Impact of cultural values and practices on entrepreneurial behavior: bibliometric literature review

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a first review of the literature focusing on cultural characteristics and values that impact on entrepreneurial behavior and activities to gain a first-hand overview of the state of the art in this field of research. In the following section, some of the most important concepts, theories and empirical papers are drawn from the existing research to frame and shape the literature review. In particular, section two identifies some of the most compelling factors influencing entrepreneurship behavior, including entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, national institutions, entrepreneur-specific characteristics, contextual characteristics and national culture. These six underlying factors are generally viewed in the literature to explain why and how behavior varies across entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach The methodology involves bibliometric analysis of the scholarly literature on entrepreneurial behavior more generally, and in particular, the role of culture. Studies listed in the Web of Science since 2000 are scanned, which generated 1,520 articles with the theme of entrepreneurial behavior. Using standard and widely accepted bibliometric techniques, a careful inspection of the original search is reduced to 582 articles. The particular inclusion criteria are carefully discussed and documented in this section, along with the keywords utilized in the search algorithm. Findings By systematically assessing the extant literature review, findings and methods of the top 25 cited articles in the field are presented so as to identify content, methodology, direction of the literature and the opportunities for future research. An important finding is the preponderance of quantitative studies and the lack of qualitative studies in this field. Therefore, the conclusion emphasizes the need for future research with a variety of methodological approaches to how national cultural settings impact entrepreneurial behavior. Such new studies can be useful for understanding entrepreneurship and how governments can tailor entrepreneurial programs that fit the country’s context. Research limitations/implications The qualification involves the key phrases and words employed in the bibliometric algorithm to undertake the search and identify the relevant literature. In fact, the entrepreneurship research field is a relatively young field (Acs and Audretsch, 2006). The time period: Given that some of the most important scholars and journals addressed the topic before the new century, there is no doubt that important research was published prior to the year 2000. However, we focused on the current century due to the sudden increase of research in this topic that occurred in 2015. The restriction to the English languages in implementing the bibliometric algorithm: Such an obstacle is common in bibliometric searches, due to the different spelling used in keywords. However, this bibliometric search run could successfully identify the different spellings of the word “behavior” and “behaviour”. Originality/value This paper fills a research gap by addressing an emerging research area that has been receiving increasing attention recently due to the growing demand for understanding the differences of entrepreneurial responses and behaviors in national cultural settings. Presently, very few systematic reviews of literature exist that specifically cover the impact of national cultural practices, characteristics and values on entrepreneurial behavior. The paper introduces a bibliometric review of literature of refereed published articles in the field of entrepreneurship behavior from 2000 until 2021, with a focus on publications that include the keywords “local/national culture/cultural characteristics/cultural values influence on entrepreneurial behavior” in their title or abstract. The paper shows that the number of publications has been rising within the last few years, indicating the growth of interest in the field of cultural impact on entrepreneurship and specifically, entrepreneurial cognition, intention and behaviors.

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