Veranstaltungsprogramm der VHB Jahrestagung

Research has long recognized that entrepreneurial ventures act under resource scarcity, and that the availability of resources is a crucial determinant of venture development and growth. Consequently, we would expect that resource abundance would further facilitate this positive relationship. However, our explorative, multiple case study identified three resource traps through which abundant resources can decelerate venture development: resource illusion, resource drift, and resource depletion.

Through resource illusion, abundant resources create an illusion that the idea is effortlessly realizable, which leads to passivity. Through resource drift, abundant resources direct the venture’s focus to peripheral tasks, and due to the progress made with peripheral tasks, ventures overlook the resulting neglect in core-task development. Through resource depletion, abundant resources take more value from the venture than they add, leading to a net-loss in venture resources.

These resource traps shed new light on entrepreneurial resourcing research: They indicate that not only resource scarcity, but also resource abundance can impose challenges on entrepreneurial ventures and decelerate venture development and point to the necessity to depart from a foremost positive linking between resource availability and venture development to a more differentiated perspective, capturing the positive and negative impact of mobilized resources on entrepreneurial ventures.

Passion is an important resource for entrepreneurs. Importantly, resources build themselves. Accordingly, we investigate passion development over time contingent on the current passion shaping this development. Our theoretical model shows that it is the interplay between an individual’s present harmonious and obsessive passion level, coupled with competence experiences, that determines whether passion intensifies or wanes over time. Specifically, obsessive passion shows a self-enhancing effect: the higher its current level, the stronger it is built due to competence satisfaction and frustration experiences. Conversely, we demonstrate a self-regulating effect for harmonious passion: its accumulation slows down when existing levels are already high. We test our model with a multi-study approach including an experience-sampling field study (Study 1) involving 209 entrepreneurs (with 1,172 lagged observations over seven weeks) and a between-subject experiment (Study 2) with 191 entrepreneurs, which yield broad support for our hypotheses. By introducing the self-enhancing and self-regulating effect of passion, we advance our theoretical understanding of how present passion levels influence their future developmental course.

An entrepreneurial ecosystem enables productive entrepreneurship by integrating diverse actors as well governing and facilitating their interactions. One of the key features of Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) is downward causation, which refers to the influence of entrepreneurial output on the overall system. However, little is known about how entrepreneurs decide to contribute to the development and evolution of the EE. This paper addresses this gap by applying social exchange theory (SET) to examine the factors that influence entrepreneurs’ decision-making to engage in specific contribution behavior such as mentoring, coaching, or peering. Based on SET, we propose a conceptual model that examines the likelihood of EE contribution behavior as a potential function of six constructs: reciprocity, personal relationships, affiliation, altruism, rationality, and group gain. We test our hypotheses using a metric conjoint experiment with a sample of German entrepreneurs who have emerged from an EE. We are currently gathering data and plan to use regression analysis to analyze the data and examine the relative importance of the attributes. Our paper will contribute to the theory of entrepreneurial ecosystems and specifically downward causation in ecosystems. It will also introduce a social exchange perspective as a new research path in entrepreneurial ecosystem research.

Why do entrepreneurs go against the norm and break the rules of the game? Are they conscious economic calculators or do they just see the world with different eyes? In this paper, we examine the underlying cognitive processes that lead to entrepreneurs' decisions to deviate from the norm. More specifically, we investigate how entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs differ in their perception and evaluation of the social consequences of norm-breaking behavior.

To achieve this, we have built a parsimonious two-step decision-making process model, which we test empirically with entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. This model builds primarily on the theoretical contributions of James G. March and Gary Becker, focusing on the perception of appropriate behavior in the first step and the economic calculation of the cost of deviance in the second step. Essentially, we are investigating and answering whether entrepreneurs expect less severe consequences for a specific behavior because they differ from non-entrepreneurs in their understanding of what is appropriate or because they simply apply different values in the risk assessment.

Building on promising results from an experimental vignette pre-study, we are in the process of carrying out a large-scale online/lab experiment with an estimated completion date of December 2023. The experiment consists of an online norm elicitation task (Krupka & Weber, 2013) and a business simulation game that will take place 3-4 weeks after the first task with the same participants (entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs).

The findings from our study will increase our understanding of the entrepreneur as an individual, provide answers to the quesiton of who sees and exploits opportunities and help us explain negative and even counterproductive entrepreneurial behavior, an area that has so far received little attention from entrepreneurship research