MSU global entrepreneurship project marks one year

Professors Elizabeth Rozell and Wesley Scroggins about a year ago launched the Entrepreneurship Work in Organizations Requiring Leadership Development project, or E-WORLD. The effort is funded by a two-year $71,200 grant from MSU’s provost office and $237,000 from Ron Bottin, the dean of MSU’s College of Business Administration, according to an MSU news release.

E-WORLD is a cross-cultural research initiative based on data collected by scholars in other countries. Ultimately, the information will be used to develop training programs for people doing business in foreign countries, Rozell said in the release.

Researchers are looking for answers to such questions as: Which entrepreneurial characteristics are specific to which cultures? And which entrepreneurial characteristics are universal, meaning they are needed in most cultures?

In the first year, Rozell and Scroggins traveled abroad to universities and established a network of 40 academic collaborators to assist in the study. Focus group data collected from initial surveys resulted in five academic papers that have been presented at academic international conferences.

Rozell and Scroggins estimate it will take at least two more years to gather and analyze data, the release said.

“When completed, the results will give the College of Business Administration at (MSU) an international reputation,” Bottin said in the release. “A spin-off of this project will be the further internalization of the business faculty, as we have already been contacted by 12 faculty from business programs in eight countries who wish to visit (MSU) to pursue exchange and research collaborations with our faculty.”[[In-content Ad]]