Building Winners? An Empirical Evaluation of Public Business Assistance in the Founding Process

This paper investigates economic and subjective effects of public business assistance delivered to nascent entrepreneurs in Germany. Employing cluster analysis, we explore the actual scope and intensity of business assistance used. Then we analyze predictors of take-up and perceived usefulness taking into account the different patterns of utilized assistance. Finally, we assess economic effects by studying subsequent business performance employing propensity score matching. We cannot reveal that business assistance translates into better start-up performance. However, we find that a lack of personal entrepreneurial resources predicts take-up of business assistance in general as well as perceived usefulness of comprehensive business assistance.entrepreneurship, business assistance, policy evaluation, entrepreneurial resources, big five

Building winners? An empirical evaluation of public business assistance in the founding process

This paper investigates economic and subjective effects of public business assistance delivered to nascent entrepreneurs in Germany. Employing cluster analysis, we explore the actual scope and intensity of business assistance used. Then we analyze predictors of take-up and perceived usefulness taking into account the different patterns of utilized assistance. Finally, we assess economic effects by studying subsequent business performance employing propensity score matching. We cannot reveal that business assistance translates into better start-up performance. However, we find that a lack of personal entrepreneurial resources predicts take-up of business assistance in general as well as perceived usefulness of comprehensive business assistance

Regional characteristics, opportunity perception and entrepreneurial activities

This paper seeks to better understand the link between regional characteristics and individual entrepreneurship. We combine individual-level GEM data for Western Germany with regional-level data, using multi-level analysis to test our hypotheses. We find no direct link between regional knowledge creation, the economic context and an entrepreneurial culture on the one side and individual business start-up intentions and start-up activity on the other side. However our findings point to the importance of an indirect effect of regional characteristics as knowledge creation, the economic context and an entrepreneurial culture have an effect on the individual perception of founding opportunities which in turn predicted start-up intentions and activity

Unraveling the "passion orchestra" in academia

This paper disentangles how organization members' “passion orchestra” is related to their entrepreneurial intentions in the particularly relevant context of academia. Drawing on passion literature and identity theory, we propose and test a model linking two central parts of researchers' “passion orchestra”, namely entrepreneurial and obsessive scientific passion, directly and indirectly, to spin-off and start-up intentions. While spin-off intentions refer to intentions to found a firm based upon research results, start-up intentions denote intentions to start any type of company. Using a sample of 2308 researchers from 24 European universities, our findings reveal that higher levels of entrepreneurial passion are associated with both stronger spin-off and start-up intentions. Further, obsessive scientific passion is positively associated with researchers' intentions to create a spin-off, and negatively with their propensity to establish a start-up. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy and affective organizational commitment mediate these effects. Finally, the two types of passion show characteristic interactions. Obsessive scientific passion moderates the entrepreneurial passion–intentions relationship such that it strengthens spin-off intentions. Our results highlight that recasting the individual driven by a singular passion to one with a “passion orchestra” provides a more holistic understanding of the new venture creation process. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Approaching the agora: Determinants of scientists' intentions to purse academic entrepreneurship

This study investigates predictors of scientists' intentions to commercialize their research through business founding. Analyzing a cross-sectional sample of 496 German scientists, we develop and test an intentions-based model of academic entrepreneurship combining personal and contextual factors. Empirical results demonstrate that intentions to start a science-based new venture are shaped by some personal characteristics (i.e., personal attitudes toward research commercialization, entrepreneurial control-beliefs, entrepreneurial self-identity, and prior entrepreneurial experience). Moreover, we find that the research context itself - i.e., normative influences of academic workplace peers - does not show a strong direct effect on entrepreneurial intentions. Moderator analyses deliver that peers have an influence primarily by person-context interactions via scientists' sense of identification with these peers. A mediation analysis further indicates that gender-related differences in entrepreneurial control-beliefs might help explain the widely-observed low proportion of female scientist-entrepreneurs

In the shadow of coal: How large-scale industries contributed to present-day regional differences in personality and well-being

Recent research has identified regional variation of personality traits within countries but we know little about the underlying drivers of this variation. We propose that the Industrial Revolution, as a key era in the history of industrialized nations, has led to a persistent clustering of well-being outcomes and personality traits associated with psychological adversity via processes of selective migration and socialization. Analyzing data from England and Wales, we examine relationships between the historical employment share in large-scale coal-based industries (coal mining and steam-powered manufacturing industries that used this coal as fuel for their steam engines) and today’s regional variation in personality and well- being. Even after controlling for possible historical confounds (historical energy supply, education, wealth, geology, climate, population density), we find that the historical local dominance of large-scale coal-based industries predicts today’s markers of psychological adversity (lower Conscientiousness [and order facet scores], higher Neuroticism [and anxiety and depression facet scores], lower activity [an Extraversion facet], and lower life satisfaction and life expectancy). An instrumental variable analysis, using the historical location of coalfields, supports the causal assumption behind these effects (with the exception of life satisfaction). Further analyses focusing on mechanisms hint at the roles of selective migration and persisting economic hardship. Finally, a robustness check in the U.S. replicates the effect of the historical concentration of large-scale industries on today’s levels of psychological adversity. Taken together, the results show how today’s regional patterns of personality and well-being may have their roots in major societal changes underway decades or centuries earlier

Fear, populism, and the geopolitical landscape: the “sleeper effect” of neurotic personality traits on regional voting behavior in the 2016 Brexit and Trump elections

Two recent electoral results - Donald Trump’s election as US president and the UK’s Brexit vote - have re-ignited debate on the psychological factors underlying voting behavior. Both campaigns promoted themes of fear, lost pride, and loss aversion, which are relevant to the personality dimension of Neuroticism, a construct previously not associated with voting behavior. To that end, we investigate whether regional prevalence of neurotic personality traits (Neuroticism, Anxiety, Depression) predicted voting behavior in the US (N = 3,167,041) and the UK (N = 417,217), comparing these effects with previous models, which have emphasized the roles of Openness and Conscientiousness. Neurotic traits positively predicted share of Brexit and Trump votes and Trump gains from Romney. Many of these effects persisted in additional robustness tests controlling for regional industrial heritage, political attitude, and socio-economic features, particularly in the US. The “sleeper effect” of neurotic traits may profoundly impact the geopolitical landscape

A global experience-sampling method study of well-being during times of crisis:The CoCo project

We present a global experience-sampling method (ESM) study aimed at describing, predicting, and understanding individual differences in well-being during times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This international ESM study is a collaborative effort of over 60 interdisciplinary researchers from around the world in the “Coping with Corona” (CoCo) project. The study comprises trait-, state-, and daily-level data of 7490 participants from over 20 countries (total ESM measurements = 207,263; total daily measurements = 73,295) collected between October 2021 and August 2022. We provide a brief overview of the theoretical background and aims of the study, present the applied methods (including a description of the study design, data collection procedures, data cleaning, and final sample), and discuss exemplary research questions to which these data can be applied. We end by inviting collaborations on the CoCo dataset.</p