Nationality and work role interactions: A cultural contrast of Israeli and U.S. entrepreneurs' versus managers' needs

The globalization of business ventures and the parallel search for sources of international competitive advantage have stimulated research relating cultural differences to entrepreneurial and managerial behaviors. Recent work by McGrath, MacMillan, and Scheinberg (1992) encouraged studies of managers and entrepreneurs in different cultures, suggesting that these comparisons may “… shed additional light into the interrelations between social structure, wealth creation, and cultural beliefs” (McGrath el at. 1992, p. 116). This study follows that advice.Cultural differences are powerful determinants of behavior, and many studies support the notion that managerial behavior must adapt to the national cultural setting to achieve success. A growing stream of entrepreneurial behavior research has explored differences in motivational needs between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs of different countries, and found parallel differences across cultures. Given these views, we might expect to find need differences between entrepreneurs and managers within countries however, some entrepreneurship researchers have concluded that U.S. managers and entrepreneurs are more alike than different.To better understand need profile differences between and within cultures, we use a theory that suggests that culture is an important determinant of work behavior. The process through which culture affects work behaviors is described in “Cultural Self-representation Theory” (Erez and Earley, 1993). Based upon this theory, inferences from the entrepreneurial archetype, and analysis of the contrast between the cultures of Israel and the U.S., we propose that: (1) entrepreneurs and managers have different motivational needs within some national cultures, and (2) across national cultures there are systematic differences in motivational needs. Based on these premises, an interaction hypothesis between work role and nationality is suggested because of the importance of both culture and work role in determining motivational need differences. Data are collected from over 370 Israeli and U.S. entrepreneurs and managers.Results support cultural self-representation theory for the Israeli-U.S. and entrepreneur-manager case, because interactions between nationality and work role are exposed for various needs. This finding suggests that cultural differences are indeed important for understanding management motivational needs in different nations, and that the effectiveness of entrepreneurial approaches to management may be culture-sensitive. The study illustrates work-role differences between Israeli managers and entrepreneurs. We confirm past conclusions about U.S. entrepreneur-manager need similarities, and suggest that these need similarities are supported by the individualistic culture within U.S. organizations.     

A comparative study of values among Chinese and U.S. entrepreneurs: Pragmatic convergence between contrasting cultures

The People's Republic of China is the world's leading Communist power, yet it also represents the largest potential market for international investment and development. In recent years, China has actively pursued private enterprise development, passing its first Private Company Act in 1988, and subsequently encouraging entrepreneurial activities. More than a half-million new ventures in high-growth manufacturing, engineering, and infrastructural development have been independently established in China in little more than six years, and although it would be presumptuous to assume that China is racing toward a free enterprise economy, there are major changes taking place. From an entrepreneurial perspective, these changes are in sharp contrast to the nation's political ideology, and those who are pursuing new ventures constitute a vanguard of individuals at odds with a majority of society.A critical concern is whether China's entrepreneurs pose a threat to those who are entrenched in a political ideology that, by definition, is opposed to free market economics and private enterprise. As Hofstede (1980) has pointed out, characteristics of a people are defined by their prevailing value systems, and research by Bond (1991), Hofstede (1983a, 1983b), Schwartz (1992), and Triandis et al. (1986) has shown that by systematically studying human values we can gain valuable insights about patterns of behavior, motivation, and expectations of cross-cultural boundaries. Consequently, this study was developed to replicate previous value-related studies among Chinese entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurial managers. A sample of more than 200 executives of state-owned and privately founded industrial companies provided comparable groups for comprehensive interviews. An analogous sample of U.S. entrepreneurs was selected to represent Western values. This extends several previous studies on private enterprise development in China, but, clearly, the convenient and limited sample cannot be construed as representative of a geographically and ethnically diversified country of more than 1.1 billion people. However, it does provide useful insights to differences and similarities in work-related values between Chinese entrepreneurs, managers, and U.S. entrepreneurs as exploratory research.A primary consideration of this study was to enrich the existing research concerning entrepreneurial values, and in the process, question whether Chinese entrepreneurial values are similar to those held by U.S. entrepreneurs. If so, there would be a stronger case for convergence of value systems and commensurate behavior. Similarities would also support arguments by many that entrepreneurial characteristics, such as individualism, achievement motives, and self-deterministic behavior, are universal. This is complicated, however, by a Confucian social philosophy that places little value on these attributes while underscoring the importance of collective behavior, conformist behavior, and referent group loyalty. It is further complicated by two generations of Communist doctrine that has suppressed individual initiative, commercial achievement, and social mobility. Can entrepreneurial values prevail under such adverse conditions? More specifically, can values associated with individualism and self-determination exist in a society that is collectivist and conformist? Several recent studies on entrepreneurial values suggest that apparent contradictory value sets might co-exist (Baum et al. 1993; Chow and Tsang 1994; Erez and Earley 1993; Hofstede and Bond 1988; Holt, Ralston, and Terpstra 1994). Entrepreneurial research has also questioned the concept of universal values and found that, in many instances, cultural-based values are not necessarily malleable (McGrath et al. 1992), values are often contingent on prevailing cultural antecedents (Shenkar and Von Glinow 1994), and discordant or paradoxical values exist within so-called collectivist societies, among presumed cohesive groups, and within well-defined ethnic clusters (McGrath, MacMillan, and Scheinberg 1992; Ohe, Honjo, and MacMillan 1990; Ralston et al. 1994; Triandis et al. 1988).The current study revealed patterns of value orientations among Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese executives of state-owned or joint venture firms, and U.S. entrepreneurs that in some instances were substantially different, and in other instances quite similar. Contrasts in these patterns suggest an apparent paradox of entrepreneurship in a collectivist society like China, and in particular, a potential confrontation between Chinese entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurial managers. The results showed that, indeed, the respondent Chinese managers and entrepreneurs differed sharply on many crucial value dimensions, and although the survey was limited to a southern industrial province, there is the possibility that China may be facing an extremely difficult transition period toward a constrained market economy with overtones of a possible ideological backlash. The results revealed many similarities between the respondent Chinese and U.S. entrepreneurs, but also several important differences steeped in Confucian social philosophy. Although there may be some convergence in values, it is more likely that Chinese entrepreneurs are simply pragmatic, and therefore selective in developing behavior that reflects values associated with achievement, independence, freedom of choice, and self-determination. If these results could be interpreted as prevalent beyond our exploratory sample, then pragmatic expectations may be driving private enterprise development in China more than cultural values, but this is difficult to verify. Whatever implications are drawn from this study must also be taken cautiously because there are indications that definitions of certain values, such as achievement or independence, may have substantially different meanings to American and Chinese entrepreneurs. Care was taken to make translations comparable during the field interviews, but Western concepts inherent in the instruments used for value research may have elicited responses or associated meanings among the Chinese that cannot be accurately interpreted.     

Digitally immersive,international entrepreneurial experiences

This study explores how entrepreneurs acquire international experiences within physical and digital business environments, and how these experiences influence the way international opportunities are recognised and exploited. Based on multiple case study evidence, including in-depth interviews with international entrepreneurs from 16 small virtual service firms, findings suggest entrepreneurs who interact with digital technologies in a responsive way in international settings may promote the emergence of a new type of experience: “digital internationalisation experience”. This new type of experience, in turn, contributes to enhanced idea generation and opportunity confidence that enable international entrepreneurial exploitation.     

Organizational and competitive influences of exploration and exploitation activities in small firms

This study explores organizational and competitive factors affecting exploration/exploitation activities in SMEs by examining the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), market orientation (MO) and perceived competitive intensity. We test the relationships among these variables using data collected from 55 manufacturing SMEs operating in the southern part of U. S. The findings provide a strong support for a positive association between EO, MO and exploration/exploitation activities. Perceived competitive intensity was only a significant moderator for the relationship between MO and the degree of exploratory activities. Our findings, hence, suggest the significant role organizational predictors play in enhancing exploration/exploitation activities in SMEs. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A Meta-Analysis of Achievement Motivation Differences between Entrepreneurs and Managers*

As a result of conflicting conclusions in primary studies, most narrative reviews have questioned the role of personality in explaining entrepreneurial behavior. We examine one stream of this research by conducting a meta-analysis of studies that contrast the achievement motivation of entrepreneurs and managers. The results indicate that entrepreneurs exhibit higher achievement motivation than managers and that these differences are influenced by the entrepreneur's venture goals, by the use of U.S. or foreign samples, and, to a less clear extent, by projective or objective instrumentation. Moreover, when the analysis is restricted to venture founders, the difference between entrepreneurs and managers on achievement motivation is substantially larger and the credibility intervals do not include zero.     

The new generation of millennial entrepreneurs: A review and call for research

Entering the third decade of the new millennium, the millennial generation is stepping into their most productive stage of life. We have witnessed a number of exemplary millennial entrepreneurs, such as Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. The world’s economy is evolving fast and presenting distinct entrepreneurial opportunities to millennials across the globe. It is critical that scholars of international entrepreneurship explore the new breed of millennial entrepreneurs and contrast them across generations and countries. Regrettably, the extant literature comes up short in fully addressing the new generation of entrepreneurs. We call for immediate scholarly attention on millennial entrepreneurs as they are in substantive ways unlike all earlier generations. We urge researchers to explore the unique characteristics of millennial entrepreneurs, their influence on entrepreneurial motivation, orientation, opportunity discovery and exploitation process, and the global ambition of their entrepreneurial ventures.     

An absorptive capacity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship

The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship identifies new knowledge as a source of entrepreneurial opportunities, and suggests that entrepreneurs play an important role in commercializing new knowledge developed in large incumbent firms or research institutions. This paper argues that, knowledge spillover entrepreneurship depends not only on new knowledge but more importantly on entrepreneurial absorptive capacity that allows entrepreneurs to understand new knowledge, recognize its value, and commercialize it by creating a firm. This absorptive capacity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship is tested using data based on U.S. metropolitan areas.     

Exploring the role played by entrepreneurial self-efficacy among women entrepreneurs in tourism sector

This study aimed to explore how entrepreneurial self-efficacy impacts firms' performance among women entrepreneurs in developing countries in tourism and hospitality industry. Survey data collected from women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka confirmed entrepreneurial self-efficacy is influenced by social media, entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial role models, whereas education and work experience had no influence over entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The mediating behavior of entrepreneurial persistence behavior is confirmed. For entrepreneurship stakeholders, this research revealed a critical factor that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is influenced by social media in digital world of technologies. Moreover, this research provided a validated model of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, enhancing its usage during the adversity or growth stages of business while producing valuable insights to policy makers in developing countries, enhancing women entrepreneurs’ contribution to the economy.     

Liabilities and benefits: Examining the two sides of the foreignness coin from entrepreneurial perspective

This paper provides an in-depth examination of foreignness at the individual level by studying it in the context of entrepreneurs. Based on data collected from 470 domestic and foreign entrepreneurs operating in the U.S., it was concluded that foreignness has a curvilinear relationship with entrepreneurial performance. There was also evidence of moderating effects of entrepreneurial orientation on the relationship between foreignness and performance. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

The impact of industry-wide and target market environmental hostility on entrepreneurial leadership in mergers and acquisitions

Based on survey data from 115 acquisitions completed between 2008 and 2011 by European acquirers from German-speaking countries, we find evidence that entrepreneurial leadership is a strong predictor of exploration and a weaker but significant driver of exploitation outcomes following M&A. Industry-wide environmental hostility negatively impacts the influence of entrepreneurial leadership on exploitation. Target market environmental hostility negatively impacts the influence of entrepreneurial leadership on exploration. Thus, while entrepreneurial leadership is a key success factor of M&A performance by increasing both, post-merger exploration and exploitation, acquirers need to take environmental conditions at the industry and market level into account.     

How do entrepreneurs' cross-cultural experiences contribute to entrepreneurial ecosystem performance?

While research on the cross-cultural experience of entrepreneurs has demonstrated that exposure to diverse cultures is beneficial for new venture growth, it has neglected the performance implications of entrepreneurs’ cross-cultural experience at the ecosystem level. This study endeavors to explore the micro-macro link between cross-cultural entrepreneurs and the performance of entrepreneurial ecosystems in which they are embedded. Building on the dynamic capability perspective, we argue that entrepreneurial ecosystem orchestrators can leverage entrepreneurs’ cross-cultural experiences to develop ecosystem dynamic capabilities and consequently improve entrepreneurial ecosystem performance. Based on multi-wave survey data of 2,981 business incubators in China, our findings show that cross-cultural entrepreneurs are positively associated with entrepreneurial ecosystem performance via increased ecosystem innovation. Moreover, the integrative capability of ecosystem orchestrators moderates the relationship between cross-cultural entrepreneurs and ecosystem innovation. Our findings contribute to the literature on cross-cultural experience by extending it to the ecosystem level and inject fresh insights into the dynamic capability literature by uncovering the formation process of ecosystem dynamic capabilities.     

Entrepreneurial Leadership,Patriarchy, Gender,and Identity in the Arab World: Lebanon in Focus

In this paper, we apply insights from poststructuralist feminist theory to contribute to entrepreneurial leadership. By drawing on 21 individual narratives with Lebanese women entrepreneurs, we explore how they determine their status as entrepreneurial leaders and establish their entrepreneurial identities. Although the factors of gender, sociocultural values, and agency can be counteractive, it is agency that creates space for entrepreneurship for women and provides them a means to navigate structural inequalities. The entrepreneurs in this study engage in compliance, disregard, and defiance strategies to expand the boundaries of what is socially permissible for women and to strengthen their identities. This research contributes to studies on entrepreneurial leadership and aids in the development of theory by demonstrating how Arab women construct entrepreneurial leadership, agency, and identity at the juncture of patriarchy, sociocultural values, and gender ideologies.     

Female‐Led High‐Growth: Examining the Role of Human and Financial Resource Management

We integrate research on upper echelons theory, the resource‐based view, and gender to explore conditions that facilitate high growth for female‐led firms. We argue that female entrepreneurs have certain advantages that help them leverage their firms’ human and financial capital to achieve high growth. In support, using a sample of U.S.‐based entrepreneurial firms, we found evidence that having a female lead entrepreneur positively moderated the positive relationships between indicators of firms’ human and financial capital and high growth. The findings have implications for programs, policies, and practices to encourage more high growth in firms with female lead entrepreneurs.     

Gender,Social Networks,and Entrepreneurial Outcomes in Tanzania

This article presents results of a study that investigates egocentric network differences between female and male entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial outcomes in Tanzania. Based on a random sample of 272 micro-, small, and medium-size enterprises, the study reveals that female and male entrepreneurs have diverse networks. However, when compared to their male counterparts, female entrepreneurs' strong ties included more kin members. No significant gender difference in the composition of weaker ties was observed, suggesting gender differences in the choice of individuals with whom to have strong ties but not with whom to have weak ties. A significant gender difference in entrepreneurial outcomes at both start up and at the time of research was found, suggesting an antecedent networking behavior influence on performance.     

A Network Perspective on Stakeholder Management: Facilitating Entrepreneurs in the Discovery of Opportunities

The problem of opportunity discovery is at the heart of entrepreneurial activity. Cognitive limitations determine the search for and the analysis of information and, as a consequence, constrain the identification of opportunities. Moreover, typical personal characteristics – locus of control, need for independence and need for achievement – suggest that entrepreneurs will tend to take a central position in their stakeholder environments and thus fail to adapt to the complexity of stakeholder relationships in their entrepreneurial activity. We approach this problem by adopting a network perspective on stakeholder management. We propose a heuristic approach of stakeholder analysis, which requires two mappings of the entrepreneurial constituents. The first mapping focuses on current interactions between the entrepreneur and their stakeholders, while the second focuses on a specific issue and the stakeholders that constitute it. In effect, such a stakeholder analysis requires entrepreneurs to use the complexity of stakeholder relationships in order to go beyond their cognitive limitations and thus facilitate the discovery of new opportunities. As we will argue, this has clear implications for the ethics and activities of entrepreneurs.     

Fellow-townsmenship as the mechanism for exploring and exploiting business opportunities: A longitudinal reflection of the nineteenth century Ningbo entrepreneurs in Shanghai

This research examines how fellow-townsmenship, a distinctive homophilous social network, functioned among Ningbo entrepreneurs pertaining to their simultaneous exploration and exploitation of business opportunities, or achieving ambidexterity, in the nineteenth century. By investigating data in relevant historical records from museums, archives and libraries, case studies based on two representative Ningbo entrepreneurs from a distinctive business family showcase how those entrepreneurs took advantage of townsmenship to resolve the trade-off between exploration and exploitation. In doing so, simultaneous exploration and exploitation alongside the expansion of fellow townsmenship proved to be effective and successful. This research provides new grounds to examine ambidexterity.     

Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, eds. Financing Innovation: In the United States, 1870 to the Present

This edited volume makes a large and welcome contribution toour understanding of the history of entrepreneurial financein the United States. The focus of the volume is on innovationby both corporations and entrepreneurs. It examines all theimportant forms of financing, including wealthy individuals(who we now call angels), venture capital, government financingand debt. Scholars of many disciplines, including economics,finance, entrepreneurship, business history, and organizationalnetworks will find this volume to be of interest and the essayscan be read either selectively or globally. Lamoreaux and Sokoloff's introduction is a significant chapterin itself, providing a rich historical analysis of the riseof the U.S. patenting system. The editors also provide a     

Perceived psychological distance,construal processes,and abstractness of entrepreneurial action

In this paper we develop the concept of abstractness as an underlying theoretical structure of entrepreneurial action, specifically to connect individual perception of psychological distance to entrepreneurial action. We draw on construal level theory to model distance and abstractness, using construal as the mechanism where, in new venture creation, entrepreneurs are expected over time to engage in more abstract action when they perceive greater psychological distance. Based on longitudinal data from 350 entrepreneurs, results from cross-lagged panel analysis indicate that psychological distance shapes the actions of entrepreneurs over time through social distance and hypotheticality. These findings advance entrepreneurial action research, practice, and pedagogy by showing that the apparently implicit relationship between entrepreneurial perception and entrepreneurial action may actually be quite explicit, when abstractness of action is seen as a construal-mechanism-based function of psychological distance.