Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, Volume 18, Issue 2, 2023
Mapping the Field of Research on Entrepreneurial Success:
A Bibliometric Study and Future Research Agenda
Varda Sardana
Jaipuria Institute of Management
A-32A, Opposite IBM India, Sector 62, Noida, 201309, India
Tel: 9654435464
Email: varda.sardana@jaipuria.ac.in
Shubham Singhania
University School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Delhi Technological University
M893+JHM, Vivek Vihar Phase 2, Block E, Vivek Vihar, Delhi, 110095, India
Tel: 9711924415
Email: shubhamsinghania1@gmail.com
Abstract
Entrepreneurship has lately become a buzzword, and emphasis is being placed on ensuring the success of
entrepreneurial ventures through both financial and non-financial means. This study aims to critically review
and provide insights into the key developments in the literature on entrepreneurial success. The review employs
bibliometric methods and content analysis on 595 research articles extracted from the Scopus Database for the
period 1996 to 2021. The findings of the study highlight the growth trends of publications on entrepreneurial
success, the most impactful articles, journals, and countries working in this domain as well as the evolution of
entrepreneurial research topics over the years. Six clusters, representing major themes that have been explored
in the literature in the past 26 years, are uncovered through content analysis. Future research agendas have been
elaborated based on the emerging topics of study.
Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial success, bibliometric analysis, literature review
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1. INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship refers to the identification of opportunities in order to create new business ventures,
provide goods and services (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000), generate employment, and promote innovation. It
acts as a major force in the economic growth of a country (Van Praag and Versloot, 2007). Entrepreneurial
development not only leads to employment generation but also leads to social development and improvement in
the global competitiveness of a country (Naudé, 2013). Entrepreneurial success may be defined as the ability of
the firm to be able to survive in the market over the long term (Fisher et al., 2014). Such success can be viewed
from two angles: financial success and non-financial success (Orser and Dyke, 2009; Gorgievski et al., 2010).
Financial success can be measured with the help of organizational economic parameters such as firm survival
rate, cash flows, company sales and profits, the number of employees, and the company growth rate (Dej, 2010).
Non-financial success, on the other hand, is based on the personal attributes of the entrepreneurs, such as
personal fulfillment, societal contributions, self-realizations, and work-related social relationships (Dej, 2010).
Financial success is often argued to represent the short-term outlook, whereas non-financial or psychological
success is attributed to the long-term perspective (Simon et al., 2015). Literature suggests that the success of a
startup may hold different meanings for different entrepreneurs. While for some, it may boil down to the
achievement of the enterprise’s goals and objectives (Hyder and Lussier, 2016) or a continuous high financial
performance (Spiegel et al., 2015), for others, a startup may be successful on being acquired by another
company at a good valuation (Krejci et al., 2015).
The process of entrepreneurship involves three phases: opportunity identification phase, development and
execution phase, and survival and growth phase (Baron and Shane, 2007). The success of an entrepreneurial
venture is mostly evaluated during the second phase. Various indicators are taken into consideration while
evaluating a venture’s success. One of the most paramount indicators is financial gain (Parker, 2009), while
other indicators include sales, revenue, and market development (Rauch and Frese, 2007). It is difficult to define
entrepreneurial success based on financial gains solely because many start-ups may not be able to become
profitable initially, even when the firm enjoys increasing sales, due to high set-up costs and interest payments
(Perez and Canino, 2009). Still, it is an integral indicator as low financial gains or profitability can prove to be
dangerous for a business venture and might lead to its death (Coad, 2007). Contrary to the above, a firm may
dissolve even if it is profitable but is unable to fulfill personal goals (Green et al., 2003).
Various factors drive entrepreneurial success, which can be classified into external and internal drivers.
The external factors include economic factors and social factors, while the internal factors comprise
psychological factors and personal factors. Economic factors comprise access to financial resources (Gupta and
Mirchandani, 2018), an increase in sales and revenues, continuous development, customer acceptance and
satisfaction, and the overall economic growth of the firm (Wach et al., 2016). The social factors include 2 major
components: workplace relationships, that is, the ability to maintain healthy relationships with the stakeholder
within and outside the organization (Jayawarna et al., 2013), and societal impact, which refers to the impact of
the firm’s products and services on the environment as well as on the health and well-being of the society
(Florea et al., 2013). Psychological factors comprise components such as resilience, self-efficacy, and the
optimism of the entrepreneurs that influences their behaviors, intentions, and motivations, (Baluku et al., 2016).
Resilience is the ability of the entrepreneur to bounce back from unprecedented, adverse circumstances by
adapting to a dynamic environment and bringing positive change (Luthans et al., 2007), while self-efficacy is
the confidence of an entrepreneur to develop and build a new venture, accomplish the goals, overcome all the
challenges, and be proficient in the entrepreneurial journey (McGee et al., 2009; Newman et al., 2014).
Optimism is a psychological factor that motivates an entrepreneur by increasing the possibility of positive
outcomes (Luthans et al., 2007; Trevelyan, 2008). Lastly, the set of personal factors comprises the education
level of the entrepreneurs (Barreneche, 2014; Kolstud and Wiig, 2015), their innovativeness and creativity
(Mazzucato, 2011), and their personal initiative as well as active actions towards ensuring the survival and
growth of the venture (Frese and Gielnik, 2014).
While in the past, emphasis has been on economic as well as psychological parameters for determining the
growth and development of businesses, recent literature has focused attention on the emotional skills of the
entrepreneurs (Aly et al., 2021), which are internal in nature, as well as family-related factors (Staniewski and
Awruk, 2021), which is an external factor. Dimensions such as parental attitudes, the manner of communication
amongst the family, and the origin of the family have now been recognized as playing a crucial role in the
entrepreneurial success (Staniewski and Awruk, 2021).
Despite the growing number of studies on entrepreneurial start-ups, the literature suffers from major gaps
in quantitatively identifying the intellectual developments and evolution taking place in the domain of
entrepreneurial success. The topic of entrepreneurial success is emerging but is under-researched (Fisher et al.,
2014). Though there are fragmented studies that focus on various aspects of entrepreneurial success, such as
achievement motivation (Staniewski and Awruk, 2019), age (Zhao et al., 2021), the relevance of resilience
(Salisu et al., 2021), the literature still lacks a quantitative review to examine the growth in this domain.
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The present study is an attempt to holistically fill this gap and provide valuable insights into the key
developments that have taken place in this domain and underline future themes for research. When the volume
of publications becomes sufficiently large over a period, it is not possible to review the literature qualitatively
alone and, in such cases, bibliometric analysis becomes the imperative solution. To bring continuity into the
entrepreneurial research domain and to give future directions, we address the following research questions:
RQ1: What are the spatial and geographical trends as well as the volume of publications on
entrepreneurial success?
RQ2: Which are the top journals publishing in the domain of the success of entrepreneurial ventures?
RQ3: Which are the most influential research articles in this research area?
RQ4: Who are the top authors publishing in the domain of entrepreneurial success?
RQ5: Which topics in the entrepreneurial success literature have been trending in the past and which
topics are emerging?
RQ6: What are the key themes that have been explored by researchers in the domain of entrepreneurial
success and what are the future avenues for research?
The above questions are answered by analyzing 595 peer-reviewed research articles and review papers
extracted from the Scopus Database. The review employs bibliometric methods (Boyack and Klavans, 2010)
and content analysis to discover the evolution and intellectual development in the domain of entrepreneurial
success. Previous studies in various domains such as corporate governance (Singh et al., 2021a), risk
management (Singhania et al., 2022), and deposit insurance (Sardana and Singhania, 2022) have also made use
of bibliometric analysis to answer such types of research questions.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Many small businesses and start-ups evolve every year, but more than a quarter of them dissolve within the
first year of their operation (McKenzie and Paffhausen, 2018). Out of the start-ups that survive, a small
proportion can grow and contribute to the generation of employment and the development of the economy
(Olafsen and Cook, 2016). The success rate of the start-ups is, therefore, quite low, and it is difficult to predict
which of the evolving firms will be more successful (Nanda, 2016). Entrepreneurship is a risky yet exciting
journey that requires not just ideas and funds, but ability, skills, determination, persistence, hard work, and most
importantly, patience. This package deal leads to the path toward entrepreneurial success (Woodfield et al.,
2017).
Traditionally, entrepreneurial success has been considered solely based on financial and economic
indicators (Zhou et al., 2017) such as profits, probability of survival, and size of the firm (Fried and Tauer,
2015). But the importance of non-financial indicators cannot be ignored (Razmus and Laguna, 2018). As far as
the factors driving entrepreneurial success are concerned, the skills and knowledge possessed by an entrepreneur
(Abu et al., 2014), the entrepreneur’s psychological behaviour, proficiency, ability to manage work stress, and
commitment towards a task (Gupta and Mirchandani, 2018), the internal locus of control of an entrepreneur
(Asante and Affum-Osei, 2019), entrepreneurs’ attitude, behaviour and mentality (Saptono and Najah, 2018)
have gained importance in theory as well as practice. In order to ensure the smooth functioning of the
organization and to deal with uncertain circumstances, the cultural attitudes of entrepreneurs (Yusof et al.,
2017), appreciation and strong implementation of work-life balance (Orlandi, 2017), autonomy for
communication, accepting behaviour towards challenges, proactiveness and a decision-making attitude (Toms et
al., 2019), innovativeness (Ojo et al., 2017), and the availability of a well-written and researched business plans
(Agarwal and Dahm, 2015) are also essential. Another important factor is gender (Muis et al., 2017) as different
genders possess different characteristics, and the success of the venture has varying meanings for different
genders.
2.1 Theories of Entrepreneurial Success
The concept of entrepreneurial success is built on theories taken from different disciplines. Some of the
major theories include cognitive theory, discovery theory, creation theory, Dubin’s theory, and the theory of
economic development. The cognitive theory takes into account all those internal processes that help an
individual identify the knowledge structures around them to make decisions, assessments, judgments, etc.
(Cacciolatti, et al., 2015). This theory acts as a guiding force for entrepreneurs and determines their risk-taking
behaviour, which differs significantly from non-entrepreneurs (Palich et al., 1995). Discovery theory is based on
the premise that the markets are dynamic, and this gives room for entrepreneurs to discover the existing
opportunities in the markets as well as tap them for the generation of profits (Kessler, 2013). On the other hand,
creation theory is of the view that opportunities are not readily available in the market, rather they are the
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consequence of actions undertaken by entrepreneurs for the development of new and innovative products and
services (Baker and Nelson, 2005). Dubin’s theory showcases the phases or steps that can be used for theory or
concept building (Dubin, 1978). It helps in the opportunity identification process and the development of the
methodology which can help the entrepreneurs capture the prevailing opportunities in the market. The process
comprises eight phases, where the first five phases are focused on developing the structure, and the last three
phases are meant for empirical validation (Ardichvili et al, 2003). Lastly, Schumpeter's theory of economic
development considers the significant role of the entrepreneurs and the innovations conducted by them in the
process of economic development (Croitoru, 2012). It is a well-recognized fact that innovation and new
technologies are not uniformly adopted by competing entrepreneurs (Jambulingam, 2018). The theory also
accords special significance to the entrepreneur as a driver of change through constant innovation, which
overcomes the obsolescence of past products (Schumpeter, & Backhaus, 2003). These theories have been
critically analyzed in the cluster analysis section, along with highlighting other emerging yet prominent theories.
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The topic of entrepreneurial success has not been subjected to a quantitative review. This study fills this
gap through a mixed-method study using a combination of bibliometric analysis, a quantitative method, and
content analysis, which is a qualitative method. Bibliometric analysis has gained wide attention in recent years
due to the ease of accessibility of open access software such as VOSviewer, R, and Gephi, as well as the cross-
pollination of the themes from one domain to the other (Dhonthu et al., 2021). Scholars use bibliometric
analysis for gaining knowledge about emerging trends, the performance of journals, clarity regarding research
patterns, core journals, countries, and influential authors as well as publications (Singh et al., 2021a; Sardana
and Singhania, 2022). This technique helps in producing a high impact on research by handling large volumes of
statistical data (Dhonthu et al., 2021). Through scientific mapping, data has been analyzed to synthesize the
existing research, giving a better clarification of the topic and field of study (Singhania et al., 2022a).
The first step of the technique involved the identification and selection of a database for the retrieval of
documents. We used the Scopus database by Elsevier as it is known for its wide range of publications in social
sciences, especially since 1996 (Vieira and Gomes, 2009). As a second step, we framed a string of keywords
based on the literature review: “entrepreneur* success*” OR “entrepreneur* victory” OR “entrepreneur*
achieve*”. This led to the retrieval of 670 documents. Since the Scopus database is known to have a weak
coverage of pre-1996 publications in the domain of social sciences (Harzing and Alakangas, 2016), the set of
documents used for analysis was restricted to the period 1996 to 2021. As a third step, the screening of records
was undertaken, which led to the filtration and elimination of 59 documents, including conference papers, book
chapters, books, and notes to keep only journal articles in the English language (excluding articles in all other
languages). Then, the records were assessed based on the title and abstract for eligibility. This further omitted 16
documents, leaving a sample of 595 documents that were finally used for the bibliometric synthesis. Figure 1
provides an overview of these steps along with the structural flow of the paper.
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Figure 1. Structural flow of the paper
Source: The authors.
4. RESEARCH ANALYSIS
The study conducts bibliometric and topographical analyses of the research articles sourced from the
Scopus database. In order to identify the pattern of development within the database, descriptive statistics are
first performed using MS Excel to construct various tables, graphs, etc. Subsequently, to determine the
relationship between the study items, VOSviewer (Van-Eck & Waltman, 2010) is employed for analysis,
network diagrams, and science mapping (Baker et al., 2021).
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4.1 Volume and Growth Trend of Published Studies
Our first analysis is focused on the volume of publications on entrepreneurial success, over the past 26
years, from 1996 to 2021. The analysis of 595 articles indicates that the knowledge base of entrepreneurial
success has witnessed slow but steady growth, and there is wide potential for evolution in this area (Figure 2).
Though at first glance the number of publications might seem low compared to the extended horizon of 26
years, we must also consider that this number does not cover a fair number of documents such as books, book
chapters, conference papers, reports, etc. Figure 2 also highlights how the studies in the said domain have seen a
steep rise post-2013. This persistent growth could be attributed to the initiatives undertaken by the government
of various economies at the global level to push the start-up culture (Yin et al., 2019; Garg and Gupta, 2022).
Countries have started realizing the potential of the start-up ecosystem, and research studies in the domain of
entrepreneurial success act as game changers for boosting the initiatives taken by various government bodies.
Moreover, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a massive loss of employment, also acted as a driver
for self-employment and entrepreneurial initiatives (Dang and Nguyen, 2021).
Figure 2. Growth of research on entrepreneurial success over the past 26 years (1996-2021)
Source: Authors' creation based on Scopus database.
4.2 Publication Analysis across Countries
Table 1 presents the top 20 countries contributing to the topic of entrepreneurial success based on the
number of citations of published documents. With the highest number of documents (197) and citations (8464),
the United States of America (USA) proves to be the most productive. The authors of the documents published
in the USA have been exploring the topics of success among small and medium enterprises (Eggers, 2020),
women entrepreneurship (Bullough et al., 2022), and entrepreneurship education (Liguori and Winkler, 2020).
The second position is taken by Germany, with 74 documents and 1955 citations. The third spot is occupied by
the Netherlands while the United Kingdom (UK) assumes the fourth spot based on the number of citations. It is
also interesting to note that though Sweden is found in sixth position in terms of the number of citations, it has
the highest average citations per document (ACPD), thereby reflecting a higher impact in relative terms, vis-à-
vis other countries. The above observations follow because the economic growth of a nation is positively
correlated with the entrepreneurial activities taking place in the country (Stel et al., 2005). Factors such as
innovation, employment, and productivity growth are driven by growing entrepreneurial activity (World
Economic Forum, 2013). The USA has consistently seen upward trends, both in early-stage entrepreneurship as
well as established entrepreneurial ventures (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor [GEM], 2019). With this comes
the responsibility of research and publications across the country, which helps in innovation and development
(Distanont and Khongmalai, 2020). It is for this reason that the USA tops the list of 20 countries.
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Table 1. Top 20 most influential countries based on citation analysis
Rank Country
No. of
Documents
No. of Citations ACPD Type of Economy
1
United States of America
197
8464
42.96
Developed
2
Germany
74
1955
26.42
Developed
3 Netherlands 27 1748 64.74
Developed
4 United Kingdom 52 1063 20.44
Developed
5 Spain 26 702 27
Developed
6 Sweden 8 601 75.13
Developed
7 Australia 30 570 19
Developed
8
Taiwan
11
354
32.18
Developed
9
France
22
353
16.05
Developed
10 Norway 13 348 26.77
Developed
11 Canada 15 321 21.4
Developed
12 Switzerland 13 227 17.46
Developed
13 India 36 212 5.89
Developing
14
Poland
18
196
10.89
Developed
15
Hong Kong
5
180
36
Developed
16
Austria
7
134
19.14
Developed
17 China 41 127 3.1
Developing
18 New Zealand 9 126 14
Developed
19 United Arab Emirates 10 125 12.5
Developed
20 Italy 17 121 7.12
Developed
Source: Authors' creation based on Scopus database and reviews.
Note: ACPD= Average Citation Per Document
An important aspect is that 90% of entrepreneurial research has been undertaken in developed countries
across the world. Though not a lot of developing countries engage in entrepreneurial research, countries like
India and China have been able to capture a spot in the list of top 20 countries. India stood at 13th place with an
ACPD of 5.89 and China stood at 17th place with an ACPD of 3.1. These two developing economies had the
lowest ACPD amongst the list of countries mentioned in the table. On the other hand, developed countries like
Sweden and Netherlands are found to have an ACPD of 75.31 and 64.74 respectively, which is the highest in the
table. This indicates the difference in the impact of the research among developed and developing economies.
4.3 Citation Analysis for Journals
The Scopus database comprises several journals that publish entrepreneurial research. Table 2 presents the
top 20 journals with the highest citations in the Scopus database. The Journal of Business Venturing by Elsevier,
an A* listed journal, proved to be the most influential source, with 5638 citations and an ACPD of 352.38. The
second position is Small Business Economics by Springer Nature with 793 citations and an ACPD of 66.08
followed by Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development by Emerald with 354 citations and 59
ACPD. Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal and Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, earlier published by
Allied Business Academies, appear in the top 20 list, but they were delisted from Scopus in 2021 and 2019,
respectively.
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Table 2: Top 20 most influential journals in the domain of entrepreneurial success, based on the citation
analysis
Rank
NOD
No. of
Citations
ACPD
Cite
Score
Scopus
Coverage
ABDC
listed
Publisher
1
16
5638
352.38
14.6
1985 to Present
A*
Elsevier
2
12
793
66.08
10.7
1989 to Present
A
Springer Nature
3
6 354 59 5.4 1994 to Present C Emerald
4
6 313 52.17 13.7 2004 to Present A* Wiley-Blackwell
5
8 282 35.25 8 1989 to Present A Taylor & Francis
6
8
262
32.75
11.2
1973 to Present
A
Elsevier
7
10 245 24.5 8 1995 to Present B Emerald
8
5
183
36.6
14
1957 to Present
C
Elsevier
9
7
166
23.71
7.9
1967 to Present
B
Emerald
10
8 160 20 8.4 1996 to Present A Taylor & Francis
11
7 126 18 9.7 2006 to Present C Springer Nature
12
Entrepreneurship
8 106 13.25 5
1996 to 1998;
2000 to 2014;
2016 to Present
C Taylor & Francis
13
7 102 14.57 2 2008 to Present C World Scientific
14
11 75 6.82 1.1 2009 to 2021 N.A. Allied Business Academies
15
10 69 6.9 1.3 2004 to Present C Inderscience Publishers
16
7 61 8.71 4.6 2014 to Present N.A. Emerald
17
12
38
3.17
4
2010 to Present
N.A.
Frontiers Media S.A.
18
6 32 5.33 2.7 2009 to 2019 N.A. Allied Business Academies
19
5
11
2.2
1.9
1958 to Present
A
Taylor & Francis
20
5 8 1.6 2.6 1998 to Present C Emerald
Source: Authors' creation based on Scopus database and reviews.
Note: NOD= Number of Documents; ACPD= Average Citation Per Document
It can also be observed that business journals cover most of the entrepreneurial success research. Other
journals publishing on entrepreneurship cater to areas such as management, economics, psychology, education,
and history. The scholars working in this domain should note an interesting aspect: that despite being in the top
3 list based on the volume of publications, the Frontiers in Psychology Journal (with 12 published documents)
is performing low in terms of the ACPD. This means that though enough papers are being published, the
publications have not been able to generate substantial impact relative to publications in other journals. As
pointed out before, entrepreneurship is one of the major contributors to the development of the economy (Doran
et al., 2018). Beyond the economic factors, entrepreneurial success is influenced by psychological factors.
Psychology is the foundation that evaluates the ability of an entrepreneur to recognize business opportunities
and use them effectively to start and build a firm (Ramos-Rodrıguez et al., 2010). Similarly, different domains
have different purposes in the journey of entrepreneurship, which are represented systematically by various
journals.
4.4 Influential Authors and Articles
The study not only identifies the top countries and journals working in the field of entrepreneurship but
also gives attention to the contributors as well as the most influential articles that have been published and have
proved to be beneficial for academicians and entrepreneurs.
Table 3 lists the top 20 authors who have been contributing their efforts towards the said topic, ranked
based on citation analysis. Michael Frese has proved to be the most influential author, with 1209 citations and a
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h-index of 112. Some of his research articles such as “Human Capital and Entrepreneurial Success: A Meta-
Analytical Review” and “Towards a Psychology of Entrepreneurship- An Action Theory Perspective”, have
made it to the top 10 most influential articles in this domain. The second most impactful author is Eva Schmitt-
Rodermund, with 285 citations and a h-index of 28. The citations received by Michael Frese, as well as his h-
index are more than four times those of Eva Schmitt-Rodermund. It is noteworthy that most of the top authors
belong to Germany and other parts of Europe. Though the USA topped the list of countries contributing to
research on entrepreneurial success, none of the top authors belong to the USA. This shows that the country is
providing a substantial quantity of research but lacks impactful authors working in this area, vis-a-vis countries
in Europe. Also, countries such as India and China, which stood at 13
th
and 17
th
place respectively in the list of
top 20 countries and are the only two developing countries that were able to find a spot in the list, have been
able to find a place even in the list of most influential authors. Jianxin Zhang (#12) belongs to China and Ranbir
Singh (#20) belongs to India.
Table 3: Top 20 authors publishing in the domain of entrepreneurial success, based on citation analysis
Rank
Author's Name
NOD
Citations
ACPD
Country Affiliation
Affiliation
h-index
1
Michael Frese
6
1209
201.5
Germany
University of Lueneburg
112
2
Eva Schmitt-Rodermund
3
285
95
Germany
University of Applied
Sciences Potsdam
28
3
Yu-Yu Chang
4
172
43
Taiwan
National Cheng Kung
University
12
4
Chen, Ming-Huei
4
172
43
Taiwan
National Chung Hsing
University
27
5
Rebecca Fisher
3
127
42.33
England
Coventry University
2
6
Ute Stephan
3
122
40.67
England
King's College London
34
7
Martin Obschonka
4
119
29.75
Netherlands
University of Amsterdam
41
8
Rainer K. Silbereisen
4
119
29.75
Germany
Friedrich Schiller
Universität Jena
69
9
Marcin Waldemar
Staniewski
6
101
16.83
Poland
University of Economics
and Human Sciences in
Warsaw
16
10
Katarzyna Awruk
5
58
11.6
Poland
Akademia Ekonomiczno-
Humanistyczna w
Warszawie
8
11
Josette Dijkhuizen
4
38
9.5
Netherlands
Maastricht School of
Management
N.A.
12