Entrepreneurial Governance and Local Growth

• Published in: Sustainability 2020, Vol.12 (9), p.3857
• Main Authors: Olsson, Amy Rader, Westlund, Hans, Larsson, Johan P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Collective action; Economic development; Employment; entrepreneur; Entrepreneurial governance; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; governance approach; Innovations; Local growth policy; Municipal entrepreneurship; Municipalities; Political entrepreneurship; Political science; Public sector; rural area; Rural areas; Sweden; urban growth; urban population
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su12093857

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.