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This study explores the structure of founders’ hybrid personal identities and their relationship to social venture performance. The authors hypothesize that founders experience the tension between the social and commercial goals of their venture as a paradox rooted in their personal values.

The authors surveyed 112 social enterprise founders in Chile and used structural equation modeling to test hypotheses about the relationship between self-transcendent values (i.e. promotion of others’ welfare and care for nature) and self-enhancement values (i.e. pursuing own interests and power over others) on a multidimensional scale of social venture performance.

Self-transcendence and self-enhancement are distinct yet interrelated values that coexist within social venture founders (i.e. they constitute a paradox). Self-transcendence values negatively moderate the positive relationship between self-enhancement values and social venture performance.

Mere benevolence is insufficient for effective social venturing; success depends on the founder’s self-enhancement values or their “drive” to succeed. Founder values can thus inform organizational design choices (e.g. tasks, team composition, structures and processes) and guide public and private investment decisions.

This research empirically assesses the structure of hybrid personal identities, uncovering how the concurrent action of self-transcendence and self-enhancement values influences social venture performance. The authors challenge the belief that balancing social and commercial goals benefits social venture performance. Best-performing ventures are those whose founder’s exhibit high self-enhancement and low self-transcendence values.

We consider how the commercialization of social ventures may result from their founders’ personal experiences of commercial organizing. Building on theories of individual imprinting, we theorize that the commercialization of social ventures is influenced by two types of commercial experience: parental imprinting from the commercial work experience of a founder’s parents, and work imprinting from a founder’s professional experience within for-profit organizations. We find support for our theory based on analysis of a novel dataset of over 2,000 nascent social ventures and their founders. We further find that the marginal effects of additional work imprinting from a founder’s commercial experience decline with the longevity of this experience. We discuss implications of our findings for literatures on social ventures, imprinting, and hybrid organizations.

We advance theory of how founder identity affects business model (BM) design during new venture creation and contribute to the cognitive perspective on BMs. We look at BM design as a longitudinal process involving a variety of cognitive work that is co-shaped by the founder identity work. Based on an in-depth nine-year process study of a single venture managed by three founders, we observed that a novelty-centered BM design resulted from cognitive work co-shaped by founder identity construction and verification processes. Yet, more remarkably, we noted that founder identity verification decreased over time and observed a process that we labeled “identity-business model decoupling.” It meant that the founders did not alter their founder identity but, over time, attentively grew self-aware and mindfully disengaged negative identity effects to design an effective BM. Our results provide a dynamic view on founder identity imprinting on ventures’ BMs and contribute to the identity, BM, and entrepreneurship literatures.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the small but growing body of research examining the influence of founder gender on new venture access to venture development programs.

Hypotheses were tested utilizing a sample of 482 nascent technology ventures which applied for admittance into a venture development organization headquartered in the southern region of the United States from March 2004 through February 2016.

Findings suggest that female-founded applicant ventures experience a higher likelihood of acceptance into venture development programs than male-founded applicant ventures. Results further suggest that social attention to gender equality reduces this effect for female-founded applicant ventures. Findings extend the understanding of the gendered nature of high-technology venturing and venture development organizations.

The findings of this study may not generalize to new ventures operating in other contexts (e.g., non-U.S., low-tech, and other venture development programs). Additionally, this study's design and data limitations do not allow for the establishment of causality or address founder motivations to apply for acceptance into venture development programs.

This study adds to empirical findings regarding the influence of founder gender on new venture acceptance into venture development programs by developing and testing competing hypotheses. This study also extends extant research by examining the moderating effect of social attention to gender equality on the hypothesized relationships between founder gender and acceptance into venture development programs.

The entrepreneurʼs experience, personality, and values affect the entrepreneurʼs behaviors and decisions (Chrisman, Bauerschmidt, and Hofer 1998). Past research results show that (1) more experienced new venture founders have a greater likelihood of leading their ventures to early success than less experienced founders (Delmar and Shane 2006) and (2) founders who engage in legitimacy-seeking behaviors have a greater likelihood of leading their ventures to early success than founders who do not do so (Tornikoski and Newbert 2007). We propose that more experienced founders understand the importance of obtaining legitimacy for their ventures and therefore will engage in more legitimacy-seeking behaviors. In addition, we propose that entrepreneursʼ growth aspirations and internal locus of control are also associated with engagement in legitimacy-seeking behaviors. We test and find support for these propositions in a sample of new ventures and their founders.

Grounded in Barney’s (1991) resource-based view of the firm and social network theory, and utilizing the Big Five factors as outlined by McCrae and Costa (1997), the purpose of this paper is to investigate how founders’ personality traits impact the quality of a firm’s network relationships, its competitive advantages, and the performance of Chinese apparel new ventures.

An online survey was conducted, employing a purposive sampling technique. Founders or members of a founding team currently operating a business in the apparel industry in China who have been in business for five years or less were chosen for this study. The survey yielded 210 usable responses, which were used for further data analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was first conducted to find a better model for the measurement of each latent variable. Structural equation modeling in AMOS 24 was then used to test the study’s hypothesized model.

The most notable finding was that three of the personality traits studied – openness to experience, agreeableness, and emotional stability – had statistically significant influences on the quality of firms’ relationships with supply-chain partners, but for the traits of extraversion and conscientiousness no influence was found. Further, perceived quality of firms’ network relationships helped enhance competitive advantages and firm performance. The findings identified unique personality traits that founders must possess for successful network relationships and are critical for the performance of Chinese apparel new ventures.

This is one of a few studies that simultaneously evaluate the impact of the personality traits of founders and the network resources of firms on the performance of new ventures in China. Its findings may help those who are interested in starting new ventures in the Chinese apparel industry to manage the external network relationships that are critical for new venture success. Supply-chain partners could also utilize these findings to create appropriate strategies for improving relationships with Chinese apparel new ventures to cope with the critical business challenges of globalization and collaboration.

Though often considered a critical factor in predicting venture success, past research into the effects of founder experience has often produced mixed results. What factors influence founders’ decisions to use, or not use, experience they possess? This study examines the role job dissatisfaction might play in a founder's decision to leverage multiple types of experience (sector, entrepreneurial, role model and education) on external (sales performance) and internal (founder intrinsic satisfaction) outcomes. Greater dissatisfaction was associated with decreased likelihood of founders building on sector experience. While dissatisfaction influenced the use of experience, greater experience levels did not consistently account for higher levels of venture sales performance. Moreover, no differences were found in founders’ intrinsic satisfaction, regardless of sales performance. The differing results in the two outcome measures suggest potential differences in the goals and consequent actions of entrepreneurs in the study. By examining multiple types of experience, and what might moderate founders’ use of that experience, these findings provide additional insights into the entrepreneurial process.

Entrepreneurship research has grown in both quality and quantity over the past decade, as many theoretical innovations and important empirical research findings have been introduced to the field. However, theoretical approaches to understanding entrepreneurship remain fragmented, and empirical findings are unstable across different contexts. This chapter describes features of a multi-level process view of new venture emergence that adds coherence to the entrepreneurship theory jungle and brings order to idiosyncratic empirical results, by explaining how ideas become organized into new ventures. The centerpiece of this effort is enactment theory, a general process approach specifically developed to explain organizing processes. Enactment theory – and Campbellian evolutionary theorizing more generally – has a long history of use within and across multiple levels of analysis. Consequently, the description here illustrates how organizing unfolds across multiple levels of analysis and multiple phases of development. After describing the theorizing assumptions and multi-level process view of new venture organizing, the chapter explores implications of applying this perspective by suggesting new research directions and interpretations of prior work. The aim is to advocate process theorizing as a more productive approach to understanding new venture emergence.

This paper brings in relevant entrepreneurial behavior theory to understand the ownership decisions founders make during the nascent stage of new venture creation, and how such decisions impact the viability of the firm.

The authors examine the behavior and decision making of 137 lead founders during the nascent stage of new venture creation. Psychological ownership and environmental uncertainty are measured of lead founders when dividing up firm ownership among the founding team. Using a longitudinal approach, these nascent-stage decisions are then analyzed to understand the impact on the new venture one year later.

Counter to prior research suggesting teams are better off with identical wages and ownership, the authors find such harmony (i.e. “kumbaya”) pursuit to be a detriment to new venture emergence. Specifically, this study finds that nascent ventures are better off with an unequal ownership split among the founding team members. These findings suggest that nascent firms with an unequal split are more likely to move beyond the nascent stage and launch a functional business.

Although the results of this study offer a valuable contribution to lead founders and new businesses, the study looked at each startup independent of another and is therefore not able to draw any conclusions related to competitiveness.

Lead founders and founding teams frequently divide ownership evenly among the founders. This paper shows that, while convenient, the decision to divide ownership equally can hamper a nascent firm as it moves toward the launch phase of the startup process. These results should motivate founders to think deeply regarding the ownership structure decision and, at the very least, consider the possible negative costs associated with the pursuit of founding team unity.

While scholars have brought attention to the nascent stage, few have identified and analyzed the decisions that take place during this critical time of the new venture development process. Furthermore, even is less is known of the impact nascent decisions have on startup launch. This study sheds light on these areas.

We advance entrepreneurship research by developing a theoretical model of how founding teams form. Our neo-Carnegie model situates nascent founders in particular network-structural milieus, engaging in aspiration-driven search for and evaluation of prospective co-founders. The formation of co-founding ties between nascent founders can be divided into four theoretical steps, which we label activation, evaluation, approach, and reciprocation. Successful founding team formation is a consequence of mutually favorable evaluations by nascent founders in a multi-sided matching process. Nascent founders with higher and less flexible aspirations are more likely to undertake distant search for co-founders by seeking referrals, forming ties with strangers, and forming new ties to social foci where they might meet potential co-founders. Churn in newly formed founding teams emerges as a consequence of shifting dominant coalition dynamics in the founding team caused by organic venture evolution and intentional changes in strategic direction. Our theoretical model provides new insights on the formation pathways of founding teams, their initial task and relational resource endowments, and initial team dynamics.