More (or less) than the sums of their parts?: status, teams, and entrepreneurial outcomes

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  • March 21, 2019
Creator
  • Davis, Amy E.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology
Abstract
  • Individuals from diverse status backgrounds pursue entrepreneurship, and approximately half of those who seek to start businesses--nascent entrepreneurs--form startup teams of two or more persons. Using data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), I examined how individual status characteristics influence group processes and entrepreneurial outcomes. I also studied how team status characteristics and group processes influence entrepreneurial outcomes. I found that status characteristics influenced the assistance team members provide to their startups. My results showed gender to be a significant status characteristic in that gender composition influenced assistance provisions, and secondly that men and women differed in perceptions of how status affected assistance provisions in their teams. I also found that the levels and types of assistance that team members provided to their startup teams reduced their odds of abandoning startup activities and increased their odds of establishing operational businesses or remaining active in entrepreneurship. However, I found little evidence that individual status, team diversity, or team relationships directly influenced startup outcomes for nascent entrepreneurs. I did find that average status of startup teams and close relationships among team members sometimes improved respondents' entrepreneurial outcomes when team members provided assistance at high levels. Additionally, I found that the influence of individual status characteristics on entrepreneurial outcomes were contingent on team membership and the levels of assistance team members provided. Therefore, although my results do not pinpoint the sorts of startup teams potential nascent entrepreneurs should form for optimal results given their status characteristics, they do demonstrate that status expectations influence group processes and that, much more so than resources originating from entrepreneurs' status characteristics, group processes influence the conditions of startups over time.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Aldrich, Howard
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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  • Open access
Date uploaded
  • October 19, 2010

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