Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial Characteristics, Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism-Correlation or Collision?

The study of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship has resulted in a great deal of information about who entrepreneurs are and how who they are impacts their behavior. This article presents additional insight into who entrepreneurs are and how their characteristics relate, and how those relationships might impact their behavior. We have studied selected entrepreneurial characteristics and their relationship to optimism, realism, and pessimism. The study shows that some entrepreneurial characteri...

An Information Technology Services Outsourcing Alternative: A Business Model

An alternative to offshoring is domestic sourcing, or outsourcing in one's home country. A subset of domestic sourcing, known as rural sourcing, is emerging as a significant option within the information technology industry, either as a standalone delivery model or as part of a global outsourcing solution. This article presents the example of one rural sourcing firm's achievements through a technology based partnership with a rural university. The advantages of rural sourcing-such as preventi...

Forced to Entrepreneurship: Modeling the Factors Behind Necessity Entrepreneurship

There have been a large number of studies addressing the venture creation decision or entrepreneurship start-up models. Several of these models are built under normal condition assumptions where the individuals are motivated by personal goal achievement and have a support system for their endeavors. These are frameworks where the risk taker chooses to become an entrepreneur. It is important to recognize that not all businesses originate under the same circumstances. In countries where unemplo...

Technology Adoption in Smes: A Strategic Posture Matrix and a Research Agenda

In small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), technological advancements create opportunities and decision-making challenges. As a result, there is considerable difference in technology adoption decisions implemented by SMEs, and their rate of adoption remains low. Although past studies have identified various factors influencing technology adoption by SMEs, there is some consensus that the motivation for adoption decisions stems from a combination of internal and external factors. The purpos...

A Situated Perspective of Entrepreneurial Learning: Implications for Entrepreneurial Innovation Propensity

Consistent with calls for a context-process-outcome research structure, this study takes a situated learning perspective to integrate environmental uncertainty, entrepreneurial learning, and entrepreneurs' innovation propensity into a coherent theoretical framework. The paper first advances a research model of a situated perspective of entrepreneurial learning. Specifically, information uncertainty is proposed to negatively relate to the degree of exploratory entrepreneurial learning, and res...

The Changing Legal Environment for Employers: Implications for Small Businesses

This article introduces the major provisions of one signed and two proposed employment and labor legislation statutes (the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, the Employee Free Choice Act, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act) which are being openly discussed for possible enactment in the near future under the Obama administration. As this legislation is likely to result in increased administrative costs, compliance costs, and litigation costs for small business owners, each statute is examined...