Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Business Creation

Front Cover
William B Gartner
SAGE, Jun 21, 2004 - Business & Economics - 575 pages
Entrepreneurial activity provides profound positive benefits across an important set of measures of social and economic well-being, much of it concentrated in new economic sectors such as information technology. Yet, even though entrepreneurship has been shown to provide many benefits, it is surprising that there has not been a systematic study of the entrepreneurial process. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Business Creation fills this gap by offering theories, ideas, and measures that can be used to explore and understand the factors that encompass and influence the creation of new businesses. The chapters in the handbook provide the rationale for questionnaires used in the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED). The PSED is a research program that was initiated to provide systematic, reliable, and generalizable data on important features of the new business creation process. The PSED includes information on the proportion and characteristics of the adult population involved in efforts to start businesses, the activities and characteristics that comprise the nature of the business start-up process, and the proportion and characteristics of those business start-up efforts that actually become new businesses. The handbook also describes the PSED data collection process; provides documentation of the interview schedules, codebooks, data preparation and weighting scheme; as well as offers examples of how analyses of PSED data might be conducted. The authors identify specific measures that can be used to operationalize theory as well as provide evidence from the PSED data sets on these measures reliability and validity. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics is ideal for a sizeable audience, including graduate students, academics, and librarians in schools of business and management who need a comprehensive reference on business creation. In addition, researchers and policy makers at the federal, state, and local level will find this an invaluable reference covering all of the factors involved in new venture formation.

From inside the book

Contents

Life Context Personal Background
3
Gender
12
Race and Ethnicity
26
Household Structure
39
Household Income and Net Worth 49
49
Labor Force Participation and Residential Tenure
62
Personal Background
78
Family Background
94
Opportunity Recognition
259
Startup Problems
273
Teams
299
Social Networks
324
Funding the First Year of Business
352
Measures of Financial Sophistication
372
Future Expectations for the New Business
386
The Entrepreneurial Context and Environment
403

Time Use
104
Work Participation History
115
The Cognitive Characteristics
131
Entrepreneurial Expectancies
153
DecisionMaking InnovatorAdaptor Style
171
Entrepreneurial Intensity
186
Attribution and Locus of Control
205
Social Skills
220
The Startup Process
237
The Economic and Community Context
421
Technology Entrepreneurs
438
Data Collection
453
Data Documentation
477
Examples of Analysis Work File
495
Name Index
541
About the Editors
563
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

William B. Gartner is the Arthur M. Spiro Professor of Entrepreneurship at Clemson University. Prior to joining Clemson he was on the faculty at Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, San Francisco State University, and the University of Southern California. He is one of the co-founders of the Entrepreneurship Research Consortium, which initiated, developed and managed the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics. His service to the entrepreneurship field has included two consecutive terms as Chair of the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division (1985 + 1986), special issue editorships for the Journal of Business Venturing (JBV) and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP), and Editorial Board memberships with the Academy of Management Review (AMR), Journal of Management (JOM), JBV, ETP, and the Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM). His research has: been published in AMR, JBV, ETP, JOM and JSBM; won awards from the Academy of Management, ETP, and the Babson-Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conference; and has been funded by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, Coleman Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, Small Business Foundation of America, the Los Angeles Times, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the Corporate Design Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His research on nascent entrepreneurs explores how they: find and identify opportunities, recognize and solve startup problems, and undertake actions to successfully launch new ventures. He is also collecting and analyzing the stories entrepreneurs tell about their entrepreneurial adventures.

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