Heiko Bergmann

While the importance of a supportive context for entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged, its antecedents are rarely investigated. We apply the concept of organizational climate to higher education institutions and examine the drivers of students’ perceptions of the entrepreneurial climate in their university. Combining data from two unique datasets and using multilevel techniques, we analyze the relationship between university characteristics and such climate perceptions of 8009 students at public universities in Germany. We find university entrepreneurship measures to have a positive effect on students’ climate perceptions, which also depend on students’ background and gender. In addition, we find evidence for different peer effects, depending on students’ affinity for entrepreneurship. For the general student population, including entrepreneurship content in their normal studies seems to be required to initiate a social process of sensemaking. However, students’ perception of the entrepreneurial climate only depend to a certain degree on intentional entrepreneurship measures. In our study, general university characteristics have the strongest influence on climate perceptions. Overall, our study adds to our understanding of which parameters are important for establishing a more favorable and inspiring climate for becoming an entrepreneur at higher education institutions.

Opportunity beliefs, in other words the beliefs of a potential entrepreneur about the feasibility and market fit of a venture idea, are considered as a key driver of entrepreneurial action. The entrepreneur's existing knowledge plays an important role in reducing the uncertainty surrounding a venture idea, thereby contributing to the formation of strong opportunity beliefs. We develop and test a model which incorporates different types of knowledge that can be considered relevant for the formation of opportunity beliefs. Following a screening of 5955 students at 12 German universities, we identify a sample of 292 aspiring entrepreneurs who evaluate their own venture ideas. We analyze the determinants of opportunity beliefs and entrepreneurial action using structural equation modeling. Empirical evidence suggests that different types of knowledge are relevant depending on the venture idea pursued. Research-driven venture ideas benefit from industry experience, whereas general human capital is important for other types of ideas. We also find divergent relationships between opportunity beliefs and entrepreneurial action. The results contribute to our understanding of how opportunity beliefs are formed and how they relate to entrepreneurial action under different conditions of uncertainty. Our study has practical implications for entrepreneurship education and the support of university start-ups.

Student start-ups are a significant part of overall university entrepreneurship. Yet, we know little about the determinants of this type of start-ups and, specifically, the relevance of context effects. Drawing on organizational and regional context literature, we develop and test a model that aims to explain student entrepreneurship in a contextual perspective. Based on unique micro data and using multi-level techniques, we analyse nascent and new entrepreneurial activities of business and economics students at 41 European universities. Our analysis reveals that individual and contextual determinants influence students' propensity to start a business. While peoples' individual characteristics are most important, the organizational and regional contexts also play a role and have a differentiated effect, depending on the source of the venture idea and the stage of its development. Organisational characteristics, like the prevalence of fellow students who have attended entrepreneurship education, influence whether students take action to start a new firm (nascent entrepreneurship) but do not seem to support the actual establishment of a new firm. In contrast, the latter is less dependent on the university context but more strongly influenced by regional characteristics. Overall, our study contributes to our understanding of the emergence of start-ups in the organizational context of universities and has implications for initiatives and programs that aim at encouraging students to become entrepreneurs.

Questioning the validity of scholarly work is not a typical path to publication in the management field. However, although considerable scholarship assesses entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions models of behaviour, methodological weaknesses in scale development have hampered scholars’ ability to rigorously interpret and build upon their research findings. We review 20 years of research and discover that the pioneer measure of entrepreneurial attitudes as a predictor of self-employment intentions, has yet to be empirically validated. We show that construct and measurement differences, one-off modifications to existing scales and a lack of adequate justification may partially explain why studies in the entrepreneurship education domain have produced inconsistent results. We address this limitation by performing factor analytic techniques on data from two sets of English-speaking university students from two North American countries. The result is a more parsimonious and streamlined ‘mini-Kolvereid’ scale. We further demonstrate that this scale is an effective predictor of entrepreneurial intentions.

We systematically review all 109 empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles which are based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's (GEM) adult population survey data. GEM has become a major database for internationally comparative entrepreneurship research because it is unique and allows investigating research questions that could not have been addressed before. Our research objectives are threefold: First, we analyse how researchers currently use GEM data in empirical academic research. To do so we apply an analysing framework that includes data source, level of analysis, variables, methods, measurement schemes, and analytical procedures. Second, we identify best practices and problematic fields of application. Third, we develop suggestions for the future design and use of GEM data. We distinguish between implications for researchers working with existing GEM data and implications for people responsible for the collec-tion of new GEM data, i.e. the national GEM teams and the coordination team.

Nascent entrepreneurship and new business ownership are subsequent stages in the entrepreneurial process. We illustrate how information from the largest internationally harmonized database on entrepreneurship, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project, can be used to approximate the entrepreneurial process. We make a methodological contribution by computing the ratio of new business ownership to nascent entrepreneurship in a way that reflects the transition from nascent to new business ownership and provides cross-nationally comparable information on the efficiency of the entrepreneurial process for 48 countries. We report evidence for the validity of the transition ratio by benchmarking it against transition rates obtained from longitudinal studies and by correlating it with commonly used entrepreneurship indicators and macro-level economic indices. The transition ratio enables future cross-national research on the entrepreneurial process by providing a reliable and valid indicator for one key transition in this process.

Because of its unique political institutions and its good economic track record Switzerland used to be called a special case. This paper investigates start-up propensities in this country based on the individual data of the adult population survey of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The focus is on factors that are distinctive for Switzerland: language differences and differences in taxes on corporate profit and personal income. There are substantial entrepre-neurship disparities among the language areas of Switzerland. Still, I do not find evidence for a cultural influence. The different start-up propensities in the three language areas can be ex-plained by structural characteristics of the regional economy. The same applies to differences in income and profit taxes. If other regional factors are taken into account I do not find evi-dence for a direct influence of taxes on the entrepreneurial propensity of the inhabitants of Swiss regions. There is however some evidence for indirect effects. This paper adds to our understanding of the effects of culture and tax differences on entrepreneurship