Born to be green: new insights into the economics and management of green entrepreneurship

While the number of green start-ups has steadily increased around the world in response to the environmental problems demanding immediate solutions, there are several unresolved questions on the behaviour and performance of such ventures. The papers in this special issue shed light on these issues by underscoring the role of several factors, such as industry life cycles, knowledge spillovers, institutions, and availability of external finance, in shaping decision-making and firm behaviour in green start-ups. This paper highlights the state-of-the art developments in the literature, discusses the key contributions of the papers put together in this special issue and presents a future research agenda for scholars interested in green entrepreneurship

The effect of industry life cycle stage on the strategy-making-firm performance relationship

This paper argues that individual small firms just like large firms, place differing emphasis on strategy-making and may employ different approaches to strategy-making. This paper offers an explanation of the nature of these processes in small firms and hypothesizes how they relate to performance. It further examines how these relationships differ depending on the industry life cycle stage. It then describes the results of an empirical study of the strategy-making processes of small firms. Analysis of the data (n=320) identifies four such processes in small firms, indicating that the participative and adaptive approaches to strategy-making may have a significant effect on firm performance, but that the importance and impact of these relationships will change when accounting for the effects of industry life cycle stage

Qualifying and quantifying the financial and economic benefits of entrepreneurship

This paper presents a suggested approach for future research designs to substantiate the relationship between entrepreneurship and financial and economic benefits. While the financial and economic benefits of entrepreneurship are widely cited within the literature, an examination of prior research in this area raises several concerns with respect to the validity of the methodologies and research measures used, and the reliability and generalisability of related research findings. The limitations and inconsistencies identified are expressly addressed through three propositions, providing a framework to establish the financial (micro) and economic (macro) benefits of entrepreneurship. We argue the integration of accounting and entrepreneurship provides a useful and necessary framework to substantiate an association between entrepreneurship and financial and economic benefit by incorporating clear financial measures such as revenue, profits, cash flow and return on investment