Entrepreneurial governance and local growth

• Do local development policies influence local employment growth? Based on a survey to municipal managers in all Swedish municipalities, this is one of the first studies to empirically assess the relationship between reported local development initiatives (entrepreneurial governance (EG) and growth of local employment. We find a weak but significant association between EG and employment growth for urban municipalities. This suggests that EG is more effective in larger, growing municipalities than in smaller, declining rural areas. Urban municipalities may of course have more resources for entrepreneurial governance than rural ones as they have grown substantially faster for a long period of time. The result thus indicates that EG and growth are in a positive interplay of interaction. When the EG index was divided into three sub-indexes after the entrepreneurial process (discover or create opportunities, collect resources and exploit opportunities) the analyses also showed positive correspondence between some sub-indexes and employment growth for the rural municipalities, indicating that EG is not solely a phenomenon connected to growth in urban, growing municipalities. In sum, the article indicates several avenues through which entrepreneurial governance at local level might be linked to local growth.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Entrepreneurial governance

Local growth policy

Municipal entrepreneurship

Political entrepreneurship

employment

entrepreneur

governance approach

rural area

urban growth

urban population

Sweden

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

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