Despite making significant investments in enhancing the customer service experience, long-term customer loyalty remains an elusive dream for many service providers. Particularly in the telecommunications industry, switching providers even from within continuous contract relationships is easy and...

This research investigates how a strong personal relationship (strong tie) between a small business owner-manager and his professional or informal advisor affects the relationship between the advisor's recent performance and the owner-manager's perceptions of the advisor's trustworthiness in...

Human resource flexibility is important in entrepreneurial ventures that need to respond to the changing challenges of growing the new business. This research investigates the impact of previously well-known people (strong ties) as entrepreneurial team members on the human resource flexibility...

Firms gain many benefits from well-designed websites. But which elements of website design quality really matter, and how do these elements influence usage behavior? With the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) as the theoretical foundation, this paper proposes that...

Popular metrics such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) highlights many benefits of word of mouth (WOM) to firms. Is WOM all it is claimed to be? Building on social identity theory, this research develops a conceptual model of WOM exchange in social settings and tests the model with customer...

K<sc>ibler</sc> E., K<sc>autonen</sc> T. and F<sc>ink</sc> M. Regional social legitimacy of entrepreneurship: implications for entrepreneurial intention and start-up behaviour, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. A new understanding of the role of regional culture in the emergence of business start-up behaviour is developed. The focal...

'Involuntary self-employment' has recently received considerable political and media attention in Finland. The notion of involuntary self-employment has been used to refer to situations where an employer seeks increased flexibility and cost efficiency by 'pushing' former employees into new forms...

This article contributes to the occupational choice literature pertaining to entrepreneurship by applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to predict entrepreneurial behaviour. Originating from social psychology, the TPB posits that intention, a function of behavioural beliefs, is a...

Previous research on age and entrepreneurship assumed homogeneity and downplayed age-related differences in the motives and aims underlying enterprising behaviour. We argue that the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship influences how the level of entrepreneurial activity varies with age. Using a...