Entrepreneurship by Elisabeth S.C. Berger
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2019
Massive problems trigger massive entrepreneurial opportunities. For this reason, environmental is... more Massive problems trigger massive entrepreneurial opportunities. For this reason, environmental issues such as earth system processes that have extended beyond their thresholds, or are approaching such thresholds, constitute interesting opportunities, especially for ecological startups, to establish appropriate businesses that create value to address such environmental issues. Our analysis of 212 ecological startups from the United States and beyond reveals the factors shaping the value creation activities of these firms. In particular, we are able to illustrate that technologically-oriented, socially-oriented, and organizationally-oriented value creation by ecological startups requires different alignments in terms of the environmental issues addressed, the sustainability strategy employed, and the sustainability ambition aspired.
Startup ecosystems have a positive impact on the creation of new businesses and the entire econom... more Startup ecosystems have a positive impact on the creation of new businesses and the entire economy and accordingly receive attention from both academics and politicians. However, while entrepreneurial ecosystems reflect a high level of entrepreneurial activity, they differ significantly in terms of the proportion of female founders, which means some ecosystems do not fulfill their true potential. This study uses qualitative comparative analysis to explore the combinations of ecosystem characteristics explaining a high proportion of female founders in the 20 most successful startup ecosystems worldwide. The results suggest two different configurations explaining a high proportion of female founders and reveal which issues require attention on a metropolitan level and which issues might require national policy makers to become involved. These findings contribute to the ecosystem literature and link to the stream of female entrepreneurship.
Taking account of prior entrepreneurial experience, this study explores how the perceived cause o... more Taking account of prior entrepreneurial experience, this study explores how the perceived cause of business failure influences an entrepreneur’s decision to start another business or to abandon entrepreneurship. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we find that the attributional dimensions of locus of causality, controllability, and stability explain a large proportion of novice, serial, and portfolio entrepreneurs’ subsequent behavior in terms of abandoning entrepreneurial activity after business failure. Additionally, we found commonalities and differences between the different types of entrepreneurs. While across all entrepreneurs perceiving the cause of business failure to be permanent yet controllable leads them to decide against starting another venture, differences in the decision to seek a different career path are evident, and depend on whether the entrepreneurs assess the cause of business failure to be internal or external, controllable or uncontrollable, and permanent or temporary.
The current research addresses the question of how policy makers might design specific components... more The current research addresses the question of how policy makers might design specific components of economic freedom (EF) to most effectively encourage high levels of entrepreneurial activity (EA). Given that entrepreneurship is a multifaceted phenomenon, the study analyzes the effects of four components of EF on EA and relies on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to do so. The research collates data from 63 different countries and analyzes EA as it applies to factor-driven, efficiency-driven, and innovation-driven economies. The current research also differentiates between opportunity-driven entrepreneurship and necessity-driven entrepreneurship. The results suggest that the effects of EF vary according to the developmental stage of an economy and the type of EA in question. The results reveal that simplistic explanations implying that high levels of EF trigger high levels of EA regardless of a country's developmental stage are inadequate.
Complexity in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology Research, 2016
Complex systems seem to be all around us and the world, economies and businesses apparently becom... more Complex systems seem to be all around us and the world, economies and businesses apparently become more complex every day. This is especially true for phenomena in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology research. This introductory chapter elaborates our understanding of complexity and explores the interdependencies in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology research with regard to complexity. When studying complexity it is essential to apply research methods that consider the non-linearity, dynamics and interrelatedness inherent in complexity. However, appropriate methods are frequently neglected or not yet established among the plethora of available research methods. This volume adds to the visibility of the application of emergent and neglected methods in the context of complexity in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology research. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the contributions in this book.
Papers by Elisabeth S.C. Berger
The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available... more The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available
to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure.We use a
conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general
public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective strategy proves to be the entrepreneurs distancing
themselves from the failure, in that they attribute the failure to external factors that are not
under the entrepreneurs' volitional control, and brought about by circumstances that are unlikely
to reoccur. Our analysis also considers how the audience members' dispositional agreeableness
and general self-efficacy influence judgment formation.
The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available... more The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure. We use a conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective strategy proves to be the entrepreneurs distanc-ing themselves from the failure, in that they attribute the failure to external factors that are not under the entrepreneurs' volitional control, and brought about by circumstances that are unlikely to reoccur. Our analysis also considers how the audience members' dispositional agreeableness and general self-efficacy influence judgment formation. Executive summary Recent entrepreneurship research promotes impression management strategies as an important means of minimizing the risk of social stigmatization following venture failure. Successful impression management strategies create socially legitimate failure impressions that support the entrepreneur's future career actions, and so enhance emotional recovery and learning from failure. Impression management strategies can be applied in private settings in interaction with the target audience, and also in public settings, where the target audience is diverse and opportunities for interaction are limited. The lack of interaction makes public post-failure impression management particularly challenging: The impression created by the first explanation of how and why the venture failed is difficult to change subsequently. This research addresses the gap in our knowledge of how entrepreneurs can present venture failure in a way that enhances their legitimacy in the eyes of a public audience. We address this gap by using a conjoint experiment to investigate how observers from the general public judge the legitimacy of different impressions of entrepreneurial failure. The principal finding of our study is that the most effective impression management strategies for garnering legitimacy judgments from the public are those where entrepreneurs distance themselves from the failure. These distance-taking impressions ascribe the cause of failure to forces that are external to the entrepreneur/firm, not under the entrepreneur's volitional control, and subject to circumstances that are unlikely to reoccur. However, we demonstrate that the observer's characteristics influence how they perceive distance-taking impressions. Individuals with a high level of dispositional agreeableness (an interpersonal trait) approve failure impressions that ascribe the main cause of failure to external factors more than do individuals scoring low on this trait. On the other hand, individuals with high levels of self-efficacy (a personal trait) disapprove of impressions that ascribe venture failure to external causes, in contrast to individuals with low levels of self-efficacy, who are far less likely to do so. The results also point to the central role of stability in evaluations of legitimacy: whether the cause of failure is described as transient (it could not happen again)
Die Betriebswirtschaft
We analyse the effects of culture, economic freedom and well-being on entrepreneurial activity (E... more We analyse the effects of culture, economic freedom and well-being on entrepreneurial activity (EA). We employ a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative (fsQCA) analysis to identify previously unknown combinations of predictors of EA in 23 innovation-driven economies. The analysis differentiates between necessity-driven entrepreneurship (NDE) and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship (ODE), reveals different configurations explaining EA, and proposes a role model for policymakers aiming to secure a high proportion of ODE in a particular economy.
Venture Capital by Elisabeth S.C. Berger
Credit and Capital Markets, 2018
Entering status dominated environments as new entrant is a difficult endeavor. Accumulated advant... more Entering status dominated environments as new entrant is a difficult endeavor. Accumulated advantages go along with the tendency of incumbents to succeed, whereas entrants are likely to lose (Matthew effect). This study examines what combination of deal resources accumulated by venture capital partners lead to high deal performance in order to analyze if new entrants can nonetheless overcome the burden of being new, i.e. having a low status position and only weak ties with current actors in status dominated environments. Our configurational analysis of 333 venture capital investments reveals opportunities for entrants to succeed that go beyond joining forces with established actors. Our findings contribute to research on interorganizational network formation and the strategic actions new entrants on the VC market may take to be successful. Furthermore, the study sheds light on the effect of syndicated opposed to single venture capitalist deals and suggests that successful syndicates require a certain degree of homogeneity among the investors.
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Entrepreneurship by Elisabeth S.C. Berger
Papers by Elisabeth S.C. Berger
to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure.We use a
conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general
public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective strategy proves to be the entrepreneurs distancing
themselves from the failure, in that they attribute the failure to external factors that are not
under the entrepreneurs' volitional control, and brought about by circumstances that are unlikely
to reoccur. Our analysis also considers how the audience members' dispositional agreeableness
and general self-efficacy influence judgment formation.
Venture Capital by Elisabeth S.C. Berger
to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure.We use a
conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general
public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective strategy proves to be the entrepreneurs distancing
themselves from the failure, in that they attribute the failure to external factors that are not
under the entrepreneurs' volitional control, and brought about by circumstances that are unlikely
to reoccur. Our analysis also considers how the audience members' dispositional agreeableness
and general self-efficacy influence judgment formation.