Entrepreneurial Quantity and Quality: The Configurational Impact of National Environmental Elements

Prior literature has ignored the complexity of entrepreneurship phenomenon, i.e., the interdependencies among entrepreneurial environmental elements and the multidimensional nature of entrepreneurial output, resulting in mixed findings regarding the net effects of national environmental elements on entrepreneurship. Building on entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective, we examine the configurational effect of eight environmental conditions from cultural, social, and material elements on two dimensions of entrepreneurship (i.e., entrepreneurial quantity and entrepreneurial quality). Employing fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to data from 44 economies, we find that it is not isolated environmental conditions but their various combinations that lead to entrepreneurial quantity and quality. There are asymmetries between configurations leading to high entrepreneurial outcomes and those leading to not-high entrepreneurial outcomes. Moreover, configurations leading to high (or not-high) entrepreneurial quantity partly differ from those leading to high (or not-high) entrepreneurial quality. This study extends entrepreneurship literature by utilizing a novel approach to capture and validate the systemic nature of entrepreneurial environment and its heterogeneous impacts on entrepreneurial quantity and quality. This study also informs policymakers by suggesting various recipes for improving entrepreneurial quantity and quality.