Comparative Entrepreneurship

Are entrepreneurs essentially the same everywhere? Are the processes of entrepreneurship similar? Or are they shaped by their environments? If so, how? We know a lot about national differences in management practices, corporate governance, and even innovation systems, but we know surprisingly little about national differences in entrepreneurship. Comparative Entrepreneurship compares processes of entrepreneurship in the UK and Japan, countries associated with liberal market economies and coordinated market economies respectively. Focusing on high tech manufacturing it identifies basic similarities and key differences. Similarities are found in approaches to opportunity and business creation, which are strikingly different from recent policy emphases in the UK and Japan, inspired by Silicon Valley (hence the entrepreneurs live in 'the shadow of Silicon Valley'). Differences - in the backgrounds of entrepreneurs, founding teams, attitudes to growth and risk, innovation, competitive advantages, HRM emphases, and inter-firm collaborations - are summed up by the concepts of 'project entrepreneurship' and 'lifework entrepreneurship.' These are closely related to the respective environments, especially the nature of markets in both countries. They also embody different time orientations, with implications for financing and governance. This study brings insights from entrepreneurship to comparative institutions and varieties of capitalism, and vice versa, and draws on two surveys and 25 case interviews in both the UK and Japan. It concludes with a discussion of dilemmas for entrepreneurship policy in the UK, Japan, and other countries.

This book investigates entrepreneurial initiatives in the three largest economies of the world: China, Japan and the USA. It brings together historical, institutional, and ethnographic approaches and highlights entrepreneurial patterns that result from cultural, legal, and political forces that facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship.

This book systematically compares the innovation and entrepreneurship education (IEE) in the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, Croatia, Canada, South Korea, and China. The book invites the most distinguished professors of each country in this field to contribute. It provides a context analysis that can lead to greater insight into why and how IEE has become an important government agenda and an institutional priority in different country settings. Following the context, each chapter analyzes governmental policies and the guidance of entrepreneurship education in recent years. This book also analyzes the internal development and supporting system of IEE from an ecosystem perspective. Based on the comparison of case countries, the book puts forwards the common successful experience and the differentiation of IEE.

′Erudite and accessible, McCann demonstrates how the national gets reconfigured around the global without losing some of its unique features. Far from being a one-size-fits-all Anglo-American template, neoliberalism comes in many different hues and variations. This is by far the best textbook in the field and is destined to become a classic for years to come.′ Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai′i-Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA ′A sweeping examination of systems of capitalism in theory and in the world’s major industrial economies leads Leo McCann to challenge the conventional wisdom on globalization. Historical analysis of the evolution of business systems and detailed examination of present practice demonstrate persuasively that, despite facing common challenges, distinctive national differences remain salient. A must read for anyone who needs to understand how business systems operate in an increasingly interdependent world economy.′ - Dr Eileen Appelbaum, Senior Economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC, USA Globalization has profound effects on national economies even as distinct national ‘models’ of capitalism remain. International and Comparative Business accessibly tracks the historical and socio-political contexts of the world’s major countries on a chapter-by-chapter basis to the present day. The book provides a comprehensive, critical, yet concise introduction to each of the economies’ key features, including macro overviews as well as organizational and workplace-level analysis. Each chapter features learning objectives, in-depth interpretation and critique of key literature, and annotated further reading to allow readers to rigorously navigate their way through the wealth of material available for each country. This text is essential reading for students and researchers in the areas of international business and cross-cultural management, comparative political economy, and history. Leo McCann is Senior Lecturer in International and Comparative Management at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK

This book explores the importance of entrepreneurs in driving economic growth as the world economy grows and becomes more integrated and more challenging. It examines the situation in both advanced and developing countries and shows how the entrepreneurial orientation of the founders of small and medium sized enterprises has resulted in phenomenal growth, often fuelled by innovation and new technologies. It contrasts the experiences of Chinese family business in China and among the overseas Chinese with the experiences of family businesses in the United States and Europe. One important conclusion is that there has been a noticeable fall in entrepreneurial proclivity in the advanced economies, in contrast to the position in emerging economies.

This book investigates entrepreneurial initiatives in the three largest economies of the world: China, Japan and the USA. It brings together historical, institutional, and ethnographic approaches and highlights entrepreneurial patterns that result from cultural, legal, and political forces that facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship.

This book focuses on the nature and role of entrepreneurship in modern developed and emerging economies and societies, its relation to governments and universities, and its role in the often-forgotten informal economy. The aim is to position entrepreneurship in the post-crisis context and explore how its relation to universities and governments contributes to explain the countries’ and territories’ growth performance and resilience or vulnerability to the crisis. The accent is particularly on processes and patterns at local level and in small and medium-sized enterprises in local economic systems and districts, local systems of innovation, and the types and configurations of innovation these give origin to. With globalization, entrepreneurship has become fundamental for the competitiveness of territories and countries, for policy management and for development. The local dimension is fundamental because of agglomeration economies and effects, the advantages of proximity and the nature of knowledge and information. Furthermore, territories carry to the centre-stage tacit knowledge, localized social capital, embeddedness and interpersonal relations as fundamental components of their endogenous socio-economic development and competitiveness. When local systems are connected in a horizontal network, they contribute to the strength of national and international systems. To play a constructive role from this perspective, entrepreneurship must avoid local entrenchment and support the local economy to upgrade and be competitive. To do this, the entrepreneurs’ interaction and alliance with universities and governments is a must for those countries and localities wanting to emerge. This requires that enterprises, universities and governments create synergies and spill-overs to their mutual advantage.

This book aims to define comparative economics and to illustrate the breadth and depth of its contribution. It starts with an historiography of the field, arguing for a continued legacy of comparative economic systems, which compared socialism and capitalism, a field which some argued should have been replaced by institutional economics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The process of transition to market capitalism is reviewed, and itself exemplifies a new combination of comparative analysis with a focus on institutional development. Going beyond, chapters broadening the application of comparative analysis and applying it to new issues and approaches, including the role and definition of institutions, subjective wellbeing, inequality, populism, demography, and novel methodologies. Overall, comparative economics has evolved in the past 30 years, and remains a powerful approach for analyzing important issues.

This book explores the importance of entrepreneurs in driving economic growth as the world economy grows and becomes more integrated and more challenging. It examines the situation in both advanced and developing countries and shows how the entrepreneurial orientation of the founders of small and medium sized enterprises has resulted in phenomenal growth, often fuelled by innovation and new technologies. It contrasts the experiences of Chinese family business in China and among the overseas Chinese with the experiences of family businesses in the United States and Europe. One important conclusion is that there has been a noticeable fall in entrepreneurial proclivity in the advanced economies, in contrast to the position in emerging economies.

This major study of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship focuses on the significance of entrepreneurship in the socioeconomic development of a society, and the economic and noneconomic factors which promote its emergence. Comparatively and analytically, it looks at five societies that achieved industrialization during the 18th and 19th century (England, France, Prussia-Germany, Japan, and the U.S.) and one that did not (Russia).