Introduction : From Fundamentals to Advances in Crowdfunding Research and Practice

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Entrepreneurial Orientation Rhetoric in Franchise Organizations: The Impact of National Culture

This study examines the role of national culture on the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric contained within franchisee recruitment promotional materials, where EO rhetoric is defined as the strategic use of words in organizational narratives to convey the risk taking, innovativeness, proactiveness, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness of the firm. The sample comprised 378 franchise organizations, in five different countries (Australia, France, India, South Africa, and the UK). The results indicate that franchise systems operating in high uncertainty avoidance and feminine cultures use less entrepreneurially oriented rhetoric, suggesting that EO rhetoric in franchise organizations varies according to different national cultural contexts

The Impact of Collective Optimism on New Venture Creation and Growth: A Social Contagion Perspective

Social contagion research suggests that individual decision making is shaped by collective, social processes. We extend the entrepreneurial optimism literature by arguing that collective optimism-the shared, positive expectations about future outcomes-is salient to key entrepreneurial outcomes. We test our position by examining how fluctuations in U.S. collective entrepreneurial optimism influence venture creation and growth using 1993-2010 NFIB entrepreneurial optimism data. Results indicate that collective entrepreneurial optimism exhibits a curvilinear relationship with venture creation and growth, which is moderated by environmental dynamism. We validate the NFIB measure by constructing an alternative measure of collective entrepreneurial optimism using media reports