Journal of Business Venturing最新文献

{"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":"2025-09-01","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}

{"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":"2025-09-01","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}

{"title":"The entrepreneurial pitching process: A systematic review using topic modeling and future research agenda","authors":"Jordan J. McSweeney ,&nbsp;Kevin T. McSweeney ,&nbsp;Thomas H. Allison ,&nbsp;Aaron H. Anglin","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106519","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106519","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurial pitching research has grown substantially over the last several decades. Despite this growth, prior research remains highly fragmented leaving us with a lack of conceptual clarity regarding what entrepreneurial pitching entails and how it unfolds over time. To address these issues, we conduct a systematic literature review of 173 articles examining entrepreneurial pitching from 2000 until 2024. Our review offers three important contributions to the entrepreneurship literature. First, we develop a process model of entrepreneurial pitching that provides a more holistic understanding of how entrepreneurial pitching unfolds over time by categorizing the 15 topics we identified into four stages: Pre-Pitch, Pitching, Post-Pitch, and Evaluation. Second, we leverage our review and integrative process model of entrepreneurial pitching to provide a roadmap to help guide future research. Third, we develop an integrative definition of entrepreneurial pitching that can conceptually anchor future studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106519"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144365399","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}

{"title":"Director turnover in new venture boards: From homophilous to resource-contingent processes","authors":"Chanchal Balachandran ,&nbsp;Karl Wennberg","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106523","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106523","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>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.</div></div><div><h3>Executive summary</h3><div>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.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106523"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144572659","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}

{"title":"Not what you expected to see? Obesity stereotypes, expectancy violations, and angel investment decisions","authors":"Torben Antretter ,&nbsp;Henrik Wesemann Lekkas ,&nbsp;Djordje Djokovic ,&nbsp;Vangelis Souitaris ,&nbsp;Joakim Wincent","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106510","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106510","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article investigates the impact of obesity stereotypes on angel investment decisions. Drawing from the stereotype literature and expectancy violation theory, we propose that angel investors tend to evaluate founders with obesity worse because they perceive them as high in warmth but low in competence (and competence matters more for angel investors' evaluations). However, we also suggest that founders with obesity who violate low-competence stereotypes through high-competence displays can offset negative obesity stereotypes without affecting positive ones, leading to overall higher evaluations. The results from two field studies show that angel investors penalize founders with obesity but that the effect is ameliorated for those presenting high-tech ventures. A follow-up experiment using AI-generated, photorealistic manipulations of founders' body types identifies perceived competence and warmth as mechanisms that explain the effects. Collectively, these findings contribute to the literature streams on appearance in entrepreneurial finance, stereotypes and their violations, and entrepreneurial research methods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106510"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144549082","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}

{"title":"Big things from small beginnings: Creating and scaling community-based opportunities for sustainable small and local businesses","authors":"Man Yang ,&nbsp;Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes ,&nbsp;Joakim Wincent","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106522","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106522","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How can communities be active to create and scale opportunities for sustainable small and local businesses? We address this question through a longitudinal study of a community-based initiative, which promoted sustainability in food production and consumption and has scaled to different communities worldwide. To improve our understanding of the entrepreneurial role of communities, we observed how communities proactively engaged in processes evolving from replicating and developing community ventures to scaling community movement over time. Through these processes, we identified three mechanisms—<em>infrastructure shift</em>, <em>nurturing</em>, and <em>sustaining infrastructure</em>. Our research extends current theories of community-based entrepreneurship by offering a process perspective at the community level and elaborating how communities collectively create and scale opportunities for sustainable small and local businesses, allowing an idea to evolve from a small initiative to a large movement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106522"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144549083","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}

{"title":"Developing the workforce: Exploring the impact of female directors on male-led new ventures","authors":"Zhiyan Wu ,&nbsp;Lucia Naldi","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106504","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106504","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates whether and how female directors influence the performance of male-led new ventures. Guided by resource dependence theory, which sees boards as providers of key resources and advice, we shift the focus adopted in prior research on female directors' strategic roles in public firms to argue that, in male-led new ventures, their influence is more operationally focused. Using data from Sweden and an instrumental variable approach that exploits the random assignment of a child's sex at birth among male founders, we find that greater female board representation is positively associated with the performance of male-led new ventures. Further analyses suggest this effect operates primarily through workforce development—namely, the hiring of skilled female employees and the provision of competitive compensation. Notably, even a single female director has a measurable impact. This study underscores the distinct role of female directors in entrepreneurial settings as opposed to established firms, illuminating the mechanisms through which female presence in the boardroom positively affects the early life stages of organizations. We hope our research serves as a basis for future research to explore further the roles played by female directors that are particularly relevant at the startup stage.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 5","pages":"Article 106504"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144212460","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}

{"title":"The rise and fall of the girlboss: Gender, social expectations and entrepreneurial hype","authors":"Janice Byrne ,&nbsp;Antonio Paco Giuliani","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106486","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106486","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Hype is a collective vision and promise of a possible future, around which attention, excitement, and expectations increase over time (Logue &amp; Grimes, 2022). Entrepreneurs employ cultural strategies, using framing to legitimize their endeavors and sustain the surrounding hype. Despite the importance of media in entrepreneurial hype, extant literature has yet to investigate media framing devices and how they shape and inform social expectations in the hype cycle. We also know that framing efforts are shaped by discursive struggles between actors (Kriechbaum et al., 2021) and that under-represented social groups are more constrained by dominant discourses. Yet, extant literature on entrepreneurial hype has thus far undertheorized power and inequality. We focus on one under-represented group - women – as they embody a glaring example of how media influence the social expectations associated with their entrepreneurial endeavors. Specifically, this study investigates how the media employ framing devices to generate social expectations for non-dominant groups (women entrepreneurs in our case) - and shape the hype cycle. To do so, we empirically analyze the evolution of the ‘girlboss’ hype, through a content analysis of 2671 media articles. Our contributions advance studies on entrepreneurial hype by explicating the role of media in the construction of hype. We contend that gender affords a critical power lens in the study of entrepreneurial hype that can be transferred to other contexts mired by inequality. We advance that feminist interrogations of media and entrepreneurship can contribute to understanding and addressing issues beyond gender.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 4","pages":"Article 106486"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143637519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ethnic fractionalization and informal entrepreneurship: An institutional logics perspective","authors":"Mark R. Mallon,&nbsp;Stav Fainshmidt","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106497","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106497","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research is needed to uncover the sociocultural influences of informal entrepreneurship, or starting a legally unregistered but otherwise legitimate business. Using the institutional logics perspective, we posit that ethnic fractionalization increases the likelihood that entrepreneurs will not register their ventures because it fosters a clan logic and embeddedness in one's ethnic group. Entrepreneurs may not readily access knowledge regarding registration because the ethnic group can provide some of the benefits associated with registration. However, the clan logic is mitigated for entrepreneurs who receive advice from lawyers or businesspeople because these advisors are associated with the state or market logics, respectively, making knowledge of registration more accessible to entrepreneurs. We find support for these arguments using a sample of over 5000 entrepreneurs in 29 countries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 4","pages":"Article 106497"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143678193","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}

{"title":"Bold, broad, rigorous, and…relevant? Designing entrepreneurship research for translation","authors":"Theodore L. Waldron ,&nbsp;Jeffery S. McMullen ,&nbsp;Scott L. Newbert ,&nbsp;G. Tyge Payne ,&nbsp;Jeffrey G. York","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106511","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106511","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurship research should strive for relevance—the potential to influence the thoughts, decisions, and actions of those who practice entrepreneurship. Despite the Journal of Business Venturing’s (JBV) efforts to foster relevance, submissions often fail to demonstrate their potential for practical usefulness. Addressing this problem involves making practical relevance a guiding principle of research design that complements traditional academic standards for publishing in JBV. It also involves forgoing attempts to make research directly usable by practitioners, who rarely read scholarly journals like JBV, in favor of enhancing its suitability for translation in outlets intended for those audiences. We introduce three design criteria—importance, insight, and impact—to guide the creation of translatable research that honors traditional academic standards. Our discussion touches on what the design criteria mean, how they make research translatable, how scholars can satisfy them, what they look like in exemplar JBV publications, and why they matter now. Indeed, designing research with practical importance, insight, and impact in mind may yield academic contributions more suitable for dissemination beyond academic circles, positioning entrepreneurship research to achieve practical relevance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 4","pages":"Article 106511"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144168690","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}