61-80 of 279 Results

Article

Crowdfunding for Entrepreneurs  

Vincenzo Butticè and Massimo G. Colombo

Fundraising has proved difficult for many entrepreneurs and ventures in the early stages of their businesses because of significant information asymmetries with investors and a lack of collateral. In an attempt to overcome such difficulties, since the early 2010s, some entrepreneurs have come to rely on the Internet in order to directly seek funding from the general public, or the “crowd.” The practice of collecting small amounts of capital from the “crowd” of Internet users is called crowdfunding. Crowdfunding research is a relative newcomer to the discipline of entrepreneurial finance. However, the availability of easy-to-access data, the diffusion of this funding channel among entrepreneurs, and increasing policy attention have made crowdfunding one of the most investigated areas of research in entrepreneurial finance. The literature has discussed crowdfunding as more than a simple mean of financing. Crowdfunding also allows entrepreneurs to develop a virtual community of followers, which provides a valuable source of information with which to test and improve early versions of innovative products. Moreover, crowdfunding represents a method of gaining information about market response to a given product and the size of demand for that product, and is a powerful marketing instrument that can be used to increase brand awareness and to promote the arts, social initiatives, and financial inclusion. However, crowdfunding also entails a number of pitfalls for entrepreneurs. In order to collect financial resources from the crowd, entrepreneurs are required to share sensitive information online. This includes information about the entrepreneurial initiative, the team, and the business model they are using. The provision of this information may facilitate product counterfeiting, or the appropriation of the value of the idea by other firms or entrepreneurs. Moreover, crowdfunding entails the risk of social stigma if the funding campaign results in a failure, because information about the performance of the crowdfunding campaign usually remains accessible online. Finally, crowdfunding entails additional challenges related to the management of the crowd of backers after the campaign, since several backers will be active providers of feedback and will interact with the entrepreneurs through direct communication. Despite these disadvantages crowdfunding has become a widely used funding source for entrepreneurs looking for financing for sustainable projects, creative initiatives, and innovative ideas.

Article

Crowdsourcing Innovation  

Linus Dahlander and Henning Piezunka

Crowdsourcing—a form of collaboration across organizational boundaries—provides access to knowledge beyond an organization’s local knowledge base. There are four basic steps to crowdsourcing: (a) define a problem, (b) broadcast the problem to an audience of potential solvers, (c) take actions to attract solutions, and (d) select from the set of submitted ideas. To successfully innovate via crowdsourcing, organizations must complete all these steps. Each step requires an organization to make various decisions. For example, organizations need to decide whether its selection is made internally. Organizations must take into account interdependencies among these four steps. For example, the choice between qualitative and quantitative selection mechanisms affects how widely organizations should broadcast a problem and how many solutions they should attract. Organizations must make many decisions, and they must take into account the many interdependencies in each key step.

Article

De-Internationalization: The Other Side of Internationalization  

Gabriel R. G. Benito

Companies rightly regard internationalization decisions as strategic; they are long-term, require and bind up resources, and have important implications for companies’ performance. But internationalization is inherently demanding and risky, changes are likely to happen, and there is no guarantee of a positive outcome. The notion of de-internationalization captures the other side of internationalization: actions that reduce a company’s engagement in or exposure to international or border-crossing activities. One important dimension of de-internationalization is its extent, which ranges from a total withdrawal from international operations to partial retractions, such as exiting from a particular market, and minor adjustments, such as downscaling activities. Another key dimension is the volition aspect of de-internationalization, which distinguishes between de-internationalization decisions that are principally taken by the companies themselves, and those that have been imposed upon the companies by other actors, such as host-country authorities. There are three main types of de-internationalization: reductions in trade volume, market withdrawals, and divestments. Extant research, while limited, has tended to take either a behavioral perspective or an economics perspective. The latter takes a choice (or decision) perspective on de-internationalization, while the former emphasizes the process aspects of such actions. De-internationalization does not need to be the end of the road for companies’ foreign involvement. There is mounting evidence that de-internationalization can be temporary, with companies re-entering foreign markets after a time-out period, often by implementing better suited approaches when retrying.

Article

Design Thinking in Business and Management: Research History, Themes, and Opportunities  

Jarryd Daymond and Eric Knight

Design thinking is a human-centered, innovation-focused problem-solving approach that employs various tools and methods for creative purposes. It is a dynamic process and often prioritizes the needs and experiences of people while considering both technical and economic aspects of a solution. The prominence of design thinking in practice has seen its use move beyond product development teams to take a more central role in shaping how organizations approach problems, develop strategies, build capabilities, and drive cultural change. It is common for organizations to employ executives with a specific focus on design, and traditionally “nondesign” organizations increasingly build, buy, or borrow design capabilities. The utility of design thinking stretches beyond organizational outcomes, with educators and employers recognizing that understanding and proficiency in design thinking is a valuable and transferrable skill. A rich scholarly tradition in design sciences and engineering underpins design thinking. These traditions provide the foundational understandings of problem definition and need-finding, information gathering and analysis, and creative expression and ideation, from which design thinking gained prominence. Although not often acknowledged in contemporary scholarship, design thinking research builds on these traditions and offers unique perspectives on the practice of design thinking and its theoretical underpinnings: The cognitive perspective focuses on how unique ways of thinking shape the practice of design thinking; the instrumental perspective attends to how design thinking is done, including the methods or tools used in design thinking; and the organizational-level perspective concerns the implementation of design thinking in organizations and its influence on organizational culture and capabilities. While the various research traditions preceding design thinking are receiving greater attention in contemporary research, rich insights from these established fields offer deep theoretical knowledge to develop several promising research areas. These avenues for future research include how design thinking can inform the redevelopment of services and customer experiences, tackle societal challenges, and build capabilities to benefit communities and society more generally.

Article

Developing Leaders: What We Can Learn From the Education, Adult, and Human Resource Development Paradigm  

Wei-Wen Vera Chang

Faced with global challenges, organizations have invested heavily in leadership development, but the impact of such a large investment has been of continual concern. Studies have suggested that effective leadership development relies on the interconnection of the top leader, senior managerial team, line managers, and human resource specialists; however, the perspective of learning and learners has received relatively limited examination. Leadership development must also look at the education, adult, and human resource development (HRD) paradigms. The three key components that comprise the intersection between adult education and HRD are experience, social context, and transformation. Learning directions in leadership development have both external and internal aspects, including using invisible force to accomplish work, managing paradoxical social dynamics, extending self-identity, and integrating multiple factors. For learning approaches, the ACT model, where A stands for acquire and apply, C stands for clean and calibrate, and T stands for transform and transcend, can assist in achieving these.

Article

Digital Platform Innovation and Opportunities  

Tammy L. Madsen

Multi-sided digital platform (MSDP) business models have enabled the reorganization of industries and are fundamentally changing the way firms innovate and grow. Fueled by advances in digital technology, digital platform firms such as Apple, Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Tencent, and ByteDance have gained prominence around the globe. MSDPs create value by facilitating interconnections of products, services, or systems generated by a variety of external actors, thereby enabling them to interact in ways that otherwise might be elusive. Theoretical and empirical work on digital platforms also has accelerated in recent decades. Scholars have explored a variety of topics such as platform competition, network effects and their implications, platforms and corporate scope (i.e., vertical integration into complementary offerings), platform types, complementor heterogeneity, and platform governance and ecosystem orchestration. Much of the empirical literature directs attention to the economics of platforms at the exclusion of analyzing how differences in strategic objectives and choices contribute to unique MSDP positions within an ecosystem. Heterogeneity in strategic objectives contributes to variation in platform scope, governance practices, and potential externalities and thus influences the strategic and organizational benefits accruing to participating actors and the platform itself. It follows that analyzing platforms from a strategic view can help to identify innovations in MSDPs and their governance. In one novel MSDP model, the co-innovation platform, the primary strategic objective is accelerating innovation and ecosystem growth by enabling collaboration among a wide array of diverse external actors. Aligned with a focus on the quality of collaborations, one of a co-innovation MSDP’s distinguishing value creation features is its hands-on approach to the formation and execution of co-innovation partnerships. This hands-on approach relies on different governance choices and yields a different mix of strategic and organizational benefits for partners and the platform relative to the hands-off approach employed by most MSDPs. Many opportunities exist for advancing theory and empirical work on the implications of platform heterogeneity.

Article

Discrimination in Work and Organizations  

Nancy DiTomaso

Discrimination is behaving differently toward people from different social identity groups, such as those based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, or some other category that is not related to the qualifications, contributions, or performance of the target group members. It is usually thought of as unfair and is often illegal. Discrimination has been the subject of substantial research in the social and behavioral sciences. It can entail acting more favorably toward those who have not earned it or less favorably toward those who have, although most of the research focuses on the negative behavior toward less favored groups rather than on the positive behavior toward more favored groups. Although discrimination can occur in many domains, this paper focuses primarily on discrimination in work and organizations. Research on labor market discrimination spans disciplines with most research being done in economics, sociology, psychology, and law, as well as in business or management. Such research has examined differences in access to jobs or employment including hiring and promotion, job rewards such as income and wages, evaluation of performance, treatment on the job from supervisors and coworkers, and unemployment or underemployment. Discrimination may be explicit or overt, but increasingly research has focused on more subtle forms of discrimination that reflect unconscious or implicit biases. Research also considers perceived discrimination. Research on discrimination has examined trends in discriminatory behavior or outcomes for various groups, comparisons across groups in terms of the extent or experience of discrimination, antecedents and the consequences of discrimination, as well as mediators and moderators of discriminatory behavior. Most research on discrimination has found that those from lower status or subordinate groups within any society are more likely to experience negative discrimination, while dominant group members almost always receive more favorable treatment. Although there are variations in terms of circumstance and context, native-born, heterosexual men from higher social classes and from dominant racial or ethnic groups are disproportionately found in the best jobs, with the most authority, and with the highest incomes, while women, racial or ethnic minorities, immigrants, those from working or lower classes, and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are more likely to suffer adverse discrimination. An increasing emphasis on the intersectionality of social identity recognizes that the labor market experiences of particular people reflect the combination of their multiple identities. Discrimination can be interpersonal, intergroup, organizational, and it can be embedded in structures and institutions.

Article

Diversity Climate in Organizations  

Elissa L. Perry and Aitong Li

Although defined in numerous and sometimes inconsistent ways in the literature, diversity climate can be described as employees’ shared perceptions of the extent to which their organization values diversity as reflected in the policies, practices, and procedures that the organization rewards, supports, and expects. Diversity climate studied at the individual level (individual perceptions of the impact of the work environment on the individual’s own well-being) is referred to as psychological climate. When it is conceived of and studied at the group or organization level (employees’ shared perceptions of their work environment aggregated to the unit level), it is referred to as group- or organizational-level climate. Two consistent criticisms raised in recent reviews continue to plague diversity climate research. These can most simply be stated as a lack of clarity about what diversity climate is and is not, and inconsistency in how diversity climate is measured and aligns (or does not) with how it has been conceptualized. Despite these criticisms, there is evidence that diversity climate can positively impact individuals’ (especially minority group members’) work-related attitudes (e.g., organizational commitment, satisfaction) and unit-level outcomes (e.g., performance). As a result, diversity climate is both practically relevant to organizations and conceptually meaningful to researchers.

Article

Dynamic Managerial Capabilities  

Véronique Ambrosini and Gulsun Altintas

Dynamic managerial capabilities are a form of dynamic capabilities. They are concerned with the role of managers in refreshing and transforming the resource base of the firm so that it maintains and develops its competitive advantage and performance. To do so, managers must develop entrepreneurial activities. These activities consist of sensing and seizing opportunities and transforming the resource base. While most studies focus on the role of top managers and CEOs, entrepreneurial activities can occur throughout the organization. Mid- and lower-level managers can also sense opportunities emanating from the market. Managerial human capital, managerial social capital, and managerial cognition are the three main antecedents to dynamic managerial capabilities.

Article

The Economics of Hacking  

Kai-Lung Hui and Jiali Zhou

Hacking is becoming more common and dangerous. The challenge of dealing with hacking often comes from the fact that much of our wisdom about conventional crime cannot be directly applied to understand hacking behavior. Against this backdrop, hacking studies are reviewed in view of the new features of cybercrime and how these features affect the application of the classical economic theory of crime in the cyberspace. Most findings of hacking studies can be interpreted with a parsimonious demand-and-supply framework. Hackers decide whether and how much to “supply” hacking by calculating the return on hacking over other opportunities. Defenders optimally tolerate some level of hacking risks because defense is costly. This tolerance can be interpreted as an indirect “demand” for hacking. Variations in law enforcement, hacking benefits, hacking costs, legal alternatives, private defense, and the dual-use problem can variously affect the supply or demand for hacking, and in turn the equilibrium amount of hacking in the market. Overall, it is suggested that the classical economic theory of crime remains a powerful framework to explain hacking behaviors. However, the application of this theory calls for considerations of different assumptions and driving forces, such as psychological motives and economies of scale in offenses, that are often less prevalent in conventional (offline) criminal behaviors but that tend to underscore hacking in the cyberspace.

Article

Effective Strategies and Psychological Mechanisms for Cooperation Induction in Social Dilemmas: A Review and Future Research  

Xiao-Ping Chen

A social dilemma is a situation in which people face a conflict between maximizing personal interest (noncooperation) and maximizing collective interest (cooperation). Although a noncooperative choice leads to a better individual outcome, when all people do the same, all will be worse off than if all choose to cooperate. Climate “Code Red,” overpopulation, funding for public television, and the depletion of scarce and valuable resources such as forests and fisheries are all typical examples of social dilemmas. A long-lasting theme in the research into social dilemmas is the identification of effective approaches to induce voluntary cooperation. In the past five decades, many strategies have been discovered, with communication, sanction, emotion, and norm formation being the most effective ones. Meanwhile, a personality trait called social value orientation (SVO) demonstrated its stable predictive power of human cooperation in social dilemmas. A close examination of the effects of the strategies and SVO reveals several distinct and common underlying psychological mechanisms, namely, group identity, cooperative norm, expectation of others’ cooperation, and interpersonal trust. These strategies and mechanisms have important implications for future research into social dilemmas because in the age of digitization and social distancing, new forms of social dilemmas that pose enormous challenge to human existence such as online teamwork and organization, global warming, and COVID-19, are emerging and calling for solutions.

Article

Effect Size and Effect Uncertainty in Organizational Research Methods  

Scott B. Morris and Arash Shokri

To understand and communicate research findings, it is important for researchers to consider two types of information provided by research results: the magnitude of the effect and the degree of uncertainty in the outcome. Statistical significance tests have long served as the mainstream method for statistical inferences. However, the widespread misinterpretation and misuse of significance tests has led critics to question their usefulness in evaluating research findings and to raise concerns about the far-reaching effects of this practice on scientific progress. An alternative approach involves reporting and interpreting measures of effect size along with confidence intervals. An effect size is an indicator of magnitude and direction of a statistical observation. Effect size statistics have been developed to represent a wide range of research questions, including indicators of the mean difference between groups, the relative odds of an event, or the degree of correlation among variables. Effect sizes play a key role in evaluating practical significance, conducting power analysis, and conducting meta-analysis. While effect sizes summarize the magnitude of an effect, the confidence intervals represent the degree of uncertainty in the result. By presenting a range of plausible alternate values that might have occurred due to sampling error, confidence intervals provide an intuitive indicator of how strongly researchers should rely on the results from a single study.

Article

E-Learning, Information Technology, and Student Success in Higher Education  

Kim Cliett Long

E-learning expands options for teaching and learning using technology. This nomenclature has been solidly in use for the last ten years. The expansive and ever fertile frontier of e-learning—a term used interchangeably with distance and online learning—has become standard fare as an educational delivery solution designed to enhance knowledge and performance. Many educational institutions, corporate enterprises and other entities are utilizing web-based teaching and learning methodologies to deliver education either partially or wholly online using electronic platforms. The learning value chain, including management and delivery, has created multimodal systems, content, and processes to increase accessibility, measurability, and cost effectiveness by infusing advanced learning techniques, such as adaptive learning or communities of practice, among students, employee groups, and lifelong learners. It is interesting to note that e-learning encapsulates internet based courseware and all other asynchronous and synchronous learning, as well as other capabilities for supporting learning experiences. Student success and advancements in technology are now inextricably linked as a result of higher education institutions embracing and offering e-learning options. The absence of direct instructor guidance makes distance learning particularly difficult for some students. Certain students struggle with the lack of guidance inherent in online learning and the requisite need to work independently. In particular, the lack of high touch strategies in e-learning often leads students to drop or fail courses. While some students struggle to remain engaged in technology-enabled learning, technology is often the vehicle for keeping these same students on task. There are a variety of electronic tools designed to augment online learning and keep online learners on task. Podcasts, for example, can be easily downloaded, then played back on a student’s media player or mobile device at a later date. The student is not tied to a computer, which results in a more comprehensive learning experience. In many cases, e-learning has become a very lucrative and desirable marketplace for higher education institutions. The business case for e-learning is a clarion call for tight integration among business, human resources, and knowledge and performance management. Hence, it is incumbent upon educational institutions to instill approaches that focus on the learner, learning, and improved performance, more so than the tools and technology. Of further importance is the need for higher education institutions to provide stratagems for developing and supporting caring online relationships, individualized student environments, collaboration, communication, and e-learning culture. Ultimately, institutions should measure not only improved business and performance, but also improved student online learning aptitudes (more self-motivated, self-directed, and self-assessed learning).

Article

Emotional Intelligence and Its Measurement  

Richard E. Boyatzis

Emotional intelligence (EI) is used in organizational training, coaching, and graduate schools. Despite its acceptance in practical applications, researchers continue to argue about its validity. EI can be defined “as a constellation of components from within a person that enable self-awareness of and management of his/her emotions, and to be aware of and manage the emotions of others.” EI seems to exist at the performance trait or ability, self-schema and trait, and behavioral levels. Based on this multilevel view, all the conceptualizations of EI and the different measures that result are EI. Research on the behavioral level of EI—its assessment, strengths, psychometric validity, and challenges—complements that on other approaches, which have already been the subject of many academic papers.

Article

Emotions in Organizations  

Cynthia Fisher

There has been an “affective revolution” in organizational behavior since the mid-1990s, focusing initially on moods and affective dispositions. The past decade has seen a further shift toward investigating the complex roles played by discrete emotions in the workplace. Discrete emotions such as fear, anger, boredom, love, gratitude, and pride have their own appraisal antecedents, subjective experiences, and action tendencies that prepare people to respond to their current situation. Emotions have intrapersonal effects on the person experiencing them in terms of attention, motivation, creativity, information processing and judgment, and well-being. Some emotions have characteristic voice tones or facial expressions that serve the interpersonal function of communicating one’s state to interaction partners. For this reason, emotions are integral to social processes in organizations such as leadership, teamwork, negotiation, and customer service. The effects of emotions on behavior can be complex and context-dependent rather than straightforwardly mechanistic. Individuals may regulate the emotions they experience, the extent to which they display what they feel, and the actions they choose in response to how they feel. Research has tended to focus on negative emotions (e.g., anger or anxiety) and their potential negative effects (e.g., aggression or avoidance), but negative emotions can sometimes have positive consequences. Discrete positive emotions have been relatively ignored in organizational research but feeling and expressing positive emotions often have positive consequences. There is considerable scope for investigating the ways in which specific discrete emotions are experienced, regulated, expressed, and acted upon in organizational life. There may also be a case for intentional efforts by organizations and employees to increase the occurrence of positive emotions at work.

Article

Employee Voice: Meanings, Approaches, and Research Directions  

Edoardo Della Torre, Alessia Gritti, and Adrian Wilkinson

Employee voice (EV) refers to all the ways and means through which employees have a say in the decisions that affect their work and the overall running of their organization. It involves different domains and topics and occurs through a variety of channels (direct and indirect, formal and informal, individual and collective). The main distinction is between direct voice channels, through which employees have the opportunity to express their ideas and opinions directly to managers without the mediation of representatives, and indirect voice channels, through which EV is expressed by representatives, usually elected from the wider group of employees. Since the last decades of the 20th century, EV has become a central topic in human resource management (HRM), industrial relations, (IR) and organizational behavior (OB) literature, providing researchers and practitioners with an extensive and ever-increasing amount of knowledge. However, each discipline has created its own conceptualization of the meanings of and purposes for EV, leading EV to become a contested terrain, characterized by research silos and competing literatures. While the OB perspective concentrates on the informal and prosocial nature of individual EV, the IR approach is mainly focused on formal structures for collective EV and the contrasting interests of management and workers, and the HRM approach tends to emphasize the role of direct EV as a component of the wider HRM systems that may generate higher organizational outcomes. Integrative approaches that can bring together different disciplinary perspectives are therefore required for a more comprehensive understanding of how EV takes shape in organizations and affects individual and organizational outcomes. Greater attention should also be paid to the multidimensionality of EV, investigating further how it relates to employee silence and to other phenomena, such as ethical employee voice and whistle-blowing. Finally, little is known about the emerging forms of EV related to workplace digitalization and working remotely.

Article

Entrepreneur Coachability  

Matthew R. Marvel

Entrepreneur coachability is the degree to which an entrepreneur seeks, carefully considers, and integrates feedback to improve a venture’s performance. There is increasing evidence that entrepreneur coachability is important for attracting the social and financial resources necessary for venture growth. Although entrepreneur coachability has emerged as an especially relevant construct for practitioners, start-up ecosystem leaders, and scholars alike, research on this entrepreneurial behavior is in its infancy. What appears to be a consistent finding across studies is that some entrepreneurs are more coachable than others, which affects downstream outcomes—particularly resource acquisition. However, there are sizable theoretical and empirical gaps that limit our understanding about the value of coachability to entrepreneurship research. As a body of literature develops, it is useful to take inventory of the work that has been accomplished thus far and to build from the lessons learned to identify insightful new directions. The topic of entrepreneur coachability has interdisciplinary appeal, and there is a surge of entrepreneur coaching taking place across start-up ecosystems. Research on coaching is diverse, and scholarship has developed across the academic domains of athletics, marketing, workplace coaching, and entrepreneurship. To identify progress to date, promising research gaps, and paths for future exploration, the literature on entrepreneur coachability is critically reviewed. To consider the future development of entrepreneur coachability scholarship, a research agenda is organized by the antecedents of entrepreneurship coachability, outcomes of entrepreneur coachability, and how entrepreneur–coach fit affects learning and development. Future scholarship is needed to more fully explore the antecedents, mechanisms, and/or consequences of entrepreneur coachability. The pursuit and development of this research stream represent fertile ground for meaningful contributions to entrepreneurship theory and practice.

Article

Entrepreneurial Finance and Governance  

Pierluigi Martino, Greg Bell, Abdul A. Rasheed, and Cristiano Bellavitis

Entrepreneurial finance includes a wide array of sources of capital, such as venture capital, angel investors, equity, and debt finance, along with new forms of financing through crowdfunding and initial coin offerings. Providers of funds to entrepreneurial ventures, whether they are venture capitalists, angel investors, debt holders, or participants in crowdfunding face similar agency problems, such as moral hazard and adverse selection. There are considerable differences across investors in terms of their objectives, risk-bearing capacity, and time horizons, as well as in their motivation and ability to monitor the firms in which they invest. These differences give rise to governance challenges associated with each source of entrepreneurial finance.

Article

Entrepreneurial Grit: Insights and Applications for New Ventures  

Marcus Wolfe

The pursuit of entrepreneurship is often characterized by high levels of struggle and adversity, and even those who ultimately succeed in their entrepreneurial endeavors routinely experience failures and setbacks along the way. Therefore, it is likely that individuals who are more skilled at coping with, and conquering, such obstacles in their quest for success are more apt to enter, and be successful at, entrepreneurial careers. While several factors contribute to an individual’s ability to persevere through adversity and to continue to work to accomplish long-term goals, individual grit has garnered an increasing level of attention as a key element in such persistence, particularly in entrepreneurial contexts. Grit, conceptualized as an individual’s passion and perseverance in the pursuit of accomplishing long-term goals, can play several roles in the entrepreneurial process. While grit is a potential outcome of entrepreneurial passion, it also has important associations with several key entrepreneurial outcomes. For instance, given that entrepreneurship is linked with risk-taking, grit is an asset for individuals who chase entrepreneurial opportunities. Higher levels of risk incur a greater likelihood of failure, and the ability to persist with entrepreneurial initiatives in the face of failures is potentially bolstered by high levels of grit. Furthermore, persistence against adversity can often translate into improved venture performance as a result of entrepreneurs’ continued, focused efforts at developing and improving their new venture. Furthermore, grit may play an even more important role for individuals who face heightened levels of adversity during their entrepreneurial careers. Women and younger individuals often experience unique challenges that their counterparts who are men or older do not have to face. Therefore, having high levels of grit may be an advantage in women and youth. While the relationship between grit and entrepreneurship has gained considerable momentum as a topic of scholarly interest, there are important avenues available for future research to further develop understanding of the topic.

Article

Entrepreneurial Identity  

Blake Mathias

Society has long considered entrepreneurs a distinct breed of people characterized by their unique willingness to act on opportunities. And yet, our recent understanding of entrepreneurship has greatly evolved to show entrepreneurs reflect a diverse and eclectic group who, though unique, emerge among all ethnicities, personalities, and walks of life. Simply, anyone can “become an entrepreneur” or “act entrepreneurially.” Entrepreneurial identity reflects the study of who entrepreneurs are and what they do. Identities can emerge through individuals’ distinct personal experiences, common roles, or shared social groups. And although identity matters for all individuals, it is especially important to entrepreneurs because they, in large part, shape organizations. The founder’s identity influences the mission, values, and strategic direction of new ventures. Even long after the founders are gone, the imprint of their identity on the organization often endures. Therefore, the study of entrepreneurial identity is critical not only to the entrepreneurs themselves but has a profound and lasting impact on most organizations, shaping how and why organizational members engage in their work.