ABSTRACT
Macroentrepreneurs are community leaders with entrepreneurial experience and are likely to understand the problems of initiating business ventures within communities. Through their leadership role they are assumed to create a facilitative community entrepreneurship environment by helping develop the local social, economic, and physical infrastructure to benefit nascent and extant entrepreneurs and in turn the broader community. Also identified as community entrepreneurs in the literature, they have been the subject of theory and conjecture but relatively little empirical research. Leaders in six communities were surveyed to examine the characteristics differentiating involvement in a local entrepreneurship program, including present and past business ownership. Results indicated that macroentrepreneurs, especially current business owners, tended to be less knowledgeable and involved in the entrepreneurship program than non-business owning community leaders. The findings suggest that in initiating community entrepreneurship programs community development practitioners need to involve a broad spectrum of leaders that goes beyond the business sector.
