Knowledge that Transforms

This article investigates how fatherhood (or the prospect thereof) shapes entrepreneurial masculinities. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory, we analyze 22 life story interviews with Finnish men technology founders and identify three entrepreneurial masculinities enacted by men to accommodate concurrent normative ideals at the intersection of work and family life. These entrepreneurial masculinities alternatively maintain, restructure, and resist entrepreneurial and parental hegemonic masculinities and are subject to generational and situational scripts. We contribute to the gender and entrepreneurship literature by revealing that the neoliberal new father discourse blurs hegemonic masculinities leading entrepreneurial masculinities to emerge as hybrid hegemonic masculinities.

Across two studies, we apply self-regulation theory to test nonlinear relationships between founder Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy and new venture performance. Our hypotheses are supported for Machiavellianism and psychopathy, but contrary to our theorizing, we find a positive relationship between narcissism and performance. Furthermore, we identify an important explanatory mechanism in knowledge sharing, which mediates the curvilinear relationships at moderate and high levels. Our research has implications for how we understand the influence of problematic founder personality traits and how behavioral differences at varying levels of these traits can explain relationships with performance, and it presents a nuanced perspective to trait-based explanations for destructive entrepreneurial actions.

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) can generate substantial gains and losses, exhausting firm resources and straining a firm’s ability to sustain its activities. We develop and test a resource exhaustion theory of firm failure, conceptualizing conditions under which EO increases the risk of firm failure by generating unsustainable amounts of entrepreneurial entropy. Using panel data on 804 large U.S. high-technology firms over 18 years, we find that EO increases the risk of firm failure, which is mediated by the lack of organizational resource slack. An abrupt change in EO increases the risk of firm failure, especially among underperforming firms.

This study contributes a novel perspective on how new venture teams navigate task re-allocation during the new venture development phase. It highlights the relevance of task re-allocation conflict, shows how “negative affect expectations” shape the unfolding of such conflicts, and demonstrates why acting out conflict and its associated negative affect can enable team members to make substantial task re-allocations instead of symbolic ones. The analysis has implications for two bodies of research, which have previously not been considered in tandem: (1) research on task (re-)allocation, professionalization, and structural imprinting in new ventures, and (2) research on team conflict.

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is an important construct in the fields of management and entrepreneurship research. Interest in EO knowledge continues to thrive with a burgeoning research agenda in multiple contexts and with diverse implications. However, a subset of this research, which endeavors to apply the EO construct to explain or predict individuals’ entrepreneurial beliefs and behaviors, has met with resistance. This paper examines the case for EO at the individual level (Ind.EO). We consider the EO legacy concerns, and the various theoretical implications and benefits of doing so. Drawing upon an “EO as a family of constructs” framework, we propose paths forward for studying Ind.EO credibly, consistent with, but distinct from, traditional firm-level EO. Finally, we outline a research agenda and discuss the contributions and potential implications for Ind.EO research across the wider entrepreneurship discipline.

Although prior research emphasizes the essential role of anchor organizations’ leadership in entrepreneurial ecosystem development in the early stages, their strategic functions are undertheorized. This study conducted a single case study with the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Santiago de Chile as a revelatory case by examining how anchor organizations catalyze the early evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the perspective of the orchestration theory. We developed a framework of ecosystem orchestration to demonstrate how anchor organizations adapt their strategic functions in managing and building various networks and resources to dynamic environments in entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Prior research highlights how entrepreneurs depend on resourceful actions to overcome constraints in value-creation situations. Yet, most resourcefulness research has examined its external manifestations. To complement this, I examine the cognitive and embodied sensemaking process that underpins resourceful actions. Using an autoethnography of a 1430-mile mountain bike ride across South Africa, I distill a microfoundational sensemaking perspective underpinning resourcefulness, highlighting how actors who confront resource-constrained situations find creative ways to overcome such constraints to move forward in their endeavors. Furthermore, I specify how resourcefulness is impacted by priming, learning, and contagion within a challenging context.

We induce a first-person conceptualization of entrepreneurial resilience. Our seven-year, two-study ethnography shows that entrepreneurs enact resilience as a four-step process of managing vulnerability: they richly experience episodes of adversity, self-monitor across episodes, reassess personal thresholds and reconcile challenges with coping skills. Entrepreneurs manage vulnerability by (1) modifying ( stretching and shrinking) objective time and (2) changing their subjective experience of time as working with or against the clock through temporal resourcing or temporal resisting. We extend the theory and practice of entrepreneurial resilience by elaborating the interplay of objective and subjective time in managing vulnerability in recurrent and unprecedented crises.

In the context of the external disruption presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigate (1) how individual-level resilience and inter-functional coordination relate to organizational resilience and (2) the link between organizational resilience and firm performance. We view organizational resilience as a resource-based capability and draw on insights regarding psychological capital and relational resources to inform our hypotheses. Our hypotheses are tested with a time-lagged, multi-level study of young technology ventures. The results show that when such firms are resilient, they tend to perform significantly better in a crisis. Further, organizational resilience is positively influenced by the individual resilience of top management team members, as well as inter-functional coordination. We discuss implications for theory and practice and suggest avenues for research on resilience in entrepreneurship.

We examine the decision process of individuals evaluating whether to support an entrepreneurial endeavor. Such decisions are made by individuals under conditions of ambiguity and equivocality. Therefore, it is nearly impossible for resource providers to adopt a purely rational evaluative process in assessing a venture. Building on insights from sensemaking and social and cognitive psychology, we elaborate a theoretical model combining sensemaking, intuition, and deliberation to account for how entrepreneurial support decisions are made. The model reflects individual and social factors that impact this decision process and provides a basis for understanding entrepreneurial support decisions across diverse actors and contexts.