Rod B. McNaughton

Purpose: Sustainability performance is increasingly becoming a core commercial requirement for new ventures rather than a peripheral societal responsibility initiative. However, we still lack a more systematic understanding of the role that entrepreneurial micro-foundations and strategies play in achieving superior venture sustainability outcomes. Drawing on the Resource-based View of the Firm and Stewardship Theory, we examine how founder resilience and an Entrepreneurs-as-Scientists (EaS) approach interact in shaping new venture sustainability performance. Design/methodology/approach: We test our research hypotheses on a sample from the 2023 wave of the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey, which includes over 13,000 active founders across 39 countries. Findings: The findings demonstrate that founder resilience is positively associated with new venture sustainability performance. We find that the effect of resilience as a psychological resource improving sustainability performance is mediated through the adoption of an EaS approach. Moreover, we provide evidence that founder resilience moderates this relationship, helping founders leverage the EaS approach to strengthen sustainability performance. Originality/value: Our study advances understanding of the micro foundations of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship by identifying the EaS approach as a decision-making mechanism channelling founder resilience into superior new venture sustainability performance. The novelty of this study is its investigation of the dual role of founder resilience in achieving superior new venture sustainability performance: as an enabler of an EaS approach and a moderator of its relationship with sustainability performance.

As firms increasingly use proprietary enterprise data to train and evaluate AI, a less obvious problem emerges: organisational archives often record what was approved, rewarded and repeated more clearly than whether the underlying decisions were sound. Using the proposed sale of Spirit Airlines' internal data as an illustrative case, this paper develops the idea of an approval-performance gap between observable organisational signals and the quality of the judgement they represent. It argues that enterprise AI may reproduce historical incentives, biases and assumptions if organisational records are treated simply as demonstrations of successful behaviour. The paper proposes decision provenance as a way of preserving the information, assumptions, alternatives and outcomes surrounding consequential decisions, and suggests using reconstructed historical decisions as blind evaluation cases before they are used for AI training. This approach turns organisational history from material to imitate into an organisation-specific environment for testing both machine and managerial judgement.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are widely conceptualized as environments that support the creation and growth of businesses by connecting diverse actors to networks, resources, and opportunities (Isenb...

Purpose: Mixed embeddedness theory has become a foundational framework in migrant entrepreneurship research. However, it predominantly conceptualises embeddedness in static or binary terms, treating entrepreneurs as embedded or disembedded within specific contexts. Prior empirical research focuses on how entrepreneurs respond to embeddedness/dis-embeddedness while overlooking the factors and mechanisms that shape it. This study aims to reconceptualise embeddedness as a dynamic and agentic process and highlight individual-level and contextual factors influencing entrepreneurs' action to embed. Given its pivotal role in business success, it is important to understand how entrepreneurs strategically construct and adjust their embeddedness across multiple contexts to pursue their business goals. Design/methodology/approach: This study draws on qualitative data from 22 high-skilled migrant entrepreneurs in New Zealand. Using in-depth interviews and egocentric social network analysis, it explores how these entrepreneurs actively construct local and transnational embeddedness to overcome structural constraints and gain access to business resources, legitimacy and relevant market opportunities. Findings: The study identifies two distinct mechanisms of embeddedness: sequential (local first, then transnational) and simultaneous (local and transnational concurrently). These mechanisms depend on factors such as the type of entry visa, cultural distance and the home-country institutional environment. The findings reveal that embeddedness is not a fixed condition but a dynamic and iterative process shaped by entrepreneurial agency, structural constraints and contextual opportunities. Originality/value: The findings extend mixed embeddedness theory by advancing the concept of dynamic embeddedness, which captures embeddedness as strategically enacted and temporally patterned rather than passively experienced. This theoretical contribution highlights migrant entrepreneurs as institutional bricoleurs who actively reconfigure their embeddedness in response to structural conditions for achieving their business goals. By introducing dynamic embeddedness, the study offers a more processual and adaptive understanding of entrepreneurial action within transnational ecosystems and provides new theoretical leverage for explaining heterogeneity in migrant entrepreneurial trajectories.

Psychometric scales are foundational to market research, yet their development is traditionally resource-intensive, slow, and prone to cognitive and cultural bias. Item generation, the stage where abstract constructs are translated into candidate measures, is especially demanding. This paper introduces a methodological framework for integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) into item generation, illustrated through a proof-of-concept study on the entrepreneurial mindset. We outline a structured human–AI workflow that combines large language model outputs with critical researcher oversight at key decision points. The process demonstrates how AI can rapidly expand item pools, reduce redundancy, and surface alternative phrasings, while expert validation safeguards theoretical fidelity and conceptual clarity. Our framework is both rigorous and adaptable. It provides detailed replication guidance, highlights ethical and practical considerations, and identifies how researchers can transparently document AI use. By showing how AI-assisted item generation can enhance efficiency without compromising validity, this paper rethinks scale development methods for an era where market research must be both conceptually robust and responsive to fast-changing contexts.

Entrepreneurs frequently encounter ambiguous, uncertain situations that, despite limited information, require critical decisions. Their decisions are not homogeneous and, while prior research has emphasized external factors such as industry experience or context, these alone do not fully explain the heterogeneity observed in entrepreneurial decision‐making. This study integrates dual‐process theories of cognition (intuitive and analytical thinking) and motivations (intrinsic and extrinsic motives) to explore how nascent entrepreneurs approach decision‐making under uncertainty. Using think‐aloud protocols with 25 new entrepreneurs presented with an unfamiliar business scenario, we found that intrinsically motivated entrepreneurs predominantly adopted intuitive thinking. In contrast, extrinsically motivated entrepreneurs relied more heavily on analytical approaches. Those who relied extensively on analytical thinking sometimes suffered decision‐making paralysis. For scholars, the study offers novel insights into the interplay between motivations and cognitive processes, advancing our understanding of why entrepreneurs facing similar uncertainties reach different decisions and highlighting potential antecedents of entrepreneurial heterogeneity. For entrepreneurs, the findings emphasize the importance of self‐awareness to align individual motivations and cognitive approaches, enhancing their decision‐making effectiveness and reducing risks associated with misalignment.