Title: Understanding entrepreneurship development in Latvia: a cross-disciplinary approach

Authors: Tatjana Koke, Natalja Lace, Karine Oganisjana

Addresses: Faculty of Education and Psychology, Department of Education, University of Latvia, Jurmalas gatve 74/76, Riga, LV-1083, Latvia. ' Faculty of Engineering Economics and Management, Riga Technical University, 1 Kalku St., Riga, LV-1658, Latvia. ' Faculty of Education and Psychology, Department of Education, University of Latvia, Jurmalas gatve 74/76, Riga, LV-1083, Latvia

Abstract: This paper analyses economic and educational challenges on the way of understanding and formation of entrepreneurship in Latvia in its almost 20-year long post socialistic period. Along with the state support programmes for small business development, entrepreneurship as a new concept is researched integrating as well the world experience in this field. It is shown that entrepreneurship is a dynamic system of the components determined in mixed methods research. The elaborated holistic functional-structural model of entrepreneurship illustrates that entrepreneurship can be developed holistically as a system when students identify, generate and realise opportunities into new personal, social or economic values not only in the context of specialised entrepreneurial disciplines, but within a wide range of disciplines in the unity of theory and practice.

Keywords: entrepreneurship development; enterprise; higher education; small business development; innovations; Latvia; small firms; SMEs; small and medium-sized enterprises.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2011.041662

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2011 Vol.13 No.3, pp.293 - 312

Published online: 21 Oct 2014 *

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