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How university context (UC) enhances students’ entrepreneurial intentions and opportunity recognition is an emerging topic. It is known that students learn, not only from educational programmes, but also from the context in which they are embedded. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of such context on student’s entrepreneurial intentions and opportunity recognition.

The authors use a three-dimensional institutional framework to describe UC including regulative, normative and cognitive structures. Regulative structures refer to rules and regulations, support initiatives in relation to entrepreneurship; normative structures include shared values and norms; while cognitive structures apply to knowledge among students and faculty. A heterogeneous sample of 196 respondents from five countries was used to create reliable measures of UC and to test the hypotheses with the help of regression analysis.

The findings indicate that two dimensions of UC in particular (regulative and normative) were shown to be of great importance in increasing entrepreneurial intentions and opportunity recognition among students.

The study contributes to this further by suggesting a reliable and theory-grounded scale of UC. Furthermore, this study adds to the discussion on entrepreneurship education by proving evidence of the importance of UC on entrepreneurial intentions. The important contribution is acknowledgement of the fact that social systems both constrain and enable entrepreneurs in their discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities. The authors have established that “would-be student entrepreneurs” do not exist separately from their structural context. Attempts to understand them outside of this context cannot, therefore, fully capture their nature.

Government attention to women’s entrepreneurship has increased in the past two decades; however, there are few cross-cultural studies to inform policy development. This paper aims to draw on gender and institutional theory to report on the status of female-focused small and medium-sized enterprises/entrepreneurship policies and to ask how – and to what extent – do women’s entrepreneurship policies differ among countries?

A common methodological approach is used to identify gaps in the policy-practice nexus.

The study highlights countries where policy is weak but practice is strong, and vice versa.

The study’s data were restricted to policy documents and observations of practices and initiatives on the ground.

The findings have implications for policy makers in respect of support for women’s entrepreneurship. Recommendations for future research are advanced.

The paper contributes to extant knowledge and understanding about entrepreneurship policy, specifically in relation to women’s entrepreneurship. It is also one of the few studies to use a common methodological approach to explore and compare women’s entrepreneurship policies in 13 countries.

The paper aims to clarify how a gendered analysis of entrepreneurial networks may benefit by the use of a constructionist (post‐structuralist) perspective.

The paper makes use of a discourse analysis: first, the paper reviews a selection of empirical research articles from 1980 to 2008 on gender and networks in entrepreneurship research in order to convey the main research question, the hypotheses, the methodology and the main findings. Second, the paper identifies in a broader literature the hegemonic statements that characterize the discourse of gender and networks.

The main findings of the studies reviewed is that there are no major differences in the networks of female and male entrepreneurs. Research on the significance of gender for entrepreneurial success indicates that there is probably more variation within than between sex categories with regard to network activities. This may be an indication that empiricist feminism and standpoint feminism have outplayed their role as approaches to the study of gender and networks in entrepreneurial settings. The discourse analysis reveals five hegemonic statements: entrepreneurs use social networks strategically, women are disadvantaged compared to men and therefore cannot network effectively, weak ties are the source of men's success; strong ties are women's drawback and, finally, women are inherently relational.

Methodologically, the current status of research on networks, gender and entrepreneurship demonstrates that most of the knowledge is gained through cross‐sectional surveys. Typically, the majority of studies on entrepreneurship, due to the methods chosen, does not allow for first‐hand, real and authentic experiences of entrepreneurial lives. Acknowledging the presence of the speaker can be done in various ways. Entrepreneurs may reveal their thoughts, their experience and reflections only if the relationship between the researcher and the researched is symmetrical. Narrative approaches are suggested in order to “tap” the voice – and thus the stories – of the acting entrepreneurs.

Theoretically, the discourse is limited by the lack of an explicit “gendered” perspective. The analysis of the texts reveals an implicit empiricist feminist approach, resulting in networks and entrepreneurship as well as gender and networks being portrayed in a very special and limited way.

The findings of the discursive approach to research texts on gender and entrepreneurial networks, is that the discourse is limited with regard to both theory and method. This paper has shown that the discourse in the research field is limited, and that the field needs to be challenged by other disciplinary procedures regulating what counts as knowledge.

This paper uses a combination of organisation theory, gender theory and the work environment to study the generation and implementation of new ideas in organisations. How do employees' perceptions of organisational structure and the work environment affect idea generation and implementation, and how does gender moderate this relationship?

The study develops and tests a structural equation model using data from a survey of a large Norwegian energy corporation. Survey items are measured using five-point scales and show good internal consistency levels. Exploratory factor analyses are used to ensure internal consistency, and confirmatory factor analyses are used to assess the fit of the model. Convergent and discriminant validity tests are also performed. Common method bias and invariance are evaluated across the female and male samples.

The theoretical model had a better fit for the male sample than the female sample, indicating that men's innovations were better captured than women's. The relationship between creativity and implementation is moderated by gender: women's ideas are not implemented to the same degree as men's. Work pressure has a positive effect on creativity; support from colleagues affects both idea generation and implementation, though support from managers does not.

The study has the usual limitations of cross-sectional surveys. The findings confirm that the two phases of the innovation process (idea generation and implementation) depend on similar intrinsic motivational factors in the work environment. However, implementing ideas also depends on decision-making authority.

Managers should be aware of how to increase innovative potential among employees. Employees should be given decision-making authority and work in an environment with supportive colleagues. The gendered findings in the study indicate that more attention should be paid to women's innovations in male-dominated corporations.

The study integrates research from disciplines that traditionally do not communicate into one theoretical framework to explore the conditions for employee-driven innovation. The findings highlight the need for developing gender-neutral innovation measures and understanding context-embedding innovation processes.

This paper studies the accuracy of small‐ to medium‐sized (SME) managers' perceptions of their information exchanges with important market actors such as customers, competitors and suppliers. In this way, examines an important dimension of managers' network perceptions, which are assumed to be necessary for optimal utilisation of their networks. By comparing managers' perceived frequency of information exchanges with external actors with an “objective” tracking of their actual behaviour, reveals substantial perceptual errors. Findings are discussed and implications highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to review the use of case method in entrepreneurship research, and to identify trends in its current application. A key objective of the paper is to lay the foundation for a future research agenda by critically reviewing relevant literatures and offering insights into the use of case method in particular settings. The paper also helps identify areas where case method could add value to research findings in future scholarship.

Using a Boolean search, a systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken across the “big five” entrepreneurship journals in the five-year period between 2008 and 2012. The search initially yielded a total of 269 “hits”. Following exclusion criteria, the list was refined to a total of 52 empirical papers, and these were reviewed using a comprehensive reading guide developed by the authors.

The paper finds that relatively few articles published in the “big five” entrepreneurship journals use case method, despite repeated calls in the literature for more in-depth, qualitative approaches. This potentially suggests that case method is not fully accepted as a legitimate or sufficiently rigorous approach in the upper echelons of contemporary published entrepreneurship scholarship. Overall the paper argues for greater acceptance of the use of case method amongst the academic community, alongside greater confidence in its application. This can be achieved by learning from other disciplines where the case approach is more established.

While a comprehensive SLR was undertaken, the search was restricted to a limited time period and across a limited number of top tier journals.

The paper highlights incidents where case method has been used successfully, identifies gaps in the literature and contributes towards setting a future research agenda that should be of particular value to qualitative researchers.

The paper builds on extant literatures by furthering our understanding of the use of case method in entrepreneurship research. It should be of value to qualitative scholars applying case method in their empirical work, as well as those seeking to extend their methodological reach beyond a purely quantitative orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a re‐directed and purposeful attention to the design of research on gender and entrepreneurship moving forward.

The paper questions the value of more studies on the men v. women binary and encourages research on the institutions supporting the gendered construction.

The paper suggests a re‐framing of gender (to include men, women, femininity, masculinity, etc.) both in topics investigated and in building the cadre of scholars engaged. It asks for discrimination of gender from biological sex in language use and believes that dialogue will be improved if the word “gender” is maintained as a socially constructed phenomenon directed at distinguishing the norms around “what women do” and “what men do”. Researchers, too, must necessarily confront personal pre‐existing ideas and language shaped by the norms and habits of one's upbringing and daily life in societies that are not acute observers of gender in action.

The paper assesses trends in research on gender and entrepreneurship and recommends ideas regarding new directions to create better research and application in practice, teaching, and training.