High hopes are invested in a rapid institutionalisation of an enterprise culture in HigherEducation. This has heightened the importance of entrepreneurship education (EE) in most Western societies; however, how values and beliefs about entrepreneurship are institutionalised in EE remains relatively unchallenged. This study applies the lens of the cult, in particular three elements Rituals, Deities and the Promise of Salvation, to reflect on the production and reproduction of entrepreneurship in EE. In doing so, the paper addresses uncontested values and beliefs that form a hidden curriculum prevalent in EE. We argue for greater appreciation of reflexive practices to challenge normative promotions of beliefs and values that compare with forms of evangelising, detrimental to objectives of Higher Education. Consequently, we call for a more critical pedagogy to counteract a 'cultification' of entrepreneurship in EE.

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We propose a novel literature review method in order to systematically trace and reveal the dominant narratives of a body of literature: the model‐narrative review method. We apply this method to an ever‐growing literature on ecosystems in business studies, as it resembles a rich knowledge base with somewhat competing, overarching stories, replete with emplotted characters, systematic puzzles and embellished scientific drama. To interpret these unfolding storylines, we both separately engage with and connect seminal work on business, entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems. Through thematic reading we map the key themes and scientific puzzles in each ecosystem type. Through enstoried reading we identify how authors construct the plot, narrative setting, emplotted characters, narrative voices and moral lessons around ecosystems. Through rhetorical reading we explicate the rhetorical devices and strategies that claim the relevance of their work. Our findings expose a number of hidden meanings and underlying assumptions, adding transparency to ecosystem rhetorics and enhancing conceptual clarity. Altogether, this method offers a systematic construction of model‐narratives to synthesize and critically reflect upon similarities and differences between related concepts and opens up space for alternative research questions.

In this paper, we examine how entrepreneurs living in communities under continuous threat prepare themselves to continue with their enterprising activities or engage in new ones after the expected crisis occurs. Most of the crisis literature on disasters and entrepreneurship focuses on aftermath responses, but the antecedents of such entrepreneurial behavior and its connection to past and future crises remains largely unexplored. Based on a two-stage exploratory study pre and post the Calbuco Volcano eruptions in 2015 and 2016 in Chile, we introduce the notion of entrepreneurial preparedness in a context of continuous threat and elaborate on its four central attributes: anchored reflectiveness, situated experience, breaking through, and reaching out. Subsequently, our work develops a refined understanding of pre and postdisaster entrepreneurship and offers a novel base for theorizing on the relationship between entrepreneurial preparedness in contexts of continuous threat.

This paper examines how entrepreneurial opportunities co-evolve within a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem (SEE). Most of the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems falls short on integrating the entrepreneurial process in empirical research. To analyze data collected from pre-start-up teams within a nascent SEE on high-tech cellulose-based materials over 3 years, we apply a design science approach that helps understand actors' collaborative sensemaking in designing and structuring ecosystem features and relationships. Our findings show that the SEE can be seen as a design artifact which evolves by ecosystem actors collectively engaging in new venture ideation and developing opportunity confidence. Furthermore, the paper presents a novel SEE framework, which elaborates on phases and enablers of the opportunity co-evolution process within an emerging ecosystem. We contribute to the literature on sustainable as well as general entrepreneurial ecosystems and offer a new theoretical foundation for a process view on ecosystems.

This study develops an understanding of the role of emotional connectivity for volunteer retention in prosocial business venturing. By embedding it in organizational ambivalence theory, our analysis of four volunteer-dependent community ventures reveals two mechanisms through which entrepreneurs strengthen volunteers' emotional connectivity. We first identify emotion-focused practices that form volunteers' emotional attachment to the venture, and then demonstrate how duality-focused practices, in the form of managing inherent organizational duality, complement emotion-focused practices to foster volunteers' emotional loyalty to the venture. Theorizing from our findings, we introduce a model of managing volunteers' emotional connectivity, and conclude by discussing its implications for prosocial venture research on volunteerism and affective commitment.

What are the strategies entrepreneurs apply to present business closure to public audiences? Most entrepreneurs choose to communicate venture failure publicly so as to foster a favorable impression of failure, in effect engaging in impression management to maintain and/or repair their professional reputation for future career actions. To date, however, the focus of most research has been on managing failure within organizational settings, where organizational actors can interact closely with their audiences. We know little about entrepreneurs’ strategies in presenting failure to public audiences in cases where they have limited opportunities for interaction. In response to this, we present an analysis of public business-closure statements to generate a typology of five venture-failure narratives— Triumph, Harmony, Embrace, Offset, and Show—that explains entrepreneurs’ distinct sets of impression-management strategies to portray failure in public. In conclusion, we theorize from our public venture-failure typology to discuss how our work advances understanding of the interaction between organizational failure, impression management, and entrepreneurial narratives.

High hopes are invested in a rapid institutionalisation of an enterprise culture in Higher Education. This has heightened the importance of entrepreneurship education (EE) in most Western societies; however, how values and beliefs about entrepreneurship are institutionalised in EE remains relatively unchallenged. This study applies the lens of the cult, in particular three elements Rituals, Deities and the Promise of Salvation, to reflect on the production and reproduction of entrepreneurship in EE. In doing so, the paper addresses uncontested values and beliefs that form a hidden curriculum prevalent in EE. We argue for greater appreciation of reflexive practices to challenge normative promotions of beliefs and values that compare with forms of evangelising, detrimental to objectives of Higher Education. Consequently, we call for a more critical pedagogy to counteract a 'cultification' of entrepreneurship in EE.