Knowledge that Transforms

A rapidly expanding body of entrepreneurship literature draws on signaling theory. Yet as the field grows, common understanding of the theory’s underlying constructs has become increasingly fuzzy and riddled with ambiguities. To establish a common ground for entrepreneurship scholars, we take stock of 172 articles in a systematic literature review and develop a taxonomy of signal constructs. In an effort to increase the clarity of signal constructs further, we apply this taxonomy to assess the signal constructs’ boundary conditions, relationships, and interplays with complementary theories in entrepreneurship contexts. Finally, we leverage the novel insights to identify promising opportunities for further theory-based developments in the field.

Entrepreneurship can be fulfilling and enhance wellbeing, but also highly stressful and diminish wellbeing. This meta-analytical review synthesizes 319 effect sizes from 94 studies and 82 countries to establish whether individuals derive greater wellbeing from working for themselves or for someone else. The answer is partly positive in favor of entrepreneurship but depends on the components of wellbeing under investigation (positive wellbeing or negative wellbeing/mental illbeing) and the institutional context (especially the rule of law). We contribute by developing the component view of wellbeing as an organizing framework and by advancing an institutional perspective to guide research on entrepreneurs’ wellbeing.

We explore how entrepreneurial passion’s effect size varies across measures and operationalizations. The role-based measure outperforms the dualistic measure on some outcomes but not on performance. The role-based measure’s IPF and IC dimensions are strongly correlated, and so are its three domains, putting its theoretical assumptions in question. Scholars often use it against the guidelines, although the obtained effect sizes do not drop. The dualistic measure is more effective when the original questions are used and when entrepreneurship-specific targets are mentioned. Yet, its focus is not positive feelings per se. The search for an ideal passion model should continue.