Social capital and entrepreneurial behaviour advancing innovativeness in interaction between small rural entrepreneurs and researchers: a phenomenographic study

Innovation processes between entrepreneurs and researchers are activated by interaction. Social capital increases the efficiency of action, for example, information dissemination by minimizing redundancy. To learn more about how to build and develop social capital assumes that we understand how entrepreneurs behave and what their expectations of interaction with researchers are. In this study we adopt a theoretical approach thet combines social capital and entrepreneurial behaviour. The firms in this study are located in the South-Savo region of Finland and operate in food production. As a result of interviews with 15 entrepreneurs a system of categories was compiled as the phenomenographic method assumes. It became obvious that the key dynamics of the cooperation between entrepreneurs and researchers is embedded in a common understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour and learning as well as a trust-building process. As a practical implication we could further suggest that researchers are expected to modify their behaviour to the specific features of entrepreneurial behaviour in order to pave the way to enhance innovativeness of rural entrepreneurs

Yrittäjyyskasvatus ammattikasvatuksen kentässä: –murroksien kautta integroitumiseen

Sekä yrittäjyyden- että ammattikasvatuksen yliopistollinen opetus ja niihin erikoistunut tutkimus on nuorta. Molempien osalta näiden kehittyminen ajoittuu 1900-luvun viimeisille vuosikymmenille (Kyrö 2001, Ruohotie 2000). Aiemmin niillä oli marginaalinen asema yliopistollisessa opetuksessa ja tutkimuksessa, yrittäjyyskasvatuksella yrittäjyyden tutkimuksessa ja ammattikasvatuksella lähinnä aikuiskasvatuksen tutkimusperinteessä. Tässä artikkelissa arvioidaan niiden kehitystä ja nykytilaa historiallisen murrosnäkemyksen pohjalta professionaalistumiskehyksessä.Tämä mahdollistaa niiden suhteiden pohtimisen ja toisaalta yrittäjyys- kasvatuksen asemoimisen ammattikasvatuksen kentässä. Tutkimuksen tuloksena nousee esiin integroitunut näkökulma ammattikasvatuksen tutkimukseen

The interplay between cognitive, conative, and affective constructs along the entrepreneurial learning process

Purpose: Although the role of reflections in entrepreneurship education is undeniable, the research has focused mainly on their advantages and consequences for learning process, whereas their dynamics and interrelations with other mental processes remain unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to better understand how personality and intelligence constructs: cognition, conation, and affection evolve and change along the learning process during entrepreneurship education. Design/methodology/approach: To better understand reflective processes in entrepreneurial learning this paper adopts the tripartite constructs of personality and intelligence. By employing longitudinal explorative research approach and self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm, the authors follow students’ reflections during their two-year learning processes. First, the authors try to identify how the interplay between the cognitive, conative, and affective aspects emerges in students’ reflections. Then, the authors investigate how this interplay evolves during the individual learning process and finally, by looking for similarities in these learning pathways, the authors aim to identify patterns of students’ reflective learning process. Findings: All constructs are present during the learning process and all are prone to change. The individual constructs alone shed no light on the interplay between different constructs, but rather that the interplay between sub-constructs should be taken into consideration as well. This seems to be particularly true for cognition, as procedural and declarative knowledge have very different profiles. Procedural knowledge emerges together with emotions, motivation, and volition, whereas the profile of declarative knowledge is individual. The unique profile of declarative knowledge in students’ reflections is an important finding as declarative knowledge is regarded as the center of current pedagogic practices. Research limitations/implications The study broadens the understanding of reflective practices in the entrepreneurial learning process and the interplay between affective, cognitive, and conative sub-constructs and reflective practices in entrepreneurship education. The findings clearly indicate the need for further research on the interplay between sub-constructs and students’ reflection profiles. The authors see the study as an attempt to apply an exploratory statistical method for the problem in question. Practical implications: The results are able to advise pedagogy. Practical implications concern the need to develop reflective practises in entrepreneurial learning interventions to enhance all three meta-competencies, even though there are so far no irrefutable findings to indicate that some types of reflection may be better than others. Originality/value: The results of the analysis indicate that it is possible to study the complex and dynamic interplay between sub-constructs of cognitive, conative and affective constructs. Moreover, the research succeeded in identifying both individual variations and general reflection patterns and changes in these during the learning process. This was possible by adopting a longitudinal explorative research approach with SOM analyses.Peer reviewe

Opportunities in the process of becoming an entrepreneur

The role of opportunities in becoming an entrepreneur is undeniable. Gaglio and Katz (2001) argue that understanding the opportunity identification is one of the core intellectual challenges for the entrepreneurship. However, despite an extensive research on opportunity, the question what opportunities are and how to identify, develop and exploit them has no explicit answer. On the contrary, there are diverse concepts gathered around opportunities. Some authors argue that opportunities ‘exist out there’ in the form of unmet needs, unsolved problems, or inefficient processes and it is the job of the entrepreneur to uncover these opportunities (Aldrich and Cliff, 2003; Kim, Aldrich and Keister, 2003; Shane, 2003). Other approach posits that opportunities are a product of one’s mind (Shane and Venkataraman 2000; Ardichvili et al.2003; Gartner et al. 2003), thus, the opportunity does not exist prior to the point in time in which they apply their individual creativity and take individual action. To follow complex and diverse opportunity process descriptive character of opportunities identification might be already moved towards questioning their dynamics and contingency (Gaglio 2004). However, the study of process perspective is hard to proceed in context of opportunities. One of the solutions to reconstruct opportunity process is to apply backward viewpoint at opportunities. As Dimov (2011) suggests the examination of individuals who talk about their past ventures allows applying retrospective perspective that seems to be particularly valid in researching opportunity concept. Retrospective enables to uncover complex histories behind individuals and their ways of putting ideas into life. Consequently, the aim of our research is to better understand how entrepreneurs experience opportunity process by studying their different venture creation processes. We aspire to follow how opportunities evolve in the process of becoming entrepreneur, recognize different phases of that process and uncover the relations between those phases. First, we identify three different approaches to the opportunity and opportunity process drawn from previous research. Then, by adopting multiple longitudinal case study approach and documentary videography as a method, we try to catch retrospective perspective to opportunity process. We take four diverse videos obtained by using editing method and investigate how entrepreneurs understand what opportunities are in their processes of becoming entrepreneurs and how they have proceeded in their opportunity process. We follow their “specific paths in terms of a sequence of events or concrete experiences” (Dimov 2011). Finally, by implementing pattern matching logic we compare their opportunity processes to the different approaches provided by us

Differences in students’ understanding of opportunity process matters for their learning!

Despite different views on opportunities and opportunities identification, there seems to be consensus about the significant role of opportunities in the entrepreneurship process and for the success of the entrepreneur (Shane & Venkataraman 2000, Eckhardt & Shane 2003, Gaglio & Katz 2001). However, even though opportunities, depending on the purpose and contributor, are regarded as a core element, process or competence in entrepreneurship, it is only recently that the question of how to teach or learn these opportunity-related competences has started to attract scholars (Saks & Gaglio 2002, Corbett 2005, Lumpkin & Lichtenstein 2005). The problem is that how the nature and process of opportunities are understood has an effect on learning and teaching practices. We argue that the differences in understanding what opportunities are have effect on how to learn and teach opportunity competences. The starting point though should be the knowledge about how students understand what opportunities are and how they want to enhance their competences related to the opportunity process. Consequently, the aim of our research is to understand how students understand opportunity process. First, we identify different theoretical approaches to the opportunity process from the learning perspective. Then, we investigate (basing on 16 writings), how students understand what opportunities are in the venture creation process with respect to these different approaches and, finally, we elaborate what this means for learning and teaching practices. On the basis of the theories of Cantillon (1931), Mises (1949) and Kirzner (1963) regarding human beings as central to entrepreneurship, our study identifies three approaches through which the opportunity process could take place: search, discovery, action. Empirical analysis validates proposed division. We conclude that courses aimed at opportunity enhancement should be designed in a way that students increase their awareness of the different nature of an opportunity and its process, as well as the varying nature of human involvement in opportunity processes. Entrepreneurship education should not be to look for uniform methods and teaching tools, but to try to combine them in order to enable all students to learn and increase their competences

Technical skills, disinterest and non-functional regulation: Barriers to building energy efficiency in Finland viewed by energy service companies

Energy inefficiency in the building stock is a substantial contributor to climate change. Integrated energy service companies (IESCs) have a potentially important role in improving energy efficiency. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the energy efficiency barriers in the Finnish building sector based on data from interviews with twelve IESCs. Taking a novel supply side perspective, we place IESCs at the centre of the emerging energy services business ecosystem to identify the barriers and hindering factors (real world illustrations of barriers). From this perspective, we also examine cause-effect relationships between the hindering factors and the actors. Hindering factors, reported by IESCs, were categorised under a revised barrier taxonomy consisting of economic market failures and economic market, behavioural, organisational and institutional barriers. The most salient hindering factors—lack of technical skills, disinterest in energy efficiency improvements and non-functional regulation—were analysed with respect to ecosystem actors causing and affected by these factors. Public actors have a key role in overcoming these barriers, for instance, by creating new possibilities for entrants to take part in decision-making, increasing the functionality and practicality of policies and by providing up-to date energy efficiency information

Riskinoton ja epävarmuudessa toimimisen valmiuksien oppimista tutkimassa

Voiko riskin ottamista ja epävarmuudessa toimimista oppia ja opettaa? Artikkelissa kuvattu, kahteen interventioon rakentuva tutkimus pitää sitä alkuoletuksestaan mahdollisena. Kirjoittajan tulkinnan mukaan lähtöasetelman oletukset ja tutkimuksen tulokset sopivat pääsääntöisesti yhteen: riskin ottamista ja epävarmuudessa toimimista voidaan sekä oppia että opettaa, oppiminen on toimintaan sidottu prosessi ja siihen liittyy sekä epätietoisuuden että epävarmuuden kokemuksia