Josh Wei-Jun Hsueh

Entrepreneurs’ mental well-being1 has increasingly attracted scholarly and public attention because of its implications for work-related outcomes, such as income (for a review, see Stephan 2018). I...

We use attribution theory to understand how people evaluate a company when another company in the same business network does something wrong. In studying business groups, we find that when one company affiliated with a group commits wrongdoing, the strategies used by other affiliated companies to manage how they are evaluated are only effective when they use tactics that differ from those used by the deviant firm. Specifically, results from three experimental studies suggest that affiliated firms should use differentiated technical and ceremonial impression management tactics to help evaluators distinguish between innocent and deviant companies. Our findings also reveal the conditions for such successful differentiation, demonstrating that it is particularly effective when companies have a history of wrongdoing but can backfire if external stakeholders become aware that these actions are intentionally coordinated. Our findings provide novel insights into the impression management literature by exploring the dynamic interplay between the impression management strategies of connected but noncompeting organizations. We also contribute to the business group literature by revealing the delicacy of coordinating affiliates.

Entrepreneurial teams represent a critical evaluation criterion for venture capitalists (VCs) in the context of making investment decisions. Despite the importance of teams in VCs’ new venture evaluation, we lack an understanding of the ways in which VCs evaluate entrepreneurial teams. Using multiple case studies of 15 VCs, we identify five distinct approaches to evaluation: intuitive approach, extended intuitive approach, systematic intuitive approach, psychological rational approach, and scientific rational approach. These approaches vary in terms of the extent to which the VCs performing the evaluation develop structured procedures, incorporate objective data analysis, and spend time on data collection and analysis. Our findings reveal VCs’ heterogeneous approaches to evaluation, which feature different combinations of subjective and objective evaluations.

Family firms purportedly use different socioemotional wealth (SEW) reference points in choosing strategies, yet empirical research continues to use family involvement as a proxy for SEW. This study uses a configurational approach to examine how the multidimensionality of SEW may be used to explain the firm’s chosen strategy. We use psychometric measures of the various SEW dimensions proposed by Berrone et al. to explain the formalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy as an example. We identify various SEW configurations to understand why family firms exhibit a preference for more formal or informal CSR strategies.

How does the grand challenge of refugees influence nascent entrepreneurs in host countries? To explore this question, we build on social identity theory and analyse how the 2015 European refugee event is related to the strength of different founder social identities (i.e. Darwinian, Communitarian, and Missionary founder social identities) of nascent entrepreneurs in the countries accommodating the refugees. Using a dataset of 6,096 nascent entrepreneurs from 24 European countries, we reveal a positive relationship between the refugee event and the strength of the Communitarian founder social identity. This relationship is even stronger when the previous percentage of foreign migrants in a country is lower and is mediated by the human health and social work industry. Interestingly, we do not find significant relationships between the refugee event and the strengths of the Darwinian or Missionary founder social identity, respectively. Hence, refugees as a grand challenge are likely to have divergent influences on different types of entrepreneurship in society.

The social ties of the owners, directors, and managers of firms have cross-level effects on firms’ network development. Firms can develop affiliations with a business group and connections across business groups. We expand the theoretical focus of Mani and Durand’s examination of the family and community ties of firm leaders and their impact on firms’ business group networks. We discuss the relational content heterogeneity of those ties and the associated logic in developing a firm’s networking strategy. Thus, we suggest alternative developmental processes for a firm’s network development strategy.