Jose Ernesto Amoros Espinosa

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Summary

José Ernesto Amorós Espinosa is the associate dean of faculty affairs at EGADE Business School and the leader of the research group Entrepreneurship and Innovation with Impact. Amorós is an expert in entrepreneurship and new business development. He has written more than 50 academic articles, which have been published in major international journals, and is also the co-author of more than 30 monographs on entrepreneurial dynamics. Through his work with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project, Amorós has participated in the evaluation of pro-entrepreneurship public policies in different countries, and he has also helped the Ibero-American scholar community enhance the relevance of applied management research.

Description of Research Impact

Amorós is committed to creating a positive impact by promoting entrepreneurship and innovation for local development. In addition to his research, he has been cooperating as an advisor for the Association of Entrepreneurs of Mexico (ASEM), both to develop relevant policy-oriented initiatives that help improve entrepreneurship ecosystems and to monitor best practices in new business dynamics. His work with the GEM project has also influenced the design of public policies for entrepreneurship, as GEM is a source of diagnostic tools for public policymakers to use in promoting a favorable environment for new businesses, allowing them to provide solutions to the most challenging social problems.

Amorós has participated in the evaluation of pro-entrepreneurship public policies in several countries and offered project recommendations to improve their business environment. This work aims to help small and medium enterprises have a significant impact in the development of their communities. For example, Amorós co-authored a report titled “Challenges and Opportunities for the Incorporation of Companies in Mexico: An Analysis of Commercial Companies,” which was prepared by Tecnológico de Monterrey, with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and in collaboration with ASEM. Specifically, the study focused on simplified stock companies and offered recommendations to achieve simplification in the incorporation of other commercial companies.

Amorós also participated with other researchers in the study, “Opportunity Amid Disruption,” conducted by GEM. In it he emphasizes the critical need to transform business according to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in order to protect the planet and ensure the well-being of present and future generations. Entrepreneurs are vital participants in this ever-changing landscape.

Examples of Research Impact

Some examples of Amorós´ research, published in Financial Times’ Top 50 journals, follow:

• “Necessity or Opportunity? The Effects of State Fragility and Economic Development on Entrepreneurial Efforts.” This paper studies the effects of state fragility and economic development on necessity- and opportunity-based individual entrepreneurial efforts. The authors contribute to the literature on the contextual determinants of entrepreneurship by examining multilevel data on 956,925 individuals from 51 countries for the years of 2005 to 2013. The authors show that state fragility has a positive effect on necessity-based entrepreneurial efforts while hindering opportunity-based efforts. The findings illustrate that the level of economic development moderates the relationship between state fragility and necessity-driven entrepreneurial efforts, reducing the likelihood of the latter. The authors discuss the implications for theory and pro-entrepreneurship policy.

• “Conducting Management Research in Latin America: Why and What’s in It for You?” The authors make the case that the conditions and timing are right and, despite some challenges, there are many benefits to conducting management research in Latin America. Some of these conditions include an upward trend in the productivity of Latin American researchers, increased collaboration between researchers in Latin America and those in other regions, and societal, cultural, and economic characteristics that make the region an ideal “natural laboratory” in which to build and test management theories. Demonstrating that their arguments are well-founded and not based solely on potential, the authors offer a selective summary of recent research conducted in Latin America that has made important contributions to micro- and macro-management domains and theories.

• “Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystems as Configural Narratives: A New Way of Seeing and Evaluating Antecedents and Outcomes.” This paper develops and applies a new evaluative approach to local entrepreneurial ecosystems, treating them as configural narratives. The authors examine how the configurations of local ecosystem attributes, as evaluated by regional experts, support or hinder the emergence of new and innovative firms. Drawing on the sociology of place, the authors present a novel approach for performing a configurational comparative analysis of an evaluation of the ecosystems in Chile by local experts. The proposed approach to entrepreneurial ecosystems helps to uncover two counterintuitive findings, thereby elaborating on interferences that have not yet been addressed through conventional concepts, methods, and data.

Select Publications

• José Ernesto Amorós et al., Challenges and Opportunities for Establishing Companies in Mexico. An Analysis of Commercial Companies (Tecnológico de Monterrey, 2021), https://asem.mx/mercantil/.
• José Ernesto Amorós et al., “Necessity or Opportunity? The Effects of State Fragility and Economic Development on Entrepreneurial Efforts,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 43, no. 4 (2019): 72550, https://doi.org/10.1177/1042258717736857.
• Herman Aguinis et al., “Conducting Management Research in Latin America: Why and What’s in It for You?,” Journal of Management 46, no. 5 (2020): 615–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320901581.
• Pablo Muñoz et al., “Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystems as Configural Narratives: A New Way of Seeing and Evaluating Antecedents and Outcomes,” Research Policy 51, no. 9 (2022): 104065, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2020.104065.

Supporting Links

• GEM 2021/2022 Global Report: Opportunity Amid Disruption, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor