Reviewing the themes of the conference since the first edition in 2003 reveals a specific positioning of the IECER community displayed by a strong focus on environmental issues and economic geography approaches. The particular focus on regional issues is certainly linked to the important space German or German-speaking scholars occupy in the conference proceedings which reflects a typical facet of the German approach to researching entrepreneurship (see also Schmude et al., 2008). Geographical environment and space has not been an important issue for scholars in management science in general and entrepreneurship in particular. The interdisciplinary character of the IECER conference may be another explanation for the importance given to environmental issues. The importance of context-specificity and embeddedness in management science and entrepreneurship also reflects the degree of adoption of new trends and approaches by the scholars attending the past IECER conferences like New Economic Geography (NEG) for example. NEG as a new branch of spatial economy aims to explain the formation of economic agglomerations in geographical space (Fujita and Mori, 2005). NEG can be described as a theory of the emergence of large agglomerations, which relies on increasing returns to scale and transportation costs (Schmutzler, 1999). Even if most models of NEG focused on pecuniary externalities as main agglomeration forces, knowledge externalities and information spillovers tend to be increasingly important. Ottaviano and Thisse (2004) argue that many of the NEG ideas have been around for a long time in the works of economic geographers and location theorists. Reviewing the papers presented, we find many contributions including or dealing with non-pecuniary externalities as part of the entrepreneurial activity or process.
Against this background, the IECER community may provide an important contribution to entrepreneurship research and theory because many papers presented since 2003 have dealt with those factors when exploring environmental issues related to entrepreneurship. Consequently, we focus on this specificity of the IECER and the privileged theme of the external environment (Theme 5) in order to clarify the contribution to the field of entrepreneurship. Analysing the papers dealing with the external environment, we were able to identify five subthemes:
1 ‘regional determinants on entrepreneurship’
2 ‘comparative studies (different levels of new firm formation and outcomes of entrepreneurship: survival, employment effects, etc.) in or between countries/regions’
3 ‘description/evolution of entrepreneurship in a country or a region’ 4 ‘entrepreneurship and regional development’
5 ‘support to entrepreneurship’.
The following section provides an (non-extensive) overview of research related to Theme 5 in order to clarify the contribution of the IECER community to the field.
168 J. Schmude, S. Heumann, F. Lasch and F. Le Roy
4.1 Regional determinants on entrepreneurship
Contributions of this subtheme study the relationship between entrepreneurship and the region and aim to identify regional assets and factors favouring or hampering entrepreneurship (What makes a region entrepreneurial?)
Traditionally, German-based and German speaking scholars intensively attend the IECER conference. Consequently, Germany is one of the most intensively studied countries in the IECER community. Empirical findings have been presented for personal/regional determinants of entrepreneurship in Germany (Sternberg and Wagner, 2003), or conditions for high-tech start-ups pointing out strengths (strong government support for entrepreneurship, excellent networking, and technology transfer) and weaknesses (lack of financing of the early development stage with venture capital and informal money, high administrative burdens) of the national innovation system (Voss and Müller, 2007) to cite some examples. Results for France have been presented by Lasch et al. (2004) identifying geographical proximity and regional knowledge base as main agglomeration forces for ICT entrepreneurship in the French labour markets. Findings on China represent interesting insights in entrepreneurial contexts outside Europe: Gao and Xiao (2006) evaluate the institutional impact on entrepreneurship in China; Gao (2005) provides an overview about institutional conditions for developing venture capital; Dornberger and Zeng (2007) analyse locational factors of high-tech start-ups in the Shenzen region (China) and identify proximity to suppliers and customers as triggers for the development of new ventures in this area.
4.2 Comparative studies: different levels of new firm formation and outcomes of entrepreneurship in or between countries/regions
This subtheme centres interest in regional determinants applying a comparative perspective or studying specific environments for entrepreneurship. (What explains different levels of entrepreneurship between regions? What are the effects of specific environments or activities for entrepreneurship?).
On the European level, Bosma and Schutjens (2007) explore the link between entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial activity in 17 European countries based upon data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and on the aggregation level of the NUTS I and II regions as defined by Eurostat. Another example is the Leitão and Ferreira (2007) study, providing a comparative analysis of the impact of the liberalisation of European telecommunications markets on entrepreneurship, employment and growth between two countries affected by radical changes of the political, economic and regulatory environment, namely, Germany (Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) and Portugal (New member of the European Union in 1986). On a national level, environmental change and its impact on entrepreneurship have been studied by Grotz and Brixy (2003). They describe the impact of German unification on entry rates, new firm survival and employment growth pointing out significant differences between the regions of West and East Germany. Geographical disparities existing in small countries are also issues of research (e.g., Bergman (2006), dealing with regional differences in Switzerland). An example for the impact of specific types of entrepreneurship (university start-ups) on regional high-tech growth is the Bleibst and Lautenschläger (2003) study, to cite an example. On the subregional level, non-pecuniary externalities as factors for entrepreneurial agglomerations are investigated comparing the cases of Lisbon and
IECER Conference – five years of entrepreneurship research 169 Stockholm (Amaral et al., 2005). Other examples for this level of geographical scope are the Fertala (2007) study examining the relationship between regional factors and firm failure in Upper Bavaria (Germany), or Mc Evoy and Hafeez (2007) dealing with variations in ethnic minority entrepreneurship in Britain. Findings related to the effect of specific environments for entrepreneurship are also available for outside Europe (emerging markets in Eastern Europe). Welter et al. (2003), for example, investigate employment effects of small-size entrepreneurship in ‘fragile’ environments, e.g., Russia. 4.3 Description/Evolution of entrepreneurship in a country or a region
This subtheme regroups mainly descriptive contributions analysing the development or structural features of entrepreneurship in a country or region. (How can the evolution of entrepreneurship be described? What are the specific features on entrepreneurship in a country or region?).
On the national level, Achtenhagen and Welter (2003), for example, retrace the development of entrepreneurship in Germany between 1997 and 2001. Paul et al. (2007) describe the emergence of the venture capital system and its impact on entrepreneurship in Egypt. Examples of studies on the regional level of analysis are Ní Bradáigh (2004; patterns and evolution of entrepreneurship in an Irish region) or Scott and Roper (2006) evaluating the regional knowledge base as determinant for the evolution of entrepreneurship in the West Midlands (UK). Studies investigating entrepreneurship in a region are available for Japan (Kamei et al., 2007, exploring opportunity entrepreneurship in the Kyoto region) and Spain (Lladós et al., 2007, analysing innovative cluster and micro firms in the Barcelona agglomeration). Marchesnay et al.
(2003) investigate entrepreneurship linked to specifically local features (‘terroir’) in France.
4.4 Entrepreneurship and regional development
This subtheme investigates more specifically regions as a whole and evaluates the role of entrepreneurship for regional growth and employment. (What is the effect of entrepreneurship on regional economic and employment growth?).
Empirical findings of the link between entrepreneurship, regional development and employment effects exist for the case of Portugal (Baptista et al., 2005; Baptista and Carias, 2007), Germany (Fritsch and Mueller, 2004, reviewing regional growth regimes in West Germany), or Israel (De Haan, 2007, high-tech entrepreneurship as trigger for economic growth). Sauka and Welter (2006) study the case of Latvia and explore productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship in a transition country. Krasniki (2004) investigates barriers to SME growth in Kosova. Murphy et al. (2005) evaluate the effect of e-commerce on entrepreneurship in Wales. At the subregional level, Wigren (2004) analyses the role of entrepreneurship in the context of renewal of an industrial district in Sweden.
4.5 Support to entrepreneurship
This subtheme reviews support infrastructure and measures to promote entrepreneurship in countries or regions. (Description of support infrastructure; what is the effect of measures and policies for entrepreneurship?).
170 J. Schmude, S. Heumann, F. Lasch and F. Le Roy
Contrasting the four subthemes presented above, issues like support infrastructure and entrepreneurship policy are recent issues appearing in the conference space since 2005. Gurău and Groh (2007) present a comparative analysis about the impact of regional development policies on ICT and biotech firm creation in France, Germany and the UK. Fritsch and Mueller (2005) assess the potential of regional policy promotion programme for entrepreneurship over time in Germany. For the same country, Raith et al. (2006) present a general model for evaluating the goal achievement of federal lending programmes. Gabriele et al. (2007) investigate the economic impact of public regional industrial policies in Italy. Incubators and effects of incubation policy are also frequent topics related to the support of entrepreneurship in countries (e.g., Roth et al., 2006, for Germany; Soetanto, 2005, for the Netherlands; Messeghem and Sammut, 2007, for France). More specifically focused on types of entrepreneurs, Mustar (2005) describes policies to support academic spin-offs in France. An example for support policy in an Asian country is the Li (2005) study (entrepreneurial support and service system in Taiwan).