How Context Matters for Entrepreneurship: Analysing Institutional Influences Upon Entrepreneurship Behaviours Through a Multilevel Perspective

Abstract

While the field of entrepreneurship research has been deepening the understanding of central questions by studying the entrepreneur, most explanations require to understand the context surrounding entrepreneurial phenomena. The study of entrepreneurship enhances its ability to explain diverse phenomena and the implications for entrepreneurs by including contextual elements in their analysis. An appropriate theoretical framework to enhance understanding of contextual influences upon entrepreneurship comes from the institutional literature. However, and despite advancement in the field of entrepreneurship from an institutional perspective, further evidence, and discussions about institutional influences upon diverse entrepreneurship phenomena are required to expand and enhance knowledge in this line of research.

The field of entrepreneurship expands and develops when its diverse, versatile, dynamic, and rich nature is acknowledged and studied. As a result, this thesis addresses this by conducting a systematic literature review that provides ways forward upon key themes identified within the literature of the institutional influence upon entrepreneurship. Based on the literature review, this thesis contributes further with two multi-level empirical studies that build on seminal and extant literature to analyse the influence of the institutional context upon entrepreneurship phenomena. The first study addresses how the institutional context influences entrepreneurial network behaviour and the second study analyses how the institutional context influences social entrepreneurship behaviour across levels of development. The findings, contributions and implications are discussed within each study.