FG ABWL, insbesondere empirische Unternehmensforschung und Transformation
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There's no fox like an old fox: Dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation and venture closure
(2023)
Only a few scholars examined downsides of EO and suggest it may negatively affect survival. Previous research, which mainly focuses on mature companies, assumes that the relationship between EO and survival is constant. However, because firm characteristics and causal mechanisms change as young venture survive and grow into mature firms, the relationships between EO and survival could also change over time. We extend the EO literature by considering changing EO effects when venture grow into mature firms and by employing a multidimensional view on EO and identify isolating independent mechanisms for the influence of each dimension (i.e. innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking) on the survival of young ventures. While the nature of proactiveness on performance is rathe positive, risk-taking and innovativeness increases the variance of firm performance and thus the chances of failure. However, the latter can be separated according to whether the increase in variance occurs at a single point in time (risk-taking) or over time (innovation) and whether the survivors have more money or more innovations. For young firms, innovativeness and risk-taking inhibit survival, while proactiveness promotes it, so the dimensions have divergent effects. As a consequence of the attrition of young ventures, the associations of innovativeness and risk-taking reverse when they grow older. Our empirical analyses are based on panel data of 8,518 young firms.
In recent years, there has been increasing use of experimentally validated self-reported items to measure individuals' risk preferences, specifically risk aversion. While previous research supports their convergent validity, we argue that self-reported risk preference measures capture a broad spectrum of additional constructs involved in risky decision-making, notably including loss aversion as a potential confound. In broader applications, such as observational studies, associations with other constructs enhance a measurement's ability to predict risk-taking behaviors across diverse natural environments, often arising from the interplay of different constructs better captured by comprehensive self-reported measures than by narrower, construct-specific incentivized measures. Conversely, in focused tests where each construct has unique behavioral implications, using broad self-reported measures as a replacement for construct-specific incentivized measurements can result in significant endogeneity issues. By analyzing three samples from two independent studies, we demonstrate that even after accounting for incentivized risk preference measures that remove latent construct associations and focus on measurement-related confounds, self-reported risk preferences maintain a substantial association with incentivized loss aversion measures, indicating that the measurement captures a mixture of both risk and loss aversion. We also observe that the strength of associations depends on whether individuals interpret risk-taking as accepting higher variances or higher losses. Based on this finding, we propose a simple procedure that utilizes this individual heterogeneity in the confounding effect's strength to enhance the robustness of conclusions drawn from analyses of self-reported risk preference measures
This study relies on optimal distinctiveness theory to investigate how radically innovative ventures might attract funding. Conforming with existing norms can help new ventures gain legitimacy from resource providers, yet radically innovative ventures instead feature extreme distinctiveness. The results of three complementary empirical studies affirm that these radically innovative ventures suffer from reduced funding chances among equity crowdfunders. Contributing to optimal distinctiveness theory, the authors show that extremely distinctive ventures can shift to become optimally distinctive. Thus, radically innovative ventures can reverse the negative effect and avoid the downsides of non-conformity by leveraging external legitimacy sources, such as endorsements from alliance partners or professional investors. The optimal level of distinctiveness also varies by audience, such that radically innovative ventures’ extreme distinctiveness evokes more negative judgments among equity crowdfunders who expect returns than among reward crowdfunders who seek novelty. Surprisingly though, without external legitimacy sources, radical innovativeness is never favored, even by novelty-seeking audiences. This fresh evidence that radical innovativeness constitutes both a liability and an asset, contingent on new ventures’ external endorsements and audience expectations, points to important boundary conditions for optimal distinctiveness theory.
Principal Topic: Hybrid entrepreneurs, individuals working in a paid job while simultaneously being self-employed (Folta et al. 2010), seem to receive increasing scholarly attention in entrepreneurship research. Since they tend to be more risk-averse and have less entrepreneurial experience than non-hybrid entrepreneurs (Folta et al. 2010; Raffiee & Feng, 2014), the general proposition in research remains to view hybrid entrepreneurs as a homogenous group who mainly use hybridity for testing before transitioning into full-time self-employment. However, we show that considering a broad diversity of motives to stay in a paid job will reveal heterogeneity among hybrid entrepreneurs. Furthermore, since different motives tend to be associated with varying performance outcomes (Deci & Ryan, 2000), we demonstrate that heterogeneity among hybrid entrepreneurs relates to differences in performance and innovativeness.
Method: We employed a start-up panel dataset (2013 – 2018) from the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research to evaluate practically relevant combinations of motives derived from theory to empirically identify natural clusters among hybrid entrepreneurs by estimating a latent class logit model. Secondly, we use panel regression analyses to test whether these three classes compared to full-time entrepreneurs differ concerning their financial and innovative performance measured in profit, sales, and innovativeness as separate dependent variables. Hereby, we control for demographics, experience, and industry.
Results and Implications: We were able to identify three dominant types among hybrid entrepreneurs: opportunists, transitioners, and networkers. Moreover, performance differences exist between these three classes as well as compared to full-time entrepreneurs. We observe that opportunists are associated with higher short-term profits than full-time entrepreneurs. At the same time, networkers and transitioners seem to engage in more innovative activities than opportunists and full-time entrepreneurs. We contribute to current research on potential mechanisms causing hybrid entrepreneurship, showing that hybrid entrepreneurs should not be considered a homogeneous group. Furthermore, we contribute to entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating that heterogeneity among hybrids exists when considering motives to remain in a paid job, which is associated with differences in performance and innovativeness.
The Behavioral Inhibition and Behavioral Approach Systems (BIS/BAS) have been conceptualized as fundamental motivational drivers deeply rooted in human neurophysiology. Recently, BIS/BAS have been linked to the emergence of entrepreneurship. This raises a question: Are BIS/BAS merely alternative reflections of underlying personality traits? Could their effects be similarly explained by a basic personality framework such as the Big Five or HEXACO, which have also been linked to neurobiological roots, or do they make a unique contribution to entrepreneurship research? Using regression and commonality analyses for a relatively large sample (N=790), this study shows that BIS/BAS influence entrepreneurial intentions beyond what is explained by the HEXACO model. This is true even when personality measures are used at the level of personality factors, facets, or even individual items. Notably, the four dimensions of BIS/BAS account for more variance than the six dimensions of personality traits. Thus, the BIS/BAS captures more than just general personality effects. Additionally, in a subsample (N=470), we examined the relationship between BIS/BAS and prior entrepreneurial involvement. While potentially subject to the threat of reverse causality, we also examine the relationship between BIS/BAS and past entrepreneurial involvement in a subsample (N=470). Although at a weaker level, we observe the same pattern. Moreover, our results suggest that the observed effects of personality on entrepreneurial intentions are largely mediated by associations with entrepreneurial self-efficacy, the belief in being able to start and run one's own business. In contrast, the influence of BIS/BAS is largely independent of self-efficacy. These findings suggest that BIS/BAS is more related to basic motivations and less related to cognitive efficacy beliefs than HEXACO. In light of these findings, future entrepreneurship research should consider incorporating the basic motivational constructs of BIS/BAS as a complementary perspective to basic personality traits.
Legitimizing non-innovative and radically innovative products and services on crowdfunding platforms
(2024)
Whether reward crowdfunding backers perceive a product or service as legitimate depends on many factors, including its innovativeness. However, studies offer conflicting results on how different levels of innovativeness influence perceived legitimacy. Some report that less innovative and only incrementally innovative products and services suffer from legitimacy challenges. Other research indicates that incrementally innovative products or services might be the most legitimate cases, at least as long as they are not receiving additional endorsements. Endorsements, such as strategic alliance partners, professional investors, or media coverage, may change whether or not lower levels of innovativeness threaten legitimacy in the eyes of the crowd. Using a vignette study approach with a sample of people experienced with crowdfunding investments, this study tests, first, how innovativeness affects legitimacy and, second, how external endorsements influence what level of innovativeness is most legitimate. The analyses reveal that without additional external endorsements, incrementally innovative products and services are most legitimate, while radically innovative ones just slightly outperform non-innovative ones. Results also reveal that threats to legitimacy posed by non-innovativeness and radical innovativeness can be buffered. However, not all three external endorsements display the same effects. Media coverage seems to help everyone, but it helps those who are already legitimate the most. The slightly negative effect of additional legitimacy through alliances and investors for incrementally innovative products is surprising but might be explained by redundant legitimacy.
Theoretischer Hintergrund: Dispositionale Hoffnung wirkt als motivationaler Mechanismus in unsicheren und krisenbehafteten Situationen, wie bei der Bewältigung beruflicher Herausforderungen und der Anpassung an das „New Normal“ der heutigen Arbeitswelt. Obwohl positive Zusammenhänge zwischen Hoffnung und Karriereplanung (Hirschi et al., 2017), beruflicher Identität (Diemer & Blustein, 2007) und beruflicher Anpassungsfähigkeit (Niles, 2011) berichtet werden, ist unklar, welchen Einfluss Hoffnung auf die Richtung einer Karriere nimmt.
Fragestellung/Hypothesen. Diese Studie untersucht den Zusammenhang von dispositionaler Hoffnung und fundamentalen Karrierezielen. Hoffnung wird als kontextunspezifisches, mehrdimensionales Konstrukt betrachtet (Bernardo, 2010), bestehend aus internaler (selbstbezogener) und externaler (auf externe Faktoren wie andere Menschen und Zufall bezogene) Hoffnung. Wir hypothetisieren, dass internale Hoffnung positiv auf die allgemeine Stärke von Karrieremotiven wirkt. Darüber hinaus werden verschiedene grundlegende Karrieremotive nach typischen Mustern des Zusammenhangs mit internaler und externaler Hoffnung unterschieden.
Methodik/Ergebnisse: Die Hypothesen wurden anhand einer Stichprobe von N=1201 Teilnehmenden geprüft. Die Mehrdimensionalität und entscheidungsleitende Wirkung der Karrieremotive werden durch mehrdimensionale Mehrebenen-Modelle abgebildet. Es zeigt sich, dass internale Hoffnung die generelle Stärke von Karrierezielen positiv beeinflusst und die Wahl herausfordernder Berufstätigkeiten fördert. Personen mit externaler Hoffnung auf andere streben nach Expertenstatus, Jobsicherheit und berücksichtigen soziale Faktoren im Beruf. Externale Hoffnung auf Zufall wirkt positiv auf das Streben nach Kreativität und unternehmerischer Selbstständigkeit. Die Effekte sind unabhängig von dispositionalem Optimismus.
Diskussion/Implikationen: Diese Studie trägt zur Hoffnungs- und Karriereforschung bei und unterstreicht die Bedeutung von Hoffnung im beruflichen Kontext. Hoffnung sollte demnach als mehrdimensionaler Einflussfaktor in Karriereentscheidungen sowie in Weiterbildungs- und Entwicklungsmaßnahmen verstärkt berücksichtigt werden.
Theoretischer Hintergrund: Hoffnung wirkt als motivationaler Mechanismus auf Handlungsintentionen in Krisensituationen und Situationen unter Unsicherheit (Krafft & Walker, 2018). Obwohl sich Hoffnung in den vergangenen Jahren als wichtige psychologische Ressource für persönliche Leistung und Zielerreichung in der Forschung etabliert hat, gibt es wenige Studien zum Einfluss auf berufsbezogene Entscheidungen. Diese zeigen jedoch Beziehungen zu wichtigen berufsbezogenen Variablen wie Jobzufriedenheit und Jobwechselabsicht (Reichard et al., 2013).
Fragestellung/Hypothesen: Über bekannte Effekte hinaus untersucht diese Studie den Einfluss von dispositioneller Hoffnung auf Jobwechseldynamiken. Wir betrachten Hoffnung als kontextunspezifischen, mehrdimensionalen Faktor, bestehend aus internaler selbstbezogener Hoffnung (Snyder, 2002) und ex ternaler Hoffnung auf einflussreiche Dritte sowie Zufall oder Schicksal (Bernardo, 2010). Wir hypothetisieren, dass insbesondere internale Hoffnung Jobwechselprozesse beeinflusst und den negativen Zusammenhang von Jobzufriedenheit und Jobwechselabsicht verstärkend moderiert.
Methodik/Ergebnisse: Die Hypothesen werden mittels Regressionsanalysen an einer Stichprobe von N=826 Berufstätigen geprüft. Internale Hoffnung korreliert negativ mit aktuellen Jobwechselabsichten, unter Kontrolle für Jobzufriedenheit wird dieser Zusammenhang positiv. Wir bestätigen den verstärkenden Effekt internaler Hoffnung auf den negativen Zusammenhang von Jobzufriedenheit und Jobwechselabsicht. Die Effekte sind robust, wenn für dispositionellen Optimismus als Alternativerklärung kontrolliert wird. Internale Hoffnung ist zudem positiv mit früheren Jobwechseln sowie aktueller Jobzufriedenheit assoziiert.
Diskussion/Implikationen: Unsere Studie leistet einen Beitrag zur Hoffnungsforschung im betrieblichen Kontext und belegt den Einfluss von Hoffnung auf Jobwechselprozesse. Eine divergente Wirkung von Hoffnung wird durch die Verstärkung von Jobwechselabsichten unter Jobunzufriedenheit gezeigt, bei gleichzeitiger Assoziation mit Jobzufriedenheit. Hoffnung sollte als personalpsychologischer Wirkmechanismus stärker in den Mittelpunkt innerbetrieblicher Maßnahmen gerückt werden, um diesen gezielt im Personalmanagement einzusetzen.
Many entrepreneurs start their businesses while being employed. We analyze managers’ perceptions of and reactions to subordinates’ entrepreneurial side businesses. Expecting improved personal skills, higher innovativeness, higher efficiency, and a better employer image leads to more positive employer reactions. Previous experiences with enterprising employees make managers perceive such positive consequences as more likely. Expectations of employees using employer resources for own businesses, lower resilience and flexibility, and a lowered fit of employees with the employing organization lead to more discouraging behaviors. Situational factors such as employee importance and proximity of employee’s and employer’s businesses affect these outcome expectancies and moderate the relationships between outcome expectancies and employers’ behaviors.
Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs
(2023)
Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity—variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18,123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity—estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs—indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis.
We examine how external endorsements help new ventures with varying degrees of innovativeness to attract funding. According to optimal distinctiveness theory, new ventures should be as different from competitors as legitimately possible. However, initial research suggests that new ventures can also buffer their legitimacy through external endorsements. We clarify that effects of such legitimacy buffers depend critically on an audience's unique legitimacy-distinctiveness relationship. Specifically, external endorsements lead to different predictions about shifts in optimal distinctiveness for return-seeking audiences compared to novelty-seeking audiences as relevant new venture funders. For return-seeking audiences, new ventures are perceived as less legitimate when they are non-innovative or radically innovative so that incrementally innovative new ventures are most attractive without endorsements. External endorsements can thus buffer the legitimacy of non-innovative and radically innovative new ventures, but they lead to different performance implications for a return-seeking audience. While non-innovative new ventures increase their attractiveness, only radically innovative new ventures can become optimally distinctive and outperform other distinctiveness configurations. In contrast, novelty-seeking audiences already have a higher tolerance for radically innovative new ventures, so the effects of external endorsements are less pronounced. Four empirical studies, using observational data and experiments in equity and reward-based crowdfunding, provide strong support for this theory and account for alternative explanations such as risk perceptions. In turn, we shed new light on the crucial, audience-specific function of external endorsements, namely, as a means to alter optimal distinctiveness levels.
Existing research focuses on hope as a motivational driver for personal effort. We argue that hope can facilitate individuals’ decisions for and against effort, depending on specific conditions. Based on a vignette study with 350 subjects, we test this suggestion with a scenario where a person decides for or against an effortful training that experts consider appropriate for that person, presuming that one could hope for success based on training but also for success without training. We find that hope can leverage individuals’ decisions to engage in and avoid effortful behavior. Moreover, ambiguity in a behavioral outcome strengthens the effect of hope on the likelihood of choosing the corresponding behavior. Separating internal from a more general kind of hope, we find that hope for success by training is mainly driven by internal hope but hope without training relates less to internal hope. Carefully separating the effects of hope from the effects of optimism, our study highlights the relevance of hope beyond optimism.
We draw on a variety of research areas that explain why individuals combine paid employment and self-employment. We provide a comprehensive empirical comparison of the relevance and co-occurrence of multiple motives. Our analysis shows that motives can be meaningfully distinguished according to whether a motive is endogenously transitory or not, and suggests the presence of three dominant classes of hybrid entrepreneurs. In particular, learning and growth constraints, which we refer to as transitory motives resolving over time, play a crucial role in distinguishing between the three classes. Based on an analysis of 3,868 hybrid and pure entrepreneurs, we show that our typology helps better understand the potentially heterogeneous relationships between being a hybrid entrepreneur and entrepreneurial performance and innovation behavior.
As innovation policy targets innovations suffering from underinvestment, we examine the effect of public grants on innovation. While innovation involves a lot of uncertainty, we suggest public grants as the best option bearing no obligations. But not all innovations are alike as they differ by newness level. Hence, we distinguish between ""new-to-world"" explorative and ""new-to-firm"" explotation innovation. Making use of (inter)national knowledge flow, some exploitative innovations are not ""new-to-firm"" but rather ""new-to-region or -country"" leveraging existing knowledge from another region or country. Allocating grants to the most promising startups, we evaluate startups' quality by high-tech industry and ""entrepreneurial orientation"" (EO). Within over 4,000 early-stage German startups, we find that explorative innovations benefit the most from grants, especially high EO startups. Also, grants help low EO firms to become innovative at all and to launch exploitative innovation with (inter)national knowledge flow.
While we have a great deal of scholarship on legitimacy, our understanding of how stigmatized actors seek to (re-)gain legitimacy remains quite limited. We seek to enhance our understanding of such processes through a qualitative, in-depth case study of a radical soccer fan community that, when faced an identity-threatening event, launched a crowdfunding campaign that ultimately succeeded in enhancing their legitimacy for their cause and enabling them to have a voice in a central strategic decision on the redesign of their club's soccer stadium. We leverage this case to develop a model on how stigmatized groups might be able to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of certain audiences. We show that first, the crowdfunding campaign created a digital and temporal space allowing them to disassociate stigmatized and associate legitimate elements (i.e. artifact-based affiliation). Second, we theorize how various association tactics were drawn upon over time, facilitating an interrelated set of dynamics between what we label manual and forced association. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our study for future research on legitimation processes related to stigmatized groups.
Previous research examining the link between individuals’ preferences for competition and occupational choice has not taken explicitly into account how the level of competition in various occupations is perceived by individuals. In contrast, we argue that individuals’ perception of intensity of competition is of key importance for linking theoretically and empirically individual competitiveness to occupational choice, particularly entrepreneurial entry. Using two datasets, one obtained from a student sample and the other from a general population sample, we provide empirical evidence that the relationship between individual competitiveness and occupational choice is moderated by perceived intensity of competition. Moreover, entrepreneurship is, on average, perceived as more competitively intense than paid employment in both samples implying that individuals shying away from competition and at the same time perceive particularly entrepreneurship as competitively intense are more likely to select into paid employment than into entrepreneurship.
We examine how radical innovativeness affects how new ventures can establish legitimacy. While legitimacy research often assumes that new ventures similarly suffer from the liability of newness, radically innovative new ventures face stronger liabilities and are less successful when raising early-stage equity financing. Consequently, they may benefit more from identity-related, associative, and organizational legitimacy-building mechanisms, which mitigate the adverse effect and may turn radical innovativeness into an asset. Campaign-level observations for technology ventures and complementary individual-level experimental analyses of financial resource providers’ legitimacy assessments suggest that legitimation mechanisms are less effective for less radically innovative ventures and might even be counter-productive.
We examined firm-level and country-level antecedents of R&D internationalization strategies, focusing on differences between enterprises in emerging and advanced economies. Previous research often focuses on the relative importance of home-base-exploiting versus home-base-augmenting knowledge transfer strategies. We suggest that country-level and firm-level effects differ for the two strategies, and hence, we examined each strategy independently. Collecting data in China, India, the United States, and Germany, we demonstrated that firms' relative technological position as a firm-level characteristic can explain differences in home-base-exploiting strategies between emerging and advanced economies. In contrast, home-base-augmenting is more closely related to exploratory institutional environments, a country-level factor. Thus, either firm- or country-level antecedents can gain a dominant role, depending on the strategy implemented.
Can radicals get a seat on the negotiation table? A Dynamic Perspective on Legitimation Processes
(2021)
The growing body of the cultural entrepreneurship literature seeks to understand how actors facing the liability of newness gain legitimacy in the eyes of resource holding audiences. However, less is known about how dynamics play out overtime when an actor with a lack of legitimacy seeks to regain it. In this paper, we conduct a qualitative, in-depth case study of a radical soccer fan community facing an identity-threatening political decision (i.e., relocating their fan zone within their stadium). Realizing that they lack a seat on the negotiation table and their traditional forms of protest bore no fruits, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to promote their cause (i.e., keeping the fan zone). The radicals successfully raised money and - even more important - convinced several national and international audiences, ultimately resulting in a legitimacy gain in the critical local political audience's eyes. This paper demonstrates how digital artifacts such as crowdfunding serve as a mechanism for dissociating with illegitimate elements while reconfiguring the links with the environment to gain legitimacy. Moreover, we demonstrate that actors with a lack of legitimacy first need to gain endorsements from other actors before turning to the actor holding the most critical resource.
Emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) increasingly access foreign technology and knowledge by internationalizing their R&D activities. Since technological laggardness hinders efficient knowledge transfer, a successful catch-up with advanced-economy multinational enterprises
(AMNEs) requires EMNEs to transfer foreign knowledge across national boundaries more effectively. However, we lack a clear understanding of how EMNEs manage this knowledge transfer and integration and to what extent the employment and effectiveness of corresponding facilitation mechanisms may differ from AMNEs. Adopting a sender-recipient model and drawing on arguments from learning theory and transaction costs economics, we suggest that EMNEs benefit more from and, consequently, are more likely to engage in mechanisms to increase
recipient capabilities and sender motivation. In a comparative analysis of Chinese, Indian, German, and U.S. MNEs and focusing on frequent international exchange of R&D personnel regarding recipient capabilities and the governance of foreign R&D activities regarding sender motivation, we observe positive relationships with home-market innovation for EMNEs, but not for AMNEs. Moreover, we observe that EMNEs exploit this positive effect and are more likely to use these mechanisms when focusing on technology- than on market-seeking.