Entrepreneurial behavior in social contexts: the role of families, teams and employees for entrepreneurial individuals

This dissertation consists of five studies that focus on different social contexts of entrepreneurial individuals and that analyze important cognitive or affective processes in these contexts. The dissertation comprises different stages of the entrepreneurial process and shows the social context’s importance in these stages. Chapter 2 represents the first step in the entrepreneurial process, the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. The influence of individuals’ families of origin contingent on national culture on these intentions is analyzed. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on a team context and are based on a team experiment with an entrepreneurial decision making task. Chapter 3 analyzes the team’s decision quality based on information exchange, experimentally manipulated information uncertainty, and team metacognitive knowledge. In a next step, chapter 4 analyzes the members’ and the teams’ ability to assess their performance in the decision making task dependent on the level of relationship conflict experienced in the team. Chapter 5 focuses on the team members’ affective reactions to conflicts experienced in the team task contingent on team efficacy and information uncertainty. Finally, Chapter 6 concentrates on a further social context of entrepreneurial individuals, new venture employees. It analyzes how the employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s entrepreneurial passion influence their commitment to the venture via their positive affect at work and goal clarity. This dissertation concludes with implications and suggestions for future research at the intersection of entrepreneurship and organizational behavior which will improve the understanding of entrepreneurial individuals and of the interdependencies with their social contexts

Bridging cognitive scripts in multidisciplinary academic spinoff teams : A process perspective on how academics learn to work with non-academic managers

This paper introduces a process model of how academics learn to bridge different cognitive scripts, thereby learning to collaborate with non-academic managers in the context of multidisciplinary academic spinoff (ASO) teams. Whereas prior research has taken a static perspective, showing that cooperation in ASO teams is challenging due to differences in cognitive scripts, we take a dynamic perspective, leveraging rich, longitudinal data on a single case to theorize how such cooperative challenges can be overcome. We reveal two aspects of this process. One is cognitive and intrapersonal, in which academics reconsider their own beliefs and understandings of their venture and the commercial world. The other is social and interpersonal, in which academics reconsider the way they collaborate with others

Intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial intentions

We draw on cross-cultural theory and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project to develop a model for the transmission of entrepreneurial intentions within families in different cultures. Using data on more than 40,000 individuals from 15 countries, we show that beyond the transmission of entrepreneurial intentions from parents to children, grandparents - either directly or "indirectly" via the parents - impact the offspring's intentions. Moreover, we find that parents' and grandparents' influences partly substitute for one another. The strength of these effects varies across cultures. Our results provide a more detailed picture of the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial intentions

Preparing for scaling: A study on founder role evolution

One of the major entrepreneurial challenges faced by scaling firms involves changing their internal organization. Our study focuses on a particular aspect of internal organizing—namely, how founder roles evolve in preparation for scaling. By means of an in-depth case study and a combination of data collection methods, we study the evolution of formal and informal founder roles. For both types of roles, we identify a founder-driven and an interaction-driven phase, during which founder and/or joiner role-crafting take place. Through both types of role-crafting, founder roles are (re)shaped. Particularly unique to our study is that we identify three scaling-specific paths through which the role-crafting of joiners shapes founders' roles. Specifically, founders experience a role efficiency increase as they take over some of the joiner-introduced role behaviors, or a role set decrease as joiners take over some of their (formal or informal) roles. We further point to the importance of psychological safety and value fit for successful joiner role-crafting to occur and for founder roles to change following founder-joiner interactions. Our study adds to the literatures on scaling and entrepreneurship as well as to role theory and role-crafting literature