Government-sponsored entrepreneurship education: Is less more?

PublikationArtikel (med peer review)
entrepreneurship, Karl Wennberg, Karolin Sjöö, Niklas Elert

Sammanfattning

Entrepreneurship research suggests that entrepreneurship education and training can bridge the gender gap in entrepreneurship, but little empirical research exists assessing the validity and impact of such initiatives. We examine a large government-sponsored entrepreneurship education program aimed at university students in Sweden. While a pre-study indicates that longer university courses are associated with short-term outcomes such as increased self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions, results from a more comprehensive study using a pre-post design suggest little effect from these extensive courses on long-term outcomes such as new venture creation and entrepreneurial income. In contrast, we do find positive effects on these long-term outcomes from more limited but more specific training interventions, especially for women. Our study suggests that less extensive but more tailored interventions can be more beneficial than longer or more extensive interventions in promoting entrepreneurship in general, and entrepreneurship of underrepresented groups in particular. We discuss implications for theory, education, and policy.

Sjöö, K., Elert, N. & Wennberg, K. (2020). Government-sponsored entrepreneurship education: Is less more?International Review of Entrepreneurship, 18(1), 1-32.


Liknande innehåll

Dynamics of founding team diversity and venture outcomes: A simulation approach
Artikel (med peer review)Publikation
Sundriyal, V. K., Lévesque, M., Wennberg, K., & Norgren, A.
Publiceringsår

2024

Publicerat i

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Sammanfattning

Research summary

Entrepreneurship research overlooks the dynamics of changing diversity in founding teams. Our simulations calibrated from existing studies suggest that founding teams that change diversity exhibit greater discounted performance for their ventures due to being less diverse and thus their ventures surviving longer, compared to teams that maintain their diversity. Moreover, discounted performance is higher for teams changing diversity due to other teams’ performance than due to their own poor performance. Simulating without membership changes the interdependence between team diversity, venture performance, and team disruption, we find that while team diversity is overall performance-enhancing, this association differs across contexts and its impact varies as ventures mature. Founding team diversity should thus be seen as a continuum where moderate diversity can best serve teams in turbulent environments.

Managerial summary

We simulated the behavior of founding teams over time to show that compared to teams that do not change their diversity, those who do experience greater discounted performance for their business ventures. This improvement stems from the increased longevity, and thus greater accumulated performance, for teams that switch since they are more rather than less homogeneous. Our investigation also indicates that ventures led by teams that change diversity because they aspire to outperform other teams, tend to exhibit greater discounted performance than those that change diversity to outperform themselves. When we investigate the interconnectedness of teams’ diversity, ventures’ performance, and disruption, albeit without allowing for any changes in team diversity, we find that while diversity usually helps, teams moderately diversified tend to perform best in turbulent times.

Corporate demography and wage inequality: Revisited
Artikel (med peer review)Publikation
Bomark, N., Carlberg Larsson, E., & Wennberg, K.
Publiceringsår

2024

Publicerat i

Socius, 10.

Sammanfattning

To further research how organizations influence workforce wage inequality, the authors replicate and extend Sorensen and Sorenson’s study on organizational demography and wage inequality in region-industries by (1) replicating original results from Danish regions from 1992 to 1998 using a close-to-identical dataset in Sweden during the same time period, (2) using multiverse analysis to gauge the effect of analytical choices on research results, and (3) expanding the scope of Sorensen and Sorenson’s model by two new measures of organizational diversity. The findings suggest strong to fair test-retest validity of the original model, but model extensions with nuanced measures of organization form diversity do not enhance the model’s explanatory power. The authors analyze and discuss replication anomalies and show how multiverse analysis can be gainfully used more generally in comparative organizational sociology.

Beyond the Silver Bullet: Unveiling Multiple Pathways to School Turnaround
Working paperPublikation
Arora-Jonsson, S., Demir, E. K., Norgren, A., & Wennberg, K.
Publiceringsår

2024

Publicerat i

Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

Sammanfattning

Research on school improvement has accumulated an extensive list of factors that facilitate turnarounds at underperforming schools. Given that context or resource constraints may limit the possibilities of putting all of these factors in place, an important question is what is necessary and sufficient to turn a school around. We use qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of 77 Swedish schools studied over 12 years to answer this question. Our core finding is that there is no “silver bullet” solution. Instead, there are several distinct combinations of factors that can enable school turnaround. The local school context is essential for which combinations of factors are necessary and sufficient for school turnaround. We discuss implications for research on school improvement and education policy.

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