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Entrepreneur: do social capital and culture matter?

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the effect of the individual perceptions of social capital and culture in entrepreneurial aspirations before and after the economic crisis in Western Europe. Following the approach of the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211, 1991), we advance the analysis of the effect of the perception of subjective norms in the entrepreneurial intentions. We studied the Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) of twelve countries in 2006 and 2010. The results reveal that the perception of having social networks is significant for the TEA, and it increases after the economic crisis. However, the cultural factors do not have a significant impact, except the one related with the perception of social equality. The results obtained through the double perspective of this analysis (individual’s social capital vs cultural factor of individualistic perspective) offers a certain dilemma when we try to understand the entrepreneurial intntion through the individual’s perception of subjective norms, following the Ajzen’s model. The more individualist is a person, the lower the weight of its social capital. However, the more a person has access to social networks, the greater his entrepreneurial intention will be. This result opens future lines of research focused on understanding the value of the individual’s social capital for different countries and groups of entrepreneurs.

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Notes

  1. People actively involved in setting up a business that they will own or co-own, has not paid salaries, wages or any other payments to the owners for over three months

  2. People who are currently owners-managers of a new business, i.e., owning and managing a running business that has paid salaries, wages, or any other payments to the owners for over three months, but not more than 42 months

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Economics, University of Santiago de Compostela. Avda. do Burgo s/n, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Isabel Neira

  2. Department of Economic Analysis and Business Administration, University of A Coruña, Campus de Elviña s/n, 15071, A Coruña, Spain

    Nuria Calvo

  3. Department of Finance and Accounting, University of Santiago de Compostela, Avda. do Burgo s/n, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Loreto Fernández

  4. Department of Finance and Accounting, University of Santiago de Compostela. Avda. Alfonso X O Sabio s/n, 27002, Lugo, Spain

    Marta Portela

Authors
  1. Isabel Neira
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  2. Nuria Calvo
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  3. Loreto Fernández
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  4. Marta Portela
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nuria Calvo.

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Highlights

• Effect of individual’s social capital on the entrepreneurial aspirations

• Cultural perceptions of the entrepreneurial aspirations

• Country effect on entrepreneurial aspirations in Western Europe

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Correlation matrix of TEA and the regression variables
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Neira, I., Calvo, N., Fernández, L. et al. Entrepreneur: do social capital and culture matter?. Int Entrep Manag J 13, 665–683 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-016-0418-3

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