Search results

Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) across the United States at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic created entrepreneurial opportunities for sewists and makers. In the United States in March and April 2020, masks were not readily available to the general public from existing retailers and PPE for medical use was being rationed for healthcare workers. Sewists and crafters, professionals and amateurs alike, began making and selling and/or donating masks. For individuals with sewing skills and time, sewing and selling masks became a lifeline financially, personally, and socially. To understand the experiences of people who made and distributed handmade masks during the early months of the pandemic in the United States, an interdisciplinary team developed an online cross-sectional survey instrument using a qualitative-dominated approach with both open and closed questions. This chapter explores themes identified from a sample of 94 participants, predominantly female-identifying, who created an enterprise or added a product line to an existing business. The sample includes individuals who did not identify as a ‘creative entrepreneur’ prior to the pandemic but did identify as an entrepreneur after starting a mask-making venture. Informed by entrepreneurship literature, the authors observed that these nascent entrepreneurs articulated recognisable motivations for social entrepreneurship, showed signs of pre-existing entrepreneurial mindsets, and employed business models and marketing tactics of entrepreneurs, largely without any business training. Implications for the study include increased recognition of latent entrepreneurial readiness, interest of women in social entrepreneurship, and higher levels of business knowledge among women than previously recognised.

Founders have significant influence over many domains within family businesses, and their impact on companies may be felt even after leadership succession. Founders have therefore received much attention from scholars, policymakers, and entrepreneurship educators. This chapter characterizes the current literature on family business founders by identifying the topics explored and the range of methods and methodologies used in recent years to outline a research agenda for future study of founders of family businesses.

A scoping review was conducted to examine the extent and essence of contemporaneous research activity related to family business founders. Scoping reviews describe current research activity without evaluating individual studies and are effective in summarizing significant concerns and themes, identifying areas of deficiency, and establishing recommendations for future directions in research. This scoping review used elements of a rapid review due to resource restrictions and this chapter discusses efforts to mitigate the limitations introduced as a result.

After summarizing the current academic conversation about family business founders, opportunities for future research topics and methodological approaches to the study of founders of family businesses are introduced.

The aim of this paper is to answer the question: What stimulates artisan entrepreneurs to act as responsible leaders?

A qualitative research method was employed and semi-structured interviews with 30 artisans working in four different artisanal activities were used to gather the data. Thematic analysis was subsequently applied to the interview transcripts.

The findings suggest that the main factors causing artisan entrepreneurs to act responsibly are as follows: autonomy (the authority artisans exercise in managing their businesses; preserving socio-cultural identity is an artisan’s main duty; proving an individual competency in implementing society-related priorities), competence (adhering to generally accepted business practices; simplicity of developing and maintaining the social agenda of artisan enterprises; meeting the clients’ desire in exercising a social awareness) and relatedness (returning social favours; necessitating involvement with different stakeholders; contributing to the common good).

This paper contributes by filling a gap in the literature on artisan entrepreneurship, responsible leadership and research in tourism and hospitality, in which empirical studies on the responsible practices of artisan entrepreneurs have been limited so far.