Title: Sustainable development and guidance for entrepreneurship in unfavoured regions: the case of the Alentejo region

Authors: Rui Manuel de Sousa Fragoso

Addresses: Centre for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics, Instituto de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais Mediterrâneas, Department of Management, School of Social Sciences, University of Évora, Apartado 94. 7000 Évora, Portugal

Abstract: The unfavoured Portuguese regions have a level of life and economic growth rates lower than favoured regions, and the mean of European Union and hence have less entrepreneurial activities. The adoption of strategies of sustainable development driven by entrepreneurship phenomena could be a viable solution. Thus, the likely relationships between entrepreneurship and regional features were described, and sources of entrepreneurship opportunities for strategies based on the own regional resources and competitive advantages were identified. The paper concludes that for the Alentejo region, some habitat variables should be reinforced for promoting entrepreneurship and sustainable development, and the main opportunities are related to the economic activities that belong to the regional productive profile of specialisation.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; sustainable development; strategic positioning; habitat variables; sustainability; unfavoured regions; Portugal; entrepreneurial activities; regional development.

DOI: 10.1504/WREMSD.2015.072048

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 2015 Vol.11 No.4, pp.358 - 376

Received: 24 Jun 2014
Accepted: 29 Jun 2014
Published online: 30 Sep 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article