Veronica Gustavsson
Assistant Professor in Business Administration
Biography
Veronica Gustavsson defended her dissertation in August 2004.
Research
Veronica is one of the researchers involved in the ERL - The Entrepreneurship Research Laboratory. ERL is an initiative to study entrepreneurship research questions with ‘laboratory’ methods, i.e., experiments and simulation. The rationales for this approach are:
- The realization that the study of current, practicing entrepreneurs does not necessarily provide all the normatively valid answers to entrepreneurship research questions. Current practice can be wrong!
- The realization that characteristics of the situation are at least as important as the characteristics of the individual(s) in determining entrepreneurial behaviour and outcomes. Laboratory approaches are excellent for manipulating situations and studying their effects.
- Unambiguous answers to questions of causality can in many cases only be obtained with laboratory research methods.
The ERL thus is not a physical location but a series of related research projects that are carried out in international collaboration. JIBS is the hub of this network, which currently has nodes in Australia, Canada and the US.
The ERL got its initial funding of SEK 800 000 per year for 2004-06 from the Swedish Research Council (Veteskapradet; VR). In their evaluation the VR remarked that “The experimental method that the researchers intend to use is original and interesting, and a welcome contribution to broadening the collection of method approaches in Swedish Business Studies.” Recently one of ERL’s principal researchers obtained substantial additional funding from the Handelsbankens Forskningsstiftelser.