Pub Date : 2025-09-25DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106540
Simon C. Parker
Does an additional year of formal education affect the decision to become an entrepreneur? Using human capital theory as a conceptual lens, we explore three channels through which it might: productivity, certification, and health impacts. To test the mechanisms and uncover whether there are causal relationships between these variables, we exploit two exogenous changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp across-cohort differences in years of education. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we estimate that the reforms significantly reduced self-employment. We go on to explore which channels best explain this finding, and discuss implications for scholars and policymakers.
{"title":"Schooling and entrepreneurship: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design","authors":"Simon C. Parker","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106540","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106540","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Does an additional year of formal education affect the decision to become an entrepreneur? Using human capital theory as a conceptual lens, we explore three channels through which it might: productivity, certification, and health impacts. To test the mechanisms and uncover whether there are causal relationships between these variables, we exploit two exogenous changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp across-cohort differences in years of education. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we estimate that the reforms significantly reduced self-employment. We go on to explore which channels best explain this finding, and discuss implications for scholars and policymakers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106540"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145159577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-20DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106548
Moren Lévesque , Ute Stephan , Teemu Kautonen , René Bakker
Entrepreneurship is deeply shaped by age, influencing who enters, how ventures perform, and whether entrepreneurs persist. Youth offers resilience and innovation yet is constrained by limited resources; midlife combines strong skills and experience with tensions around financial security and competing demands; later life brings accumulated expertise and networks but also ageist barriers. This editorial synthesizes a decade of research and the five articles in this special issue, identifying ten themes that illuminate the age-entrepreneurship relationship. We distill key insights and outline future research avenues, underscoring the wealth of exciting topics and the need for nuanced understanding of entrepreneurship across the lifespan.
{"title":"Entrepreneurship, age, and the lifespan: Taking stock and avenues for future research","authors":"Moren Lévesque , Ute Stephan , Teemu Kautonen , René Bakker","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106548","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106548","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurship is deeply shaped by age, influencing who enters, how ventures perform, and whether entrepreneurs persist. Youth offers resilience and innovation yet is constrained by limited resources; midlife combines strong skills and experience with tensions around financial security and competing demands; later life brings accumulated expertise and networks but also ageist barriers. This editorial synthesizes a decade of research and the five articles in this special issue, identifying ten themes that illuminate the age-entrepreneurship relationship. We distill key insights and outline future research avenues, underscoring the wealth of exciting topics and the need for nuanced understanding of entrepreneurship across the lifespan.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106548"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145103900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-18DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106549
Miranda J. Welbourne Eleazar , Toyah L. Miller
Entrepreneurial pivots can mean the difference between venture failure and survival. Mentor feedback often illuminates the essential need to pivot, but the manner in which feedback is delivered may determine whether entrepreneurs act on it and pivot. Drawing on the feedback literature and construal level theory, we hypothesize that mentor feedback provided in a concrete manner will increase the likelihood that entrepreneurs will pivot. Further, we examine how temporal distance, mentor expertise distance, and entrepreneurial experience, affect entrepreneurs' responses to feedback. We test our hypotheses using a conjoint analysis with a validation study; gain additional insights from a qualitative study of mentors; and test a way to improve entrepreneurial receptiveness to abstract feedback from mentors through a second conjoint analysis design. In doing so, we contribute to the entrepreneurship literature on pivoting and mentoring.
{"title":"Tell me “how” and “why”: Mentor feedback framing, construal level, and entrepreneurial pivoting","authors":"Miranda J. Welbourne Eleazar , Toyah L. Miller","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106549","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106549","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurial pivots can mean the difference between venture failure and survival. Mentor feedback often illuminates the essential need to pivot, but the manner in which feedback is delivered may determine whether entrepreneurs act on it and pivot. Drawing on the feedback literature and construal level theory, we hypothesize that mentor feedback provided in a concrete manner will increase the likelihood that entrepreneurs will pivot. Further, we examine how temporal distance, mentor expertise distance, and entrepreneurial experience, affect entrepreneurs' responses to feedback. We test our hypotheses using a conjoint analysis with a validation study; gain additional insights from a qualitative study of mentors; and test a way to improve entrepreneurial receptiveness to abstract feedback from mentors through a second conjoint analysis design. In doing so, we contribute to the entrepreneurship literature on pivoting and mentoring.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106549"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145103921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-12DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106547
Trey Lewis , Richard A. Hunt , Maurice J. Murphy , David M. Townsend
Black entrepreneurship (BE) plays an increasingly important, and increasingly paradoxical, role in contemporary American society. On one hand, BE is a vehicle for economic advancement, exemplified through inspiring instances of resolute agency, heroic achievement, and storied successes that collectively reinforce the notion that entrepreneurship can be a potent, emancipatory force of social and economic mobility. On the other hand, BE is also a vivid illustration of race-related challenges, chronicled through an abundance of empirical evidence that reveals the extent to which Black entrepreneurs navigate a racialized entrepreneurial context; one in which formidable constraints arise throughout the entrepreneurial journey. Though critically important, the mechanisms of racialization – and the manner in which they are manifested and surmounted – remain under-theorized, leading to an incomplete understanding of how and why success is more elusive for historically marginalized entrepreneurs than it is for others, and why the threat of failure looms so large. To address these research challenges, we build upon existing work to develop a process model, depicting the unique constraints that Black entrepreneurs face at each stage of the business venturing lifecycle. Applying this processual perspective, we articulate a theory of constrained agency, wherein Black entrepreneurs can and do exercise entrepreneurial agency despite varying, multilevel manifestations of racialization. Our work lays the groundwork for a more detailed, purposeful, and relevant approach to the future research of Black entrepreneurs as well as other historically marginalized groups.
{"title":"Black entrepreneurship: A multilevel process model of constrained agency across the business venturing lifecycle","authors":"Trey Lewis , Richard A. Hunt , Maurice J. Murphy , David M. Townsend","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106547","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106547","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Black entrepreneurship (BE) plays an increasingly important, and increasingly paradoxical, role in contemporary American society. On one hand, BE is a vehicle for economic advancement, exemplified through inspiring instances of resolute agency, heroic achievement, and storied successes that collectively reinforce the notion that entrepreneurship can be a potent, emancipatory force of social and economic mobility. On the other hand, BE is also a vivid illustration of race-related challenges, chronicled through an abundance of empirical evidence that reveals the extent to which Black entrepreneurs navigate a racialized entrepreneurial context; one in which formidable constraints arise throughout the entrepreneurial journey. Though critically important, the mechanisms of racialization – and the manner in which they are manifested and surmounted – remain under-theorized, leading to an incomplete understanding of how and why success is more elusive for historically marginalized entrepreneurs than it is for others, and why the threat of failure looms so large. To address these research challenges, we build upon existing work to develop a process model, depicting the unique constraints that Black entrepreneurs face at each stage of the business venturing lifecycle. Applying this processual perspective, we articulate a theory of constrained agency, wherein Black entrepreneurs can and do exercise entrepreneurial agency despite varying, multilevel manifestations of racialization. Our work lays the groundwork for a more detailed, purposeful, and relevant approach to the future research of Black entrepreneurs as well as other historically marginalized groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106547"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145049955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-16DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106538
Sonia Koller , Gorkan Ahmetoglu , Ute Stephan
Effectuation is a key theory of entrepreneurial decision-making. However, measuring effectuation remains challenging. Existing measures use self-report scales that rely on recall and aggregate across diverse past situations. Such measures cannot capture effectuation as a decision-making logic based on heuristics. Leveraging insights from extant work on situational judgment tests (SJT) in applied psychology, we develop and validate an effectuation SJT that captures the implicit nature of entrepreneurs' use of effectuation in specific situations. Across seven studies including a 14-month prospective panel study, we establish the construct, predictive and incremental validity of the new SJT for venture outcomes. Methodologically, this novel SJT of effectuation facilitates new types of research, such as unpacking the cognitive underpinnings of effectuation. Theoretically, our study offers new conceptual clarity about effectual principles and their impacts on venture outcomes by leveraging extant work on heuristics in the cognitive sciences. We also introduce SJTs as a new method of value to specific streams of entrepreneurship research.
{"title":"Measuring entrepreneurs' use of effectuation as heuristics: Development and validation of a situational judgment test (SJT) for effectuation","authors":"Sonia Koller , Gorkan Ahmetoglu , Ute Stephan","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106538","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106538","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Effectuation is a key theory of entrepreneurial decision-making. However, measuring effectuation remains challenging. Existing measures use self-report scales that rely on recall and aggregate across diverse past situations. Such measures cannot capture effectuation as a decision-making logic based on heuristics. Leveraging insights from extant work on situational judgment tests (SJT) in applied psychology, we develop and validate an effectuation SJT that captures the implicit nature of entrepreneurs' use of effectuation in specific situations. Across seven studies including a 14-month prospective panel study, we establish the construct, predictive and incremental validity of the new SJT for venture outcomes. Methodologically, this novel SJT of effectuation facilitates new types of research, such as unpacking the cognitive underpinnings of effectuation. Theoretically, our study offers new conceptual clarity about effectual principles and their impacts on venture outcomes by leveraging extant work on heuristics in the cognitive sciences. We also introduce SJTs as a new method of value to specific streams of entrepreneurship research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 6","pages":"Article 106538"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144858329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-16DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106527
Sung Min Kim, Uğur Uygur
Entrepreneurial action under uncertainty requires resource commitment, yet the cognitive mechanisms enabling such decisions remain underexplored. This study investigates the role of venture-specific knowledge (VSK) in entrepreneurial action, focusing on two distinct cognitive pathways: refinement, which enhances understanding to address ignorance, and conviction, which strengthens confidence to overcome doubt. Using a causal map representation of VSK, we demonstrate that refinement and conviction independently drive personal financial investment, while also acting as substitutes when one pathway reaches its limits. Our findings extend entrepreneurial action theory by highlighting the distinct cognitive processes underlying VSK. Furthermore, we examine how these pathways interact with individual traits such as entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and uncertainty avoidance, revealing nuanced moderating effects. These insights advance understanding of entrepreneurial decision making under irreducible uncertainty and provide implications for both theory and practice.
{"title":"Cognitive origins of entrepreneurial action: How venture-specific knowledge drives financial investments","authors":"Sung Min Kim, Uğur Uygur","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106527","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106527","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurial action under uncertainty requires resource commitment, yet the cognitive mechanisms enabling such decisions remain underexplored. This study investigates the role of venture-specific knowledge (VSK) in entrepreneurial action, focusing on two distinct cognitive pathways: refinement, which enhances understanding to address ignorance, and conviction, which strengthens confidence to overcome doubt. Using a causal map representation of VSK, we demonstrate that refinement and conviction independently drive personal financial investment, while also acting as substitutes when one pathway reaches its limits. Our findings extend entrepreneurial action theory by highlighting the distinct cognitive processes underlying VSK. Furthermore, we examine how these pathways interact with individual traits such as entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and uncertainty avoidance, revealing nuanced moderating effects. These insights advance understanding of entrepreneurial decision making under irreducible uncertainty and provide implications for both theory and practice.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 6","pages":"Article 106527"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144852617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-14DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106539
Sefa Awaworyi Churchill , Simon Chang , Russell Smyth , Trong-Anh Trinh
This paper explores the long-run gender origins of entrepreneurship. We argue that present-day propensity for entrepreneurship among men will be higher in neighbourhoods which had historically high sex ratios. We propose that high sex ratios generate attitudes and behaviours that imprint into cultural norms about gender roles and that transmission within families, at school and via shared remembrance create hysteresis in the evolution of these gender norms. To empirically test the theory, we employ the transport of convicts to the British colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a natural experiment to examine the long-run effect of cultural norms about gender roles on entrepreneurship in present-day Australia. We use a representative longitudinal dataset for the Australian population that provides information on the neighbourhood in which the participant lives, which we merge with data on the sex ratio in historical counties from the mid-nineteenth century. We find that men who live in neighbourhoods that had high historical sex ratios have a higher propensity for entrepreneurship. We present evidence consistent with transmission of cultural norms within families and schools, as well as via shared remembrance in neighbourhoods that had high historical sex ratios being likely persistence mechanisms.
{"title":"The long run gender origins of entrepreneurship: Evidence from Australia's convict history","authors":"Sefa Awaworyi Churchill , Simon Chang , Russell Smyth , Trong-Anh Trinh","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106539","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106539","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the long-run gender origins of entrepreneurship. We argue that present-day propensity for entrepreneurship among men will be higher in neighbourhoods which had historically high sex ratios. We propose that high sex ratios generate attitudes and behaviours that imprint into cultural norms about gender roles and that transmission within families, at school and via shared remembrance create hysteresis in the evolution of these gender norms. To empirically test the theory, we employ the transport of convicts to the British colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a natural experiment to examine the long-run effect of cultural norms about gender roles on entrepreneurship in present-day Australia. We use a representative longitudinal dataset for the Australian population that provides information on the neighbourhood in which the participant lives, which we merge with data on the sex ratio in historical counties from the mid-nineteenth century. We find that men who live in neighbourhoods that had high historical sex ratios have a higher propensity for entrepreneurship. We present evidence consistent with transmission of cultural norms within families and schools, as well as via shared remembrance in neighbourhoods that had high historical sex ratios being likely persistence mechanisms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 6","pages":"Article 106539"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144842132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-21DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106526
Stella Seyb , Dean A. Shepherd , Sally Maitlis
<div><h3>Abstract</h3><div>This paper introduces the concept of meaningful venturing, which refers to entrepreneurial action that generates a sense of meaning in life for the entrepreneur. Although entrepreneurs have considerable freedom to create meaning in life through their venturing, they appear to struggle to do so. To address this tension, we theorize about how entrepreneurs can generate meaningful venturing and the tradeoffs that may arise during this process. The emerging framework of meaningful venturing offers four pathways based on differences in nascent entrepreneurs’ motivation and knowledge. For each pathway, we explain the tradeoffs that the focal entrepreneur is most likely to experience between the three facets of meaning in life. We then explain how each entrepreneur might resolve these tradeoffs to generate fully-meaningful venturing by taking specific schema-enhancing action that would be less effective for the other entrepreneurs. Overall, the framework contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing new insights into how meaningful venturing manifests, why entrepreneurs exploring the same opportunity may experience different tradeoffs, and how different entrepreneurs might generate fully-meaningful venturing. Additionally, we offer possibilities for future research at the intersection of meaningful venturing, and the literatures on entrepreneurial identity, well-being, and passion.</div></div><div><h3>Executive summary</h3><div>Because entrepreneurship provides founders with the freedom to enact their personal vision, entrepreneurs have high potential to generate meaning in life for themselves through their venturing. However, they often struggle to do so. We introduce the concept of meaningful venturing to encompass entrepreneurial action that generates a sense of meaning in life for the entrepreneur. To theorize about how entrepreneurs generate meaning in life, we integrate the psychology literature on meaning in life with the entrepreneurship literature, emphasizing how entrepreneurial action theory (McMullen and Shepherd, 2006) can be a helpful theoretical lens for examining meaningful venturing.</div><div>We develop a framework of meaningful venturing that contains four pathways based on nascent entrepreneurs' initial motivation and knowledge and the entrepreneurial action they engage in to reduce perceived uncertainty. Each pathway contains different tradeoffs between the three formative facets of meaning in life — a sense of purpose, mattering, and comprehension. These tradeoffs suggest unique ways for each entrepreneur to generate fully-meaningful venturing that would not be effective for the other entrepreneurs.</div><div>Overall, the framework of meaningful venturing contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing new insights into how meaningful venturing manifests, what causes it, and how it can progress for different entrepreneurs. To expand the theoretical relevance of the meaningful ven
摘要本文引入了“有意义创业”的概念，指的是让创业者产生人生意义感的创业行为。尽管企业家有相当大的自由，可以通过他们的冒险创造生活的意义，但他们似乎很难做到这一点。为了解决这种紧张关系，我们对企业家如何进行有意义的冒险以及在此过程中可能出现的权衡进行了理论化。新兴的有意义创业的框架基于新兴企业家的动机和知识差异提供了四条途径。对于每一条路径，我们解释了专注的企业家最有可能在生活意义的三个方面之间经历的权衡。然后，我们解释了每个企业家如何通过采取对其他企业家不太有效的特定模式增强行动来解决这些权衡，以产生完全有意义的冒险。总体而言，该框架对创业文献的贡献在于，它为以下问题提供了新的见解：有意义的创业是如何表现出来的，为什么探索相同机会的企业家可能会经历不同的权衡，以及不同的企业家如何可能产生完全有意义的创业。此外，我们还提供了未来研究的可能性，包括有意义的创业，以及关于创业认同、幸福感和激情的文献。因为创业为创始人提供了实现个人愿景的自由，企业家有很大的潜力通过他们的冒险为自己的生活创造意义。然而，他们往往很难做到这一点。我们引入了有意义的冒险的概念，以包含企业家的行动，产生一种意义在生活的企业家。为了理论化企业家如何在生活中产生意义，我们将关于生活意义的心理学文献与创业学文献结合起来，强调创业行动理论（McMullen and Shepherd, 2006）如何成为检验有意义创业的有益理论视角。我们开发了一个有意义的创业框架，该框架包含四种途径，基于新兴企业家的初始动机和知识，以及他们参与的创业行动，以减少感知的不确定性。每条道路都包含着人生意义形成的三个方面——目标感、重要性和理解力之间的不同权衡。这些权衡为每个企业家提供了独特的方式来产生对其他企业家无效的完全有意义的风险投资。总体而言，有意义的风险投资框架通过提供关于有意义的风险投资如何表现，导致它的原因以及它如何在不同的企业家中发展的新见解，为创业文献做出了贡献。为了拓展有意义的创业概念的理论相关性，我们讨论了将有意义的创业与创业中关于身份、幸福感和激情的现有文献整合的潜力。通过这一研究议程，我们强调了有意义的风险投资如何为创业奖学金提供令人兴奋的可能性。
{"title":"Meaningful venturing: Examining how entrepreneurs generate meaning in life","authors":"Stella Seyb , Dean A. Shepherd , Sally Maitlis","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106526","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106526","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Abstract</h3><div>This paper introduces the concept of meaningful venturing, which refers to entrepreneurial action that generates a sense of meaning in life for the entrepreneur. Although entrepreneurs have considerable freedom to create meaning in life through their venturing, they appear to struggle to do so. To address this tension, we theorize about how entrepreneurs can generate meaningful venturing and the tradeoffs that may arise during this process. The emerging framework of meaningful venturing offers four pathways based on differences in nascent entrepreneurs’ motivation and knowledge. For each pathway, we explain the tradeoffs that the focal entrepreneur is most likely to experience between the three facets of meaning in life. We then explain how each entrepreneur might resolve these tradeoffs to generate fully-meaningful venturing by taking specific schema-enhancing action that would be less effective for the other entrepreneurs. Overall, the framework contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing new insights into how meaningful venturing manifests, why entrepreneurs exploring the same opportunity may experience different tradeoffs, and how different entrepreneurs might generate fully-meaningful venturing. Additionally, we offer possibilities for future research at the intersection of meaningful venturing, and the literatures on entrepreneurial identity, well-being, and passion.</div></div><div><h3>Executive summary</h3><div>Because entrepreneurship provides founders with the freedom to enact their personal vision, entrepreneurs have high potential to generate meaning in life for themselves through their venturing. However, they often struggle to do so. We introduce the concept of meaningful venturing to encompass entrepreneurial action that generates a sense of meaning in life for the entrepreneur. To theorize about how entrepreneurs generate meaning in life, we integrate the psychology literature on meaning in life with the entrepreneurship literature, emphasizing how entrepreneurial action theory (McMullen and Shepherd, 2006) can be a helpful theoretical lens for examining meaningful venturing.</div><div>We develop a framework of meaningful venturing that contains four pathways based on nascent entrepreneurs' initial motivation and knowledge and the entrepreneurial action they engage in to reduce perceived uncertainty. Each pathway contains different tradeoffs between the three formative facets of meaning in life — a sense of purpose, mattering, and comprehension. These tradeoffs suggest unique ways for each entrepreneur to generate fully-meaningful venturing that would not be effective for the other entrepreneurs.</div><div>Overall, the framework of meaningful venturing contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by providing new insights into how meaningful venturing manifests, what causes it, and how it can progress for different entrepreneurs. To expand the theoretical relevance of the meaningful ven","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106526"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144679494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-07DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106525
Abu Zafar M. Shahriar , Sarah R. Chase , Dean Shepherd
{"title":"Financial inclusion and low-income women's new venture initiation: A Field experiment","authors":"Abu Zafar M. Shahriar , Sarah R. Chase , Dean Shepherd","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106525","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106525","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106525"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144571324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-07DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106523
Chanchal Balachandran , Karl Wennberg
While resource-dependency theories suggest that heterogenous directors in new venture boards contribute important knowledge and networks, research on boardroom homophily highlights that dissimilar directors are more likely to leave, especially under adverse conditions. To date, there is limited evidence on whether such mechanisms also prevail in the venture context where founder-managers retain excessive control over director appointments. We analyze director tenure in 28,295 Swedish ventures, finding that dissimilar directors are more likely to leave the board when ventures are operating in favorable conditions but only when considering knowledge diversity. Post-hoc analyses of directors' post-exit career paths and qualitative interviews with CEOs and directors help clarify the mechanisms that cause diverse directors to depart venture boards more often. Specifically, lifecycle demands and venture profitability ease resource-dependence pressures on director retention, thus feeding homogeneity in board expertise. Our findings provide insights into the homogenizing nature of new ventures' upper echelons as they evolve into mature organizations.
Executive summary
Boards are a vital resource for early-stage ventures, offering advice, funding connections, and strategic guidance — especially when directors bring diverse expertise. Yet, as ventures grow and succeed, that diversity can erode. Our study of over 28,000 Swedish owner-managed firms shows that directors whose expertise differs from that of the founder(s) are more likely to leave—not during hardship, but when the business is performing well. Interviews with several founders and directors further suggest that as ventures mature, they increasingly rely on internal capabilities and shift toward boards that reflect the founder's evolving preferences. These dynamics lead to more homogenous boards over time, potentially narrowing the range of perspectives available in the board. For founders and policymakers, the findings highlight a key challenge: keeping diverse directors around not just at the start, but as the company scales.
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