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This paper discusses the present and potential usages of experimental methods applied to entrepreneurship phenomena. Drawing upon a review of experimental studies in entrepreneurship research, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of experimental research designs that use contexts which are real or constructed, and in which participants passively observe or actively participate in manipulations. In an attempt to advance research agendas and theory in the field, we introduce a typology of experimental manipulations that highlight alternative design choices based on the nature of the participant impact and the realism of the context. We make the case that entrepreneurship insights about the nexus of individuals, opportunities, and environments can be advanced from experimental research methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning is a process that begins with the occurrence of concrete experiences that are reflectively analyzed and transformed into new knowledge that is tested using active experimentation. Although the notion that business failure provides an opportunity for learning is widely accepted, existing studies have not sufficiently paid attention to the entrepreneur's learning behavior. This study investigates learning with a focus on the relationship between the reflective analysis of prior business failure and the subsequent venture performance. We examine the efficacy of the entrepreneur's reflective analysis of the cause-and-effect of failure events. We also examine the boundary conditions of disruptive visions and industry changes, which may affect this relationship. Our sample is 286 entrepreneurs enrolled in a support program for reentry after business failure in Korea. We find that efficacious reflective analysis of failure increases the subjective positive perception of subsequent venture performance and that this relationship was weakened when entrepreneurs had disruptive visions for subsequent ventures or when there was low industry similarity between the failed and subsequent venture. These results inform entrepreneurship research on failure attribution, entrepreneurial learning, and reentry decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we set out to address important research questions: How do economic, political, education and health gender gaps influence total entrepreneurial activity? How do social costs of failure affect the relationship between gender gaps and total entrepreneurship activity? Are these effects the same for the distinct and important facet of high growth entrepreneurship? We applied a legitimacy theory framework, reasoning that smaller gender gaps connote the legitimacy of women entrepreneurs. We further conjectured that preexisting perceptions and challenges to the fit of women in the entrepreneurship domain are magnified in institutional contexts with high social costs of failure. We found that in societies with smaller gender gaps, there are increased levels of both total entrepreneurship activity and high-growth entrepreneurship activity, and that these relationships are moderated by the social costs of failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some entrepreneurs are sensation seekers who get pleasure from their engagement of entrepreneurial activities. Other entrepreneurs are workaholics who are motivated to finish what they start but have low work enjoyment. Recent studies theorize that both groups may engage in excessive or compulsive entrepreneurial activities, irrespective of their prior performance or the success or failure feedback. This paper provides the first empirical tests of the direct effects of sensation seeking and workaholism and the moderating effects of performance feedback on serial entrepreneurship intentions. We conduct two studies. Study 1 is a randomized virtual experiment that uses a sample of 161 university students. Study 2 is a survey of 189 former entrepreneurs, who had sold, shut down, or discontinued a prior business. We found that sensation-seeking and workaholism positively predicts serial entrepreneurship intensions, independently of prior business performance. Additionally, the effects of sensation-seeking and workaholism were stronger for entrepreneurs with negative prior performance. Our study provides new insights into the neurological and psychological diversity of entrepreneurs and the implications for serial entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of ecosystem factors influence the entry and engagement decisions of individual entrepreneurs - societal attitudes being one of them. We believe that advancing knowledge about the impact of different societal attitudes on entrepreneurial engagement is important. Prior research in this area has focused on societal attitudes that shape the mode of entry - such beliefs about gender roles or stigmas of business failure. Research is lacking on the effects of societal attitudes on the manner of organizing entrepreneurial entry and engagement. Drawing on Situationism Theory, we test for relationships between different societal attitudes about corporate social responsibility and individual decisions to engage in entrepreneurial activities with a social purpose. To test our hypotheses, we constructed a unique dataset for 26 countries built from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Flash Eurobarometer and World Bank Doing Business Reports. We find evidence of correlations that have important theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although prosocial interfaces establish boundaries that bring insiders together to jointly define an organization's mission, organizing these interfaces can also create paradoxes. Prior research on prosocial organizing draw on institutional or paradox theories to explain social and economic tensions of organizing entrepreneurial activities that impact the welfare of community stakeholders at the firm level. This paper extends prior studies with a unique examination of another paradox that is embedded within broader conversation that currently dominates the social entrepreneurship literature. Specifically, we draw attention to the sensemaking of market-based prosocial opportunities that are mission centric but have different attributes of risk, uncertainty and ambiguity by the leaders of social enterprises. Using data we collected from an experimental vignette study of 195 real world CEO leaders of social enterprises, we find that the leaders with prior entrepreneurial experiences had less aversion to exploiting prosocial market based opportunities with ambiguous market risks. We also find that the leaders of social enterprises, irrespective of prior entrepreneurial experience, prioritize the safeguarding of organization resources and exhibit loss aversion when their strategic goal is to expand the mission impact. Our findings demonstrate the value of entrepreneur specific human capital in prosocial organizing and similar to traditional corporate venturing, suggests that the strategic goals of social enterprises may take precedence over achieving financial returns. In other words, trading off mission impact for financial returns from market based prosocial opportunities may not make sense to CEO leaders of social enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no question that social capital increases the performance of serial entrepreneurs. Yet, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to understanding the relationship between prior success and failures at entrepreneurial engagement and the questioning, and in some cases, reallocation of the social resources that are embedded in entrepreneurial networks. Because entrepreneurial processes are in one form or another embedded in a concrete, and ongoing system of social relationships, the actions or non-actions of entrepreneurs influence the transfer of their social assets from one venture to the next. Stated simply, some bridges are built and some are burnt, whether intentionally or by consequence. In this paper, we discuss the role that humility may play in the building and burning of the social capital of serial entrepreneurs. Such an understanding is both theoretically and practically important because as entrepreneurs become more aware of how their humble and confident leadership approaches influence the social realities of their ventures, they can better maximize their social capital and may gain more control over the positive or negative outcomes of their firms. Additionally, the expected economic and societal benefits from total entrepreneurial engagement can be lost if valuable social assets of entrepreneurs are burnt not built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary purpose of this paper is to better understand how entrepreneurs create value for different stakeholders. Combining concepts from stakeholder theory and capability approach in welfare and development economics, we theoretically develop the concept of "Stakeholder Capabilities" as unit of value. Using this lens, we examine performance of five Inc. 500 companies and six B-Corporations. By conducting detailed semi-structured interviews with 11 founders, we discovered that while interacting with multiple stakeholders they expended thought and effort to expand various stakeholder capabilities within economic, psychological, social, intellectual and physiological dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the present and potential usages of experimental methods applied to entrepreneurship phenomena. Drawing upon a review of experimental studies in entrepreneurship research, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of experimental research designs that use contexts which are real or constructed, and in which participants passively observe or actively participate in manipulations. In an attempt to advance research agendas and theory in the field, we introduce a typology of experimental manipulations that highlight alternative design choices based on the nature of the participant impact and the realism of the context. We make the case that entrepreneurship insights about the nexus of individuals, opportunities, and environments can be advanced from experimental research methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]