Abstract
Why are citizens important? In any civic society, this question may sound superfluous. We take for granted the duties, responsibilities and limitations of the citizen as we assume that carrying a passport or voting at an election (still a cherished duty in democratic societies) is what constitutes citizenship. But citizenship understood merely as a mechanism of governance or as an apparatus of democracy may not be enough. The very cultivation and sustenance of that democracy may depend on the knowledge, skills, civic intelligence and moral integrity of all its citizens, as Vincent Ostrom (1997) argued, together with the notion of self-governance and ‘the commons’ representing citizenship in action, that the other Ostrom, Eleanor (2005, 2014), developed so powerfully. In our fractured social and economic environments, it is well worth remembering that the growing institutional sclerosis over issues that affect our lives so fundamentally (including a populist challenge to democracy) may be best prevented by self-governance based on a coherent set of beliefs and actions drawn from the wellspring of civic competence and engagement.
One way of fostering that civic competence and a better sense of self-governance is through entrepreneurship, but not as entrepreneurship as usual, as in a turgid tide of new venture creation and relentless innovation, so beloved of the digitally exclusive set of tabloid press, policymakers and, dare I state, some academic researchers. If we wish to upgrade entrepreneurship to something more than the prevalence rate of start-ups by a few and embed it in a wider pool of social and economic activities, we might need to overcome the constraints of orthodoxy. We need to stretch our critical appreciation of entrepreneurship to a form of engagement that combines the innovative strength of producers and users with the engagement in the creative dynamics of the people as citizens. Our canon of knowledge on entrepreneurship fails to respect the collective wisdom of citizens who are also producers, users, parents, partners, children and, crucially, the collective set of individuals. What is produced, marketed and sold in the name of entrepreneurship is dependent on the absorption of goods, services, ideas and information by all citizens. So how could we create a new culture of Citizen Entrepreneurship (CE)?
CE means the involvement of citizens, as users, producers and collective governance gatekeepers, in the private, social and public entrepreneurship process. CE promotes the idea of pro-active involvement of citizens, in the private, social and public forms of new venture creation and growth. The pro-active involvement of citizens in productive social and economic projects offers new ways of using technology, harnessing a common pool of financial, social and human capital, to address people’s aspirations and needs that could act as a meaningful antidote to decreasing levels of trust in institutions, businesses and governance processes in most countries around the world. It does not mean being evangelical about all citizens developing enterprise formation capabilities. Rather, it is about greater awareness, meaningful contact with entrepreneurial activities in society and engagement with entrepreneurs about choices for skills development and labour supply, valorisation of financial and human resources, implications for the environment and local problem-solving. Citizen engagement in entrepreneurial initiatives often finds best expression in smart city projects such as the one in Copenhagen, Denmark regarded as the ‘smartest city’ by the EasyPark Group (Copenhagen Capacity, 2018), in socially constructed programmes such as the Glasgow project on crime reduction initiated by a number of stakeholders such as local families, victims and perpetrators of crime and in the capacity development of rural artisans, performing artists and musicians through rural development initiatives in West Bengal, India by Bangalnatakdotcom.
Some of us across different nations are coming together to discuss and reflect on the concept soon at the European Union (see
For now, we have another issue full of varied and rich contributions. Amanpreet Kaur and Balwinder Singh attempt to answer a vital question about the connection between investment research and development (R&D) and the reputation of a firm in the Indian context. While R&D investment in advanced economies is a ‘bread and butter’ stuff for policymakers, with only the rate, frequency and volume of investment being the contentious areas of debate in policy, corporate and research circles, emerging nations need to consider a more strategic approach for enhancing innovation capabilities. Under pressure to succeed, firms can be swayed more by market reputation than other considerations. Read what Kaur and Singh find in their article. Away in West Africa, in Ghana, Stephen Oduro reflects on another important aspect of firm behaviour for innovation. Choices about the type of innovation a firm pursues could have a differential impact on the performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Oduro provides us with interesting insights into this area of innovation in SMEs. By way of a change of gear and movement in alternate arenas, we have Jennifer Heiny, Icek Ajzen, Ingrid-Ute Leonhaeuser and Peter Schmidt revisit the subject of entrepreneurial intentions in private households for tourism projects, explaining and considering the mediated effects of entrepreneurial experience. Entrepreneurial intentions together with the concept of planned behaviour has been researched in depth following some of the pioneering works of Icek Ajzen, so it is a privilege to have him as a co-author for this new work. Sibylle Heilbrunn and Rosa Lisa Iannone help us to engage in critical discourse on how the neoliberalist agenda in entrepreneurship policy is subverting the project of entrepreneurship. It is by stepping back and reflecting critically on how entrepreneurship is evolving across nations that we can make sense of its value or indeed its appropriation for questionable ends. This paper won the Best Paper prize at the 18th International Entrepreneurship Forum conference held in Nancy, France in December 2018. Travelling to Vietnam, courtesy of Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen, we find a rich empirical exploration of corporate image and customer responses to organisational transformation in B2B contexts. The growing economy of Vietnam is witnessing the emergence of new forms of business activities as Nguyen Thi Hoang Yen narrates in his article. In his paper, Amit Singh Khokhar helps us to ponder over the determinants of female entrepreneurship in India. Reductionist approaches tend to rely on the same or similar set of choices and decision-making processes, especially with regard to female entrepreneurial activities. Khokhar’s work suggests that context matters. Staying in Asia, we obtain a better understanding of enterprise income and assets based on observations of participation in various development initiatives in Peninsular Malaysia, by a team of six collaborating authors—Abdullah Al Mamun, Mohd Asrul Hery Bin Ibrahim, Rajennd A/L Muniady, Mohammad Bin Ismail, Noorshella Binti Che Nawi and Noorul Azwin Binti Md Nasir. Going back to entrepreneurial intentions, how do students perceive the role of self-efficacy? Edwin Bbenkele and Vivence Kalitanyi answer this question by measuring university students’ perceptions about the role of self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions in Cape Town, South Africa. Finally, we host an interesting ‘points of view’ piece on how institutions emerge and develop to play a key role in emerging economies, in particular the new economic giant of the People’s Republic of China. Bingling Wei, Di Ye and Jinghong Wei take on this task to give us a better understanding of the changing environment in China.
I am excited to act as the editor of JEIEE and to offer you this rich crop of the differentiated colours of entrepreneurship and innovation. I hope you enjoy reading these articles and perhaps make your own contributions in the future.