Mauri Laukkanen

• Doctor of Business Administration
• Professor Emeritus at University of Eastern Finland

This study tracks the development of nascent entrepreneurs’ (NE) belief systems (mental models) from the time they were seriously planning entrepreneurship to having started their firms. It aims to reveal their typical entrepreneurship-related belief systems to understand the underlying logic of the contents and their change. Cognitive theory predi...

Purpose Studies of entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) have become increasingly common, informed usually by Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Although the TPB postulates that beliefs determine EIs, the contents of the beliefs have not been properly studied, leaving EIs’ cognitive underpinnings and cognitive approaches to influencing EI...

This chapter discusses the grounds and methods of studying the knowledge structures (aka belief systems, cognitive maps, mental models) that underlie and guide entrepreneurs’ and entrepreneurial actors’ perceptions, intentions, decision-making and performance. Current entrepreneurial cognition research (ECR), largely emulating cognitive psychology,...

This book is an introduction to the conceptual background and current methods of comparative and composite causal (aka cognitive) mapping (CCM). CCM methods can use interview, questionnaire or documentary data to explore social actors’ or collectivities’ knowledge/belief systems’ (mental models) momentary contents or change over time. The book is a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, using the case of Finnish small business advisors (SBAs), it aims to clarify a controversy in entrepreneurship policy about using public funds to foster solo and micro entrepreneurship. The study reveals the SBAs’ belief systems to facilitate policy-relevant conclusions about their advisory compe...

This paper discusses a study comparing three causal mapping methods (CCM): a semi-structured approach (SIM), which uses on-site interview data, and two structured methods, which use emailed concept selection lists and pairwise comparison (PCM) matrices and freehand-drawing (FDM) to elicit causal relations. The respondents (n=3*15) are small busines...

Comparative Causal Mapping: The CMAP3 Method, by Mauri Laukkanen and Mingde Wang, is an introduction to the conceptual backgrounds of causal (cognitive) mapping and to the typical methods in comparative and composite causal mapping, based on either interview or questionnaire primary data or on secondary documentary data. The discussed CCM research...

Purpose The paper's first objective is to develop a new conceptual framework for categorizing and designing cognitive, specifically comparative, causal mapping (CCM) research by building upon the theory‐centred and participant‐centred perspectives. The second purpose is to enable the discerned study prototypes by introducing a new CCM software appl...

Causal (aka cognitive) mapping emerged in the late 1970s as an innovative method for capturing and analyzing political decision-makers' and organizational phenomenological and causal belief patterns. Since then, in particular comparative causal mapping (CCM) has become widely used especially in management and organization (MOC) and IT-studies in th...

It is increasingly expected that universities, besides research and teaching, should perform a third task as regional engines of innovation and economic growth. This paper discusses the role transformation and its demands upon university and faculty, including academic entrepreneurship. The empirical part consists of an exploration of senior facult...

This paper discusses the preconditions and strategies of local development and turnaround in difficult surroundings such as peripheral rural communities. Its key premise is that local decision makers’ beliefs of how such small economies function and of ‘proper’ interventions are critical. Such thought patterns were studied among Finnish rural munic...

This paper concerns a business development and support initiative—the Business Laboratory (BL) of the University of Kuopio, Finland. The project is designed to foster the emergence of university-based new ventures. The goal of the BL is to develop 'incubator-ready' science-based firms. The BL also supports management team development, encourages th...

This chapter presents a study of the evolution in the causal thinking of the managing director (CEO) of a Finnish consumer electronics importer-distributor firm. The process was primarily an environmentally induced one. This industry, along with others, was hit by the deep economic recession in 1991–94. It caused the firms difficult strategic and o...

Entrepreneurship is widely regarded as instrumental in economic growth, a balanced regional development and for creating jobs. To fulŽlfill what is called their ‘third obligation’, universities are expected to contribute by research, teaching and transfer of technology. Entrepreneurial education is one of the responses to the realities. For the Ž f...

Increasingly, thoughtful managers recognize the role of knowledge and learning in corporate action and performance. Concurrently, a new field, management and organization cognition (MOC), has emerged producing useful insights and findings. Thus far, empirical studies have largely focused on single cases or actors, using often archival data and some...

In management and organization studies, models based on cognitive constructs and processes are increasingly frequent. This means that new methods are needed, and in particular approaches that facilitate comparative designs and more testable argumentation and findings. The paper outlines the cognitively oriented tradition and discusses the related m...