Global entrepreneurship report - ResearchGate

National Context and
Entrepreneurial Activity
The history, institutional structure and
cultural/social systems of the 37 countries in GEM
2002 are quite diverse and may have an impact on
the patterns of entrepreneurial activity observed in
this year’s study. In order to “flesh out” such
differences, GEM national teams in 34 of the GEM
2002 16 countries collected two types of data from
national experts: 17 (a) narrative answers to semistructured
face-to-face interviews, 18 and (b)
quantitative responses to a 10-page questionnaire. 19
Drawing from the conceptual model presented in
Appendix A, national experts were chosen by GEM
national teams to represent the following nine
entrepreneurial framework conditions:
(1) presence of financial support, (2) government
policies, (3) government programs, (4) education and
training, (5) research and development transfer,
(6) commercial and professional infrastructure,
(7) internal market openness, (8) access to physical
infrastructure, and (9) cultural and social norms
related to entrepreneurship.
During the course of the face-to-face
interviews, each national expert was asked to
articulate the strengths and weaknesses of the
entrepreneurship support structure in his or her
particular country. Their opinions provide an
interesting general impression of the relative
importance of each of the nine framework
conditions. For example, across the 1,000 experts
contacted for GEM 2002, cultural and social norms
were clearly given emphasis as the leading strength
— about 25 percent of all comments were related
to this topic — or the second most important
weakness. Two other areas were also strongly
considered to be either a major strength or
significant weakness: government policies, and
education and training. With few exceptions (e.g.,
Singapore considered financial support to be its top
strength), these three domains were consistently
considered to be the leading national issues around
the support of entrepreneurship.
Correlations between the nine framework
conditions (as measured in the expert questionnaire)
and the overall TEA index, as well as opportunityand
necessity-based entrepreneurial activity, are
provided in Table 7.
The results are quite striking. Most of the
correlations associated with overall TEA or
opportunity-based entrepreneurial activity are not
statistically significant. There is, however, a
significant positive relationship between these items
and the capacity of the people in the country to
implement and manage new firms. There is also a
positive correlation between opportunity-based
entrepreneurial activity and the perceived presence
of business opportunities. On the other hand, strong
protection for intellectual property is negatively
associated with all three measures of
entrepreneurial activity. This may be a reflection of
the fact that the level of entrepreneurial activity is
highest in developing countries where protection for
intellectual property is yet emerging.
It is the relationships to necessity-based
entrepreneurial activity that are the most dramatic
feature of this portion of the analysis. All seven
statistically significant correlations are negative in
direction. Specifically, in those countries lacking in
financial support, government policies and programs,
mechanisms for transferring research and
development to new firms, the presence of
commercial and professional infrastructures and the
protection of intellectual property rights, there are
higher levels of necessity entrepreneurship.
The consistently negative relationship
between the quality of the infrastructure and the
level of necessity entrepreneurship, as well as the
lack of relationship between framework conditions
and opportunity entrepreneurship, may be a
reflection of three phenomena. First, necessity
entrepreneurship is most prevalent in developing
countries such as Thailand, India, Korea, Brazil,
China and Mexico, where financial support,
education and training and physical infrastructure
are among the least extensive. Second,
entrepreneurship-enhancing programs and policies
implemented by a large number of developed
countries, principally in the European Union, have
only resulted in modest levels of activity so far.
Third, the well-educated, highly experienced experts
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