G. Tyge Payne

Cronyism promotes the exchange of favors among connected parties based on relationships rather than merit, granting them undue advantages in securing opportunities and resources. This study examines the impact of cronyism on the quantity and quality of entrepreneurship. The analysis of data from 98 countries over 8 years (482 country-year observations) indicates that cronyism is negatively associated with the quantity of productive entrepreneurship, and positively associated with the prevalence of unproductive entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the results reveal that cronyism diminishes the quality of entrepreneurship productivity across countries. Interestingly, the findings suggest that a stronger rule of law exacerbates the detrimental effects of cronyism on entrepreneurship productivity. These results extend our understanding of cronyism as a crucial yet understudied informal institution with major implications for management and entrepreneurship.

The study of nascent entrepreneurship lies at the core of entrepreneurship scholarship, offering critical insights into how both entrepreneurs and ventures emerge through a contextually embedded process. This review synthesizes findings from 95 peer-reviewed articles that employ the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED I and II), two comprehensive longitudinal datasets specifically focusing on nascent entrepreneurship. Using thematic analysis, we synthesize the literature into three core dimensions—the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial process, and the venture—and emphasize the role of context. Although research on individuals and ventures is relatively well developed, the process dimension remains underexplored, and contextual influences warrant further investigation. We also identify key methodological challenges—particularly related to construct validity—as well as emerging methodological innovations. Finally, we outline promising directions for future research, underscoring the need for more large-scale initiatives and opportunities to re-engage with the PSED’s untapped potential to advance understanding of entrepreneurial emergence.

Narratives are written, spoken, or visual accounts of events associated with an organization (e.g., speeches, press releases, Twitter feeds, shareholder letters, videos). Narratives are typically used as a means of recording and documenting important information about a company. When properly managed, narratives relate stories that provide meaning to organizational actions and behaviors; these can be utilized for the strategic benefit of the organization and the people within them. This entry provides an overview of organizational narratives, emphasizing their importance to all organizations, but especially family businesses. This entry also identifies ways to utilize narratives to improve our understanding of organizations from both a practical and a scholarly perspective because the use of narratives and storytelling is more visible and important in modern times than ever before.

Although researchers have devoted considerable attention to assessing how organizations benefit from ascriptions of high status, relatively little research has analyzed the financial costs that organizations may incur in actively managing such ascriptions. In this study, we analyze how and why organizations may pay a relatively steep economic price for the attainment and/or maintenance of social status. Specifically, we advance an original theoretical perspective, which suggests that firms engaged in economic competition are simultaneously engaged in social ceremony and that these dual processes can generate a combination of social gains (in terms of status) and economic losses (in terms of profitability). We theorize and test our perspective in the context of competitive bidding ceremonies using a unique, decade-long data set on repeated competitive market interactions among firms in the U.S. construction industry. We find support for our prediction that firms’ participation in bidding ceremonies can generate divergent outcomes, that is, higher social status and diminished economic performance. We discuss the implications of our theoretical and empirical analysis for the existing literature on social status, competitive bidding, and—more generally—on the role social forces play in competitive market behaviors and outcomes.