperform in growth rate, educational institutions in Ethiopia need to incorporate competence based training system and entrepreneurship into their syllabus by strengthening the industry university linkages / Business Management / DBL