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Student entrepreneurs face a variety of challenges in building their ventures. In this process, the student founders experience profound changes to their identities as they transition from traditional students to student entrepreneurs. Drawing on the social cognitive theory of self-regulation and utilizing a partially grounded theory approach we develop a two-stage process model to elucidate how mentor relationship and student founders affective state impacts entrepreneurial identity and venture progress. Our findings indicate that effective mentoring and positive founder's affect enables students to transition to entrepreneurs. This allows them to assemble resources and take necessary action to move their venture forward. We develop propositions to guide future empirical research in this area.

The issue of uncertainty has been one of the most important topics in the research on multinational enterprises' foreign market entry modes. This paper provides a conceptual review of the literature on the role of uncertainty in entry-mode strategies. It is found that transaction cost theory has focused primarily on entry modes as a way of minimizing behavioural uncertainty, while research using the more recent real options approach has distinguished between endogenous and exogenous types of uncertainty and provided evidence that managing uncertainty through appropriate entry modes may lead to competitive advantage. By synthesizing the relevant literature, this paper provides some new perspectives and avenues for future research on uncertainty and entry-mode choices by considering the impact of firm learning, prior experience and host market attractiveness.

This article examines the entrepreneurial persistence of opportunity-motivated entrepreneurs in Ghana. Specifically, it develops a theoretical model focusing on the relationships among perceived institutional support, entrepreneurial persistence and small venture performance, including how entrepreneurial networks condition the relationship between institutional support and entrepreneurial persistence. Using time-lagged data from 373 opportunity-motivated entrepreneurs leading small ventures in Ghana, we find broad support for our hypotheses. The insights from our study provide an integrative understanding of the relationships among perceived institutional support, entrepreneurial persistence and venture performance in an adverse environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.