
Teemu KautonenZayed University
Teemu Kautonen
Dr. rer. oec.
About
88
Publications
64,817
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6,794
Citations
Introduction
Professor of Entrepreneurship and Acting Vice Dean in the College of Business and Economics at the United Arab Emirates University.
My research interests cover diverse perspectives into entrepreneurship, predominantly focussing on the individual and regional perspectives (rather than the firm level).
My research has a strong quantitative focus.
Additional affiliations
August 2012 - present
Position
- VIPSE - Valuable, Intangible and Prestigious Service Experiences
Description
- This project looks into social mechanisms of prestige-based value creation in diverse product categories. The project is conducted in cooperation with Vaasa University (Finland) and Victoria University (Australia), and it is funded by Tekes with €580,000.
August 2009 - May 2013
August 2006 - July 2007
Position
- Involuntary self-employment
Description
- This project looked into the scope and characteristics of involuntary transitions into self-employment, e.g. when firms transform former employment relationships into subcontractor ones. This was contract research for the Finnish Government worth €55,000.
Education
January 2002 - February 2005
February 1998 - February 2000
October 1995 - April 1998
Publications
Publications (88)
We examine the physical health consequences to entrepreneurs of firm growth and decline. Using register-based panel data (2000–2021), we find that entrepreneurs and hired CEOs are, on average, healthier and live longer than individuals from a socio-economically similar random sample from the general population. However, our findings also reveal tha...
This exploratory study develops an understanding of how the hitherto under-investigated psychological dimension of place affects entrepreneurs’ well-being. The analysis focuses on eudaimonic well-being, which describes individuals’ psychological functioning and fulfillment of their best potentials and is relatively underexplored compared to hedonic...
Plain English Summary
Does being compassionate to the self and others contribute to the emergence of shared entrepreneurial passion in venture teams? Team entrepreneurial passion plays an important role in business ventures as it can positively impact team-level outcomes and venture performance. Our research on venture teams of small- and medium-si...
This study adds to the emergent stream of work examining the micro-level antecedents of pay dispersion by focusing on how business founders’ personal characteristics influence pay dispersion in their organizations. We leverage stakeholder theory and the motivated information processing perspective to predict pathways between founders’ self- versus...
What is the real value of entrepreneurship? We propose a framework of psychological utility by integrating Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory with a recovery approach from a personal agency perspective. We hypothesize that personal agency together with the positive JD-R pattern of entrepreneurship generates outstanding psychological utility, which...
This article applies social identity theory to examine how identification with social groups shapes the entrepreneurial endeavours of individuals aged 50 or over who start businesses when unemployed or under threat of redundancy. Understanding what drives older individuals to start a business as an alternative to unemployment has important policy i...
Despite the significant increase in interest in sustainable business practices, decisions on switching to more environmentally friendly input materials are understudied. In a conjoint experiment, we presented 267 Finnish manufacturing firms with an opportunity to acquire an alternative, more ecological input material and investigated their willingn...
Access to credit is crucial for SMEs’ survival. However, due to the opaqueness of publicly available information on SMEs, banks face information asymmetry that can cause them to ration credit. In this case, trust has been shown to facilitate credit access by bridging the information gap. We contribute to the literature on trust-based banking by usi...
This article examines how a firm’s willingness to make trade-offs that favour sustainability over commercial goals attenuates the relationship between firm-level sustainability orientation and subsequent performance. The hypothesis development draws on stakeholder theory and the literature on mission and revenue drifts, while the empirical analysis...
Mindfulness, meaning a receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience, is reported to have a wide range of benefits, but it has been suggested that it could prove costly in terms of task performance. This article analyzes how dispositional mindfulness relates to taking entrepreneurial action. Based on two waves of survey data...
Entrepreneurship research on prosocial motivation has outlined its positive impact on well-being, but still little is known about its overwhelming power, which under certain conditions may have deleterious personal consequences. In this study, we question whether prosocial motivation can harm entrepreneurs' subjective well-being when they run a com...
Private businesses are increasingly expected to help solve the most challenging social problems of our times — health, poverty, and the promotion of sustainable development — in the absence of, or in conjunction with, government action. But what does this do to the employees who are tasked with turning these plans into reality? Research on entrepre...
Prior studies find sizable gaps between entrepreneurial intentions and subsequent actions. We extend models of entrepreneurial intentions by drawing on action phase theory to better understand how entrepreneurial intentions translate into actions. Our study focuses on the effects of implementation intentions on taking entrepreneurial action. The an...
As a result of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy, the average age of the global population is increasing. This demographic trend has important implications for the labor market. Aging individuals are not always able to find satisfactory outlets for their abilities. Moreover, finding sufficient funds to maintain the current level...
This report was compiled for the conference Power from Statistics; Data, Information and Knowledge organized by EUROSTAT and European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC). In this report, we argue that policy makers would benefit from official statistics that capture the contemporary forms of work in a more fine-grained manner than the employment versu...
Late-career transitions to entrepreneurship are discussed as a promising way to address some of the problematic implications of population aging. By extending employment choice theory to simultaneously account for career stage and for non-monetary rewards from entrepreneurship, we investigate how late-career transitions from organizational employme...
The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure. We use a conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective st...
The positive relationship between innovativeness and firm performance is well established and applies equally to all businesses, including family firms. However, little is yet known about how the unique characteristics of family firms influence this relationship. Drawing upon the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this study explains how the in...
Available at: http://www.oecd.org/employment/leed/rapid-assessment-Finland-Final.pdf
Commissioned report.
Available at: https://www.oecd.org/cfe/smes/FINLAND-country-note.pdf
Commissioned report.
This study introduces an individual’s perception of their entrepreneurial potential in terms of their age (age-based self-image) to complement chronological age as a predictor of entrepreneurial behaviour. The principal hypothesis is that a positive age-based self-image enhances the likelihood of individuals turning their intention to start a busin...
This analysis demonstrates the relevance and robustness of the theory of planned behavior in the prediction of business start-up intentions and subsequent behavior based on longitudinal survey data (2011 and 2012; n = 969) from the adult population in Austria and Finland. By doing so, the study addresses two weaknesses in current research: the limi...
Policymakers and scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the growing challenges emerging from the ageing of populations, particularly in advanced economies (OECD 2006; Finlayson 2009; Platman 2003; Weber and Shaper 2004; Wainwright and Kibler 2014). In the British context, one of the more visible policy interventions has been to increase the...
This article investigates how sources of social exclusion and support emerge within an ‘older’ entrepreneur’s immediate environment, and how this affects the development of their small business. Based on 22 in-depth interviews in London, UK, we suggest how older entrepreneurs with different backgrounds are able to manage social exclusion, and ident...
This study draws on the Rubicon model of action phases to study the actions or lack of actions that follow the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. Concurrently, it examines the roles of self-control and action-related emotions in explaining the intention–action gap using longitudinal survey data (N = 161). The results show that self-control po...
This article will develop our socio-cultural understanding of entrepreneurship by examining the influence of the moral legitimacy of entrepreneurs in society on an individual’s engagement in early-stage entrepreneurship. A multilevel analysis conducted across 26 countries shows that the higher the perceived degree of moral legitimacy, the more like...
This article examines the impact of ageing well on the employment behaviour of ageing workers. We focus on start-up activities because doing so circumvents potential constraints on labour market participation imposed by statutory retirement and employer practices. Using Finnish survey data, we find a positive and significant relationship between ag...
Research finds that entrepreneurship in society is often framed as an activity for younger individuals. Such stereotyping can mean that older workers do not finding starting a business as desirable or appropriate for their age, and it may also lead to subtle forms of ageism from family, friends, prospective clients and financiers. This paper examin...
This research adds to the literature on relationship lending in the small business context by discussing the roles of entrepreneurial competence and voluntarily disclosed information as determinants of credit access. More specifically, we propose that the loan manager’s evaluation of the information voluntarily disclosed by the entrepreneur is an i...
This article develops a new understanding of the role of regional culture in the emergence of business start-up behaviour. The focal construct is regional social legitimacy: the perception of the desirability and appropriateness of entrepreneurship in a region. The econometric analysis utilizes a combination of bespoke longitudinal survey data from...
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 significant predictor of subsequent behaviour. In spite of an...
Little is known about the effect cultural media has in influencing attitudes and behaviours towards entrepreneurship. In addressing this research gap our paper employs a neologism - 'entre-tainment' - defined as those televisual media that stage and perform entrepreneurship and other business-related activity for entertainment purposes. In doing so...
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 sample of 2566 respondents from 27 European countries we...
This article analyses the determinants of the entrepreneurial potential in Europe’s ageing population based on the 2007 Flash Eurobarometer Survey on Entrepreneurship. The findings contribute to an empirically underpinned public discourse on the scope of senior entrepreneurship in Europe and the design of entrepreneurship policy, and provide implic...
This paper contributes to our knowledge of the determinants of job satisfaction by analysing the effects of employment status (self-employed or salaried employee) and work characteristics (autonomy, variety, task identity, task significance and feedback) on job satisfaction in a sample of 2327 Finnish professionals. The results of the structural eq...
This article examines how the social expectations of the general public concerning the economic contribution of older people (country-level explanatory variable) affect the entrepreneurial activity of ageing individuals (individual-level dependent variable). A multilevel analysis based on data from 24 European countries finds that the perceived eco...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of job satisfaction on the intended retirement age of self‐employed and organisationally‐employed white‐collar professionals. The analysis also examines potential boundary conditions imposed by other domains of life for the applicability of this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
Th...
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 of new ventures. Data collected from German founding en...
This article investigates the impact of perceived age norms on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions in the third age. Age norms refer to those social norms that determine whether establishing and running a business is considered appropriate behavior for a mature individual. A representative empirical analysis of 496 Finnish individuals aged...
This exploratory study investigates the relationship between an individual’s socialization into different professional and organizational cultures and their subsequent entrepreneurial intentions. Using age cohorts as a proxy for the duration of work-related socialization processes and changes in the business environment over time, the study propose...
Necessity entrepreneurship has been much debated in research and policy. This paper examines the impact of necessity as a start-up motive on subsequent entrepreneurial satisfaction. Empirically, the paper is based on a sample of 777 recently established Finnish micro enterprises. The results show that necessity entrepreneurs are somewhat more likel...
This paper examines the mediating role of opportunity exploration and resource exploitation in the relationship between strategic planning and small business performance. The research model is examined with a sample of 153 small Finnish firms. The results show that exploitation, but not exploration, carries the effect of strategic planning to the p...
A considerable stream of literature is devoted to studying entrepreneurial intentions, which are seen as the first step in the process of new venture creation. However, this research lacks generalisability due to the widespread use of demographically limited samples. This article removes this limitation by applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour (...
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 terms of ability, benevolence and integrity. A negative m...
Purpose
– There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self‐employment located in a “grey area” between employment and self‐employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self‐employment.
Design/methodology/approach
– The pap...
This study explores how the determinants of entrepreneurial intentions vary with age of the respondent in the context of the working-age adult population in Finland. The theoretical foundation of this analysis is based on Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The TPB is based on the idea that intentions have three conceptually independen...
'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 of precarious self-employment. Although the terminolo...
The contribution of our study is twofold. Firstly, it responds to the great need for the application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to examine entrepreneurial intentions in other demographic segments than students. Secondly, we address the topical policy issue of explaining the entrepreneurial intentions of the ageing population (individu...
This paper seeks to increase understanding of strategic plan- ning in small growth-oriented firms by focusing on what strategy actually means in their everyday business practice. The results of a discourse analysis of 22 interviews with Finnish small business managers show three different approaches to strategy: (1) strategy as an emergent process...
Purpose
The objective of this paper is to examine the potential for and barriers to older enterprise as well as the role and contribution of specific enterprise support policy, focusing in particular on socially disadvantaged older people.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes the form of a single case study of the Prince's Initiative for Ma...
The application of the transaction cost economics based governance framework as a tool for developing sourcing strategy has received limited attention in the literature so far. Synthesising previous literature and analysing multiple-case study data from 16 subcontracting partnerships in the Finnish metal and electronics industries, this paper devel...
Process-based thinking commonly focuses on enhancing the efficiency of processes, while it is often criticized for not paying enough attention to the customer. This paper argues that customer complaint information can be used as a basis for customer-focused process improvement. Thus, it is not enough to make the complaining customer satisfied, but...
This paper responds to the need for more data on the topical issue of older entrepreneurship by comparing Third Age (50+ years) and Prime Age (20-49 years) entrepreneurs in Finland. The data comprises responses from 839 small firms which were established 2000-2006. The fact that 16% of these firms were founded by individuals aged 50 or over indicat...
Process-based thinking commonly focuses on enhancing the efficiency of processes, while it is often criticized for not paying enough attention to the customer. This paper argues that customer complaint information can be used as a basis for customer-focused process improvement. Thus, it is not enough to make the complaining customer satisfied, but...
Purpose
This paper's aim is to develop a conceptual model to examine the influence of four antecedent factors (personal trust, institutional trust, perceived control and experience) on consumers' willingness to participate in permission‐based mobile marketing. The model is to be tested empirically across three European countries and gender.
Design...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a three‐country comparison of personal and institutionally based trust as factors affecting consumers' willingness to participate in permission‐based mobile marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual model of different dimensions of personal and institutionally based trust and their effect o...
Although there is general agreement in the literature of trust being a transaction-cost efficient means of governance, scholars are far less harmonious as to what trust actually is. This analysis examines and provides clarity to the concept and to the role of trust as a governance mechanism in the specific context of inter-firm relations by address...
Purpose
New venture support networks (NVSN) are an instrument of enterprise policy with the aim of effectively coordinating the activities of different organisations involved in new venture support. This paper aims to illuminate the role of certain key actors in facilitating and maintaining cooperation in such networks, which are characterised by a...
This paper investigates the factors that affect the availability and robustness of trust as a governance mechanism in inter-firm relations. By adopting a broad 'embedded' perspective, the analysis focuses both on the factors that affect trust within the inter-firm relation (endogenous determinants) and those related to the business environment that...
This article focuses on the role of trust as a substitute and complement to formal contracts in small-firm business networks. Hence trust is defined as a broad category that subsumes different forms of informal governance in business networks, that is those forms that cannot be enforced through the courts.
Purpose
To introduce new venture support networks (NVSN) as a topical instrument in German entrepreneurship policy, and to discuss critically the problems in achieving cooperation between the member organizations in these networks.
Design/methodology/approach
Conceptual analysis with illustrative empirical examples derived from 17 semi‐structured...
New Venture Support Networks (NVSN) are a political instrument with the aim of improving coordination between private and public organizations involved in new venture support in a region. Cooperation between these organizations should improve the overall quality of new venture support and increase its transparency to potential entrepreneurs. Howeve...
This paper examines the role of social networks in enterprise development by comparing personal trust (as inherent in social relationships) to collective and institutional trust (derived from the wider cultural, political and legal environment). The findings indicate that there is a shift from personal towards institutional trust as the firm develo...