Journal of Business Venturing最新文献

Prior studies of craft-based categories have emphasized member ventures' prototypical features of smallness and innovativeness, collaboration and cohesiveness norms, and a perception of shared fate forging their strong oppositional identity vis-a-vis industrialized producers. However, our study of craft breweries reveals the potential pitfalls of rigidly adhering to these features and norms during market disruptions. As consumer behaviors changed during the COVID-19 crisis, smallness and innovativeness became liabilities while scale and familiarity became indispensable, favoring larger breweries over prototypical members. This shift exposed hidden divisions within the category, challenging long-held beliefs in shared fate and entrenching heterogeneity among members. The consequent realignment within the category demonstrates how market disruptions can reshape craft-based ventures and categories. Our study advances a theoretical understanding of the dynamic nature of prototypical features and norms: An adherence to category prototypes can become a source of vulnerability during times of significant upheaval.

This editorial reflects on a strong recurring theme noticed when evaluating the JBV publications of 2023 (Volume 38, Issues 1–6) for the annual best paper award. We refer to this theme as “whole-person entrepreneurship”, i.e., how does the who of entrepreneurship shape the what of entrepreneurship. It consists of articles that sought an understanding of entrepreneurs as children, mothers, spouses, religious believers, political beings, hobbyists, victims, and community-members. These articles revealed how an understanding of who “else” entrepreneurs are (other than some role or function) had much to teach about what entrepreneurs do as well as how, why, where, and when they do it. In the following editorial, we offer some evidence for this observation, provide explanation for how the field may have arrived at this “humanistic turn”, and articulate some ways in which it this humanistic turn might shape scholarship in entrepreneurship going forward.

We investigate the impact of friction-reducing labor market reforms on regional high-growth entrepreneurship (HGE) through the effects of reduced legal enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs). We draw on new institutional economic theory and the external enablement framework, with insights from the theory of market-preserving federalism, to explore how these reforms enable (disable) HGE within the context of other, concurrent institutional changes at different governance levels. We assemble a novel multi-level longitudinal dataset and employ staggered difference-in-differences estimation to assess causal effects. Our findings suggest that while reducing the enforceability of NCAs can foster regional HGE, the effectiveness of such reforms is heavily influenced by concurrent federal and local institutional changes. In sectors facing significant federal regulatory expansion, the benefits brought by the reduction of NCA enforceability are negated. However, local pro-market institutional changes can counteract the disabling effects of federal regulatory expansion. This highlights the need to consider how the evolving institutional environment influences potential enablers of HGE, cautioning against claims that these labor market reforms (or other exogenous environmental changes) universally yield positive entrepreneurship outcomes.

We investigate a strategy entrepreneurs can use to manage their emotions prior to pitching: linking anxiety to passion. We theorize that internally acknowledging anxiety and interpreting it as a reflection of one's passion for the venture can make passionate feelings salient, facilitate expressions of passion during pitches, and increase judges' evaluations of pitch performance. A field study and a randomized experiment support the theory, offering insights for how entrepreneurs can mentally reframe their seemingly detrimental emotional experiences for beneficial outcomes. More broadly, this work demonstrates the utility of fostering beneficial emotions rather than just alleviating negative ones.

The concepts of ‘scaling,’ ‘scalability,’ and ‘scale-up’ are increasingly used in business research and practice. However, the literature reveals a range of definitions for each, and often, their meanings are only implied. This diminishes the ability to build cumulative and meaningful insight - and conduct research - on each concept. In this editorial, we offer a systematic review that assesses and harmonizes prior definitions of these important concepts. This allows us to define and differentiate between (a) scaling as an organizational process, (b) scalability as an ordinary organizational capability, and (c) scale-up as a phase of organizational development. Complementing and extending existing scholarly work, we develop a rich agenda for scaling-related research in entrepreneurship.

The Internet has transformed economic activities in many important ways over the past two decades. This study examines the role of the Internet in narrowing the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Building on the assumptions that the Internet facilitates information transmission and breaks down information barriers for aspiring entrepreneurs, the study hypothesizes that (a) the Internet narrows the gender gap in the probability of entrepreneurship, and (b) the gender gap–mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger for the more disadvantaged members of society. These hypotheses are tested with six waves of data from the China Family Panel Studies, a nationally representative longitudinal survey series from 2010 to 2020. Empirical evidence based on the analysis of 25,177 individuals confirms that Internet use is associated with a narrower gender gap in entrepreneurship. In addition, the gender gap–mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger for less educated individuals and those who live in regions with a lower level of gender equality. The gender gap–mitigating effect of the Internet is also stronger for informal (rather than formal) entrepreneurship. The Internet appears to have a democratizing effect by facilitating entrepreneurship among the more socially and economically disadvantaged subsets of society.

This paper offers a market-compatible perspective of the emancipatory entrepreneurship of marginalized groups. We identify two dimensions of market-emancipation compatibility that derive from tensions inherent in the emancipatory entrepreneurship of marginalized groups. Ends-compatibility reflects the misalignment of emancipatory outcomes with market outcomes. Means-compatibility reflects the constraint entrepreneurs from marginalized groups encounter in market structures. We engage with these tensions in the context of the businesses, processes, and products that emerge from the entrepreneurship of marginalized groups. We use these tensions to derive propositions that speak to the likelihood emancipatory opportunities develop and that these opportunities are exploited by marginalized groups. With these propositions, we contribute to debates about entrepreneurship's overall emancipatory capacity. Specifically, we contribute a conceptual space in which the market forces that structure entrepreneurial activity and the material realities of venturing from marginalized social positions are incorporated into theorizing and testing entrepreneurship's capacity to enable marginalized groups with respect to structural disadvantage.

Effectuation theory posits that the accrual of disparate resources from various stakeholders is key to opening up transformational opportunities to the effectual venture. Here we aim to theoretically unravel the social exchange processes of the ‘effectual ask’—petitioning resource pre-commitments—pertaining to the so-called ‘crazy quilt’ principle. To do so, we introduce and integrate into effectuation theory's foundational mechanics key insights from social exchange theory (SET), which sees social interactions as mutually beneficial ‘exchanges.’ Revisiting a prior debate, we theorize on the different types of trust, how they distinctly influence the entrepreneurship process (particularly in obtaining resource pre-commitments), and how they are built over time. We also introduce charisma as a key factor in the trust-building process, distinguishing two types of charisma—causal and effectual—as individual-level mechanisms for enabling different types of stakeholder trust and commitment.