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The purpose of this paper is to understand how national institutional environments contribute to differences in life satisfaction between entrepreneurs and employees.

Leveraging person–environment fit and institutional theories and using a sample of more than 70,000 entrepreneurs and employees from 43 countries, the study investigates how the impact of entrepreneurial activity on life satisfaction differs in various environmental contexts. An entrepreneur’s life satisfaction arguably should increase when a high degree of compatibility or fit exists between his or her choice to be an entrepreneur and the informal and formal institutional environment.

The study finds that differences in life satisfaction between entrepreneurs and employees are larger in countries with high power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, extant entrepreneurship policies, low commercial profit taxes and low worker rights.

This study sheds new light on how entrepreneurial activity affects life satisfaction, contingent on the informal and formal institutions in a country that support entrepreneurship by its residents.

This study investigates the differential likelihood of being an entrepreneur among immigrants to and natives of a country. Using a mixed embeddedness perspective, the authors outline how economic, sociocultural, and institutional embeddedness influence the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity exhibited by immigrant and native residents.

The tests of the hypotheses rely on a multilevel cross-country research design that uses secondary data from different sources.

Compared with their native counterparts, immigrants are more likely to start and run their own businesses, and an array of environmental factors influences this likelihood. The level of economic development and equality laws increase it; the abundance of market opportunities in an economy, entrepreneurship culture and cultural collectivism diminish it.

The findings provide policy makers and stakeholders with valuable insights into pertinent environmental factors that determine the differential propensities of immigrant and native residents to become entrepreneurs.

This study provides an expanded understanding of the connection between being an immigrant and entrepreneurial activity, by explicating the influences of country-level conditions.

In public management research, the focus in the public value debate has been on public administration organizations’ broader societal outcomes. Public value describes how public administrations form a vital part of the social context in which people develop and grow. However, there has not yet been an analysis of how public administration contributes to happiness in society.

In this study, we empirically analyze the relationship between people’s happiness and the public value of public administration. Our approach is based on a unique Swiss survey dataset comprising 870 individuals.

We find a positive relationship between public administration’s public value and happiness. We also find preliminary evidence with a moderation analysis that the relationship between a value-creating public administration sector and self-reported happiness is stronger for public administration employees.

While correlation studies cannot claim causal explanations and common method bias may additionally limit any research in social science, we took a number of measures to mitigate related problem. We tested our model in two samples and took both several procedural techniques and a survey design minimizing common method bias.

The paper discusses implications for public sector performance measurement for public management and practitioners.

This study calls for a more positive view on the multiple functions public administration performs for society. After an era of critical voices, our study helps reclaim public administration as a positive force for society at large in times of grand challenges, such as climate crisis, demographics and digitization.

This study has highlighted the importance between public administration’s public value and happiness in Swiss public service organizations. The study also showed that an employment in the public administration contributes to the happiness of individuals and beyond to society.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how the interplay of individual-level resources and culture affects entrepreneurs’ propensity to adopt social value creation goals.

Using a sample of 12,685 entrepreneurs in 35 countries from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, it investigates the main effects of individual-level resources – measured as financial, human and social capital – on social value creation goals, as well as the moderating effects of the cultural context in which the respective entrepreneur is embedded, on the relationship between individual-level resources and social value creation goals.

Drawing on the resource-based perspective and Hofstede’s cultural values framework, the results offer empirical evidence that individual-level resources are relevant for predicting the extent to which entrepreneurs emphasise social goals for their business. Furthermore, culture influences the way entrepreneurs allocate their resources towards social value creation.

The study sheds new light on how entrepreneurs’ individual resources influence their willingness to create social value. Moreover, by focussing on the role of culture in the relationship between individual-level resources and social value creation goals, it contributes to social entrepreneurship literature, which has devoted little attention to the interplay of individual characteristics and culture.

This paper aims to develop and empirically test a framework on how personal values and sustainability conceptions affect students’ sustainability management orientation (SMO). An understanding of this connection gives insight into the question whether students are likely to engage in sustainable business practices in their future work.

A cross-sectional and comparative research design is used, using survey data of business students from Germany, Indonesia and the USA (N = 475). The proposed mediation models are tested by bootstrap procedures using Hayes’s (2013) PROCESS macro for SPSS.

Self-transcendence values translate into more nuanced sustainability conceptions since individuals with self-transcendence values are more likely to conceptualize sustainability beyond their own (narrow) self-interests. In turn, the stronger individuals’ sustainability conceptions, the higher the likelihood that they prefer sustainable management practices in their future professional working field.

Implications arise for researchers to investigate the engagement of future managers with different personal value types in sustainability practices and to gain insights into values and sustainability conceptions as a learning outcome. Limitations of this research – for instance, arising from potential common method bias – are discussed.

The findings point to the need to (re-)design appointment processes for management positions in a way that allows taking into account individuals’ personal values and sustainability conceptions. This research may also help firms and higher education institutions to empower their workforce/students to develop more integrated perspectives on sustainability challenges as well as teaching methods that address students’ effective learning outcomes, e.g. their values.

The paper offers a new framework and a cross-country perspective on psychological antecedents of individuals’ SMO as an important prerequisite for responsible behavior in the business context.