Entrepreneurship and the Community

Abstract

Guest Editor, Thomas S. Lyons, Baruch College, NY, USA in conjunction with the ERJ Co-Editors and a Special Issue Executive Committee consisting of David Audretsch at Indiana University, Theodore R. Alter at Pennsylvania State University, and Darline Augustine at Baruch College. This ERJ Special Issue is devoted to the premise that communities are a vital part of entrepreneurship research as well as practice. In the lead article, the Executive Committee including Theodore R. Alter, David Audretsch and Darline Augustine, along with Thomas S. Lyons as ERJ Guest Editor, document the literature to date and the many facets of the relationship between entrepreneurship and the community. These scholars remind us that entrepreneurship does not take place in a vacuum and that there is, and should be, a symbiotic relationship between these two human constructs. The four competitive research articles in this special issue represent a diversity of perspectives on and approaches to entrepreneurship and community. Both rural and urban perspectives are presented; quantitative and qualitative methodologies are employed; the venues of exploration are international; and the lenses of business development, community development, economics, entrepreneurship, geography, public policy, and rural sociology are applied. These articles contribute to our understanding of the entrepreneurship-community nexus and to the literature of entrepreneurship through: (1) examining the role of entrepreneurship in addressing urban poverty; (2) exploring how entrepreneurship manifests itself in recessionary times; (3) studying the impact of community culture on entrepreneurship and vice versa; and (4) explaining the function of networking in creating entrepreneurial communities.