Entrepreneurship and self-employment for mature-aged people

Abstract

Not only do Australian mature-aged entrepreneurs contribute $11.9 billion per annum to the Australian economy in over 379,000 businesses, they launch approximately 14,000 new businesses each year and actively contribute to fiscal, social, health, and active ageing outcomes in their communities. Thirty-four per cent of all young businesses in Australia are now led by mature-aged entrepreneurs, identifying mature-aged entrepreneurship as the fastest growing sector of entrepreneurship. This study is the first of its kind to examine mature-aged entrepreneurship in Australia using five pragmatic and embedded case-study examples. Aligning to Cartensen's sociomotional selection theory, we adopted an interpretivist philosphical framework of emergent enquiry action research. The paper includes benefits and challenges associated with mature-aged entrepreneurship, including contextual and theoretical foundations. We provide policy and research recommendations to enhance the development of a dedicated entrepreneurial ecosystem for mature-aged people.

Determinants, processes, and impacts of indigenous entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review

“…The fact that most of the studies were either conceptual or used a case study approach underlined the prevailing patterns of theory building research. In addition, most of the conceptual works showed limitations, mainly because of their linear view of IE (Croce, 2020; Maritz and Foley, 2018; Maritz et al , 2021; Scheyvens et al , 2017).…”

“…The core of IE valued indigenous knowledge and culture, which positively affected the sustainability of indigenous communities, encouraging indigenous business activities and local products and contributing to economic development (Bodle et al, 2018;Rante and Warokka, 2013;Wennecke et al, 2019). Overall, these studies provided strong evidence of improvement in the country's economic and social development because of IE, whereby indigenous economic participation, investment and regional networks and alliances had a positive relationship with economic community development and business financial performance (Colbourne, 2017;Jarvis et al, 2018;Jhamb et al, 2021;Maritz et al, 2021;Thakur and Ray, 2020).…”

“…Indigenous entrepreneurs generally aimed to serve local communities and their efforts were often intended to enhance indigenous people’s quality of life. Given the importance of indigenous values embedded in indigenous culture, the sociocultural tenets impinging on IE included family or clan ties, community well-being, collective endeavours to preserve the dignity of indigenous people, the use of common properties or resources, tribal and religious values and a knack for a sustainable way of living (Dana, 1995; Dana, 2015; Dana and Anderson, 2005; Henry and Poyser, 2022; Maritz et al , 2021; Ratten and Dana, 2017). The studies provided ample evidence that sociocultural environments had an important bearing on indigenous entrepreneurial behaviour and performance (Collins et al , 2017; Grimm et al , 2013; Macpherson et al , 2021; Thakur and Ray, 2020; Tretiakov et al , 2020; Wennecke et al , 2019).…”

“…However, an advanced level of economic development in a country was not necessarily commensurate with the enhanced well-being of its indigenous communities. The obvious examples included Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA (Hindle, 2005; Maritz et al , 2021; Mason et al , 2012a; Rout et al , 2017). Among all the economic issues, land entitlement of indigenous communities remained the most critical one in both advanced countries and some developing countries in Latin America.…”

Part-time entrepreneurship in the third age: well-being and motives

“…Ratten, 2019) to mature-aged (e.g. Maritz et al, 2021) to third-age (e.g. Kautonen, 2008) entrepreneurs.…”