Economic resilience and entrepreneurship: A case study of the Thessaloniki City Region

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between economic resilience and entrepreneurship in City Regions. ‘Resilience’ is an emerging concept, which has been employed to examine economic performance and responsiveness to exogenous shocks, such as financial crisis and recession. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders in the Thessaloniki City Region, Greece, this article contributes to the emergent literature by examining the link between economic resilience and entrepreneurship. The article finds that entrepreneurship is integral to promoting the diversification and capacity building of city region economies, with the external shock of the Eurozone crisis and austerity challenging areas such as the Thessaloniki City Region to rethink their economic structure. The article concludes that entrepreneurship is critical to restructuring and adaption of city region economies before drawing a series of recommendations concerning the wider policy implications of the study.

Economic resilience in Great Britain: the crisis impact and its determining factors for local authority districts

“…The loss of statistical significance across models indicates considerable sensitivity across specifications. This diminishes the robustness of the results and does not allow for the confirmation of a significant effect for entrepreneurship suggested by other studies (Bishop and Shilcof 2016;Williams and Vorley 2014;Williams et al 2013). The opposing effects of firm formation on employment generation-dynamism and flexibility on the one hand and the fact that most new firms tend to be small enterprises with relatively limited access to credit and high death rates, could potentially explain the sensitivity of the results to small changes in specification.…”

“…A number of studies highlight the importance of entrepreneurship to economic growth through innovation and job creation (Audretsch et al 2015;Williams et al 2013). However, firm formation exhibits significant geographical and time persistent differences (Acs and Mueller 2008;Bishop 2012).…”

“…The opposing effects of firm formation on employment generation-dynamism and flexibility on the one hand and the fact that most new firms tend to be small enterprises with relatively limited access to credit and high death rates, could potentially explain the sensitivity of the results to small changes in specification. In addition, it could be the case that entrepreneurship is important to the restructuring or recovery phase rather than the crisis impact (Bishop and Shilcof 2016;Williams and Vorley 2014;Williams et al 2013).…”

Does personality of owners of micro enterprises matter for the relationship between startup capital and entrepreneurial success?

“…Entrepreneurship stimulates economic transformation (Chattopadhyay and Ghosh, 2002;Ireland and Webb, 2007;Skriabikova et al, 2014;Williams et al, 2013;Zahra, 2005). This is the motivation behind enormous efforts of developing nations and their development partners aimed at intensifying entrepreneurial activities.…”

A Mixed Blessing: Resilience in the Entrepreneurial Socio-Technical System of Bitcoin

“…Fingleton et al (2012) point to the fact that studies of resilience in economic systems have been largely conceptual in nature. Indeed, the most recent global financial crisis highlighted how little we understand about resilience in practice (Williams et al 2013). This is also true of entrepreneurship where, despite increased recognition that it is an important contributor to job creation and economic growth, entrepreneurial resilience on a system-level has been largely ignored.…”