Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

Angel investment research has grown rapidly; yet, when and under what conditions angel investors recommit remains understudied. Integrating escalation of commitment (EOC) theory with the conflict management styles (CMSs) perspective, we examine these conditions through archival data investigation, a conjoint experiment (2,368 decisions by 148 angel investors), and a field study (214 ventures by 112 angel investors). We show that prior commitment increases angel investors’ reinvestment likelihood, contingent on entrepreneurs’ CMSs. We advance EOC theory by identifying relational boundary conditions and conflict management research by theorizing its moderating role in reinvestment decision-making, revealing escalation as a socially embedded process shaped by investor–entrepreneur interactions.

We examine the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) in evaluating early-stage ventures. In pre-registered experiments, we prompt selected LLMs to generate investment evaluations and survival predictions for an archival dataset of 171 new venture pitches under systematically varied information cues. We compare these LLM-generated evaluations with realized fundraising outcomes, post-campaign survival rates, and evaluations provided by a benchmark sample of human investors. LLMs show strong capabilities in mirroring real fundraising outcomes. In contrast, their apparent accuracy in predicting venture survival largely reflects prior exposure to some ventures’ digital footprints rather than genuine reasoning under uncertainty. Providing LLMs with scientific, contextual, and social information cues can improve their evaluations, but can also activate human-like heuristics, including anchoring and herding. Our study highlights LLMs’ potential in venture evaluations while cautioning that unobserved influences can mislead interpretations of their capabilities.

We investigate the effect of parental leave taken by top management team (TMT) members on innovation outputs in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). By analyzing a large sample of Swedish SMEs, we find that the length of parental leave taken by TMT members has a positive effect on SME innovation outputs. This effect is stronger for smaller and longer-tenured TMTs, as these TMTs likely exhibit greater behavioral integration. Such integration can support TMT members in mitigating role conflicts and leveraging the role enhancement benefits connected to performing multiple roles during and after leave. These results contribute to the literature and offer valuable practical insights.

Just because we undertake value-neutral research to explain an entrepreneurial phenomenon does not mean we cannot extend our work through engaging values to prescribe what entrepreneurs (and/or other focal actors) should do. In this editorial, we illustrate how scholars can generate and offer prescriptive theorizing. Specifically, scholars can generate practical implications by (a) focusing on a phenomenon-based problem; (b) identifying focal actors and values; (c) defining desired outcomes; (d) developing an implementation roadmap; (e) thinking about reflexivity and boundaries; and (f) generating testable prescriptions. We offer additional considerations about when and for whom this prescriptive theorizing is most appropriate.

Entrepreneurship research increasingly seeks to explain how systemic change towards gender inclusivity unfolds. Drawing on a critical realist case study, we develop a morphogenetic account of how such change becomes possible within entrepreneurial ecosystems through structural and cultural conditioning, social interaction, and structural and cultural elaboration. We show that bonding and bridging function as collective, agential mechanisms through which women and their allies reflexively contest gendered constraints and mobilise resource gatekeepers, thereby enabling shifts in ecosystem norms and practices over time. By doing so, the study bridges women’s entrepreneurship, ecosystem scholarship, and critical realism through a processual explanation of change.

This study examines hybrid entrepreneurship (HE) in non-Western contexts where informal and non-market institutions are central. Based on 31 case studies of female hybrid entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and 64 in-depth interviews, we conceptualize HE as a relational, co-constructed process shaped by institutional complexity. Women enact HE in liminal spaces sustained through relational practices: reconfiguring boundaries, cultivating ambiguity and gray areas, and maintaining webs of reciprocity. Institutional complexity both enables and constrains HE, underscoring its social embeddedness rather than individual agency. The study advances research on HE, female entrepreneurship, and institutional complexity by foregrounding relational dynamics and gendered experiences.

We investigate how environmentally oriented ventures (EOVs) acquire financial resources through equity crowdfunding (ECF) and allocate resources to job creation. Our results suggest that EOVs raise 22.20% to 34.70% more funding and increase headcount by 18.06% to 61.95% relative to non-environmentally oriented ventures. We argue that environmental orientation may increase demand for labor, through the ongoing development of environmental capabilities, and labor supply, by making EOVs more attractive employers. Our evidence is more consistent with a supply explanation as EOVs find it somewhat easier to hire in tight labor markets. Our study highlights how ECF has real-economic impact through job creation.

JEL classification: L26, M13, M14, M51

This study revisits the assumption that moderate growth offers the most reliable path to new venture survival. Adopting a lifetime growth perspective, we distinguish genuine failure from strategic or neutral exits to better understand the growth–survival relationship. Using 246,831 venture-year observations from 52,277 Dutch startups (2007–2019), we replicate and extend prior research. While moderate annualized growth enhances short-term survival, our extension reveals a contrasting long-term pattern: ventures with either low or high lifetime growth exhibit the greatest survival likelihood. These findings reconcile competing perspectives and highlight how ventures need to navigate short- and long-term pressures to survive.

Hybrid entrepreneurship as a side hustle is a widespread yet understudied coping strategy among low-income wage workers. This study examines how loss aversion is associated with such side-hustle activities and their links to well-being. We conducted a mixed-method study in Bangladesh. Quantitative analysis, based on surveys and lab experiments, indicates that loss aversion is associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in hybrid entrepreneurship, which is in turn linked to higher well-being. Qualitative analysis, based on in-depth interviews, illustrates mechanisms that may underlie these associations. Together, these findings provide insights into the protective role of hybrid entrepreneurship in poverty contexts.

We investigate how crowds evaluate pitches by entrepreneurs with versus without physical disabilities. Leveraging stereotype subtyping, we argue that entrepreneurs with physical disabilities are evaluated as a distinct subtype, rather than as people with disabilities or as conventional entrepreneurs. We hypothesize that benevolent ableism shapes how this subtype is evaluated, inflating both warmth and competence perceptions. Three experiments support our hypotheses, and key informant conversations with professional investors and entrepreneurs with disabilities corroborate the proposed mechanisms. Our findings contribute to unconventional entrepreneurship research by examining how bias can manifest as patronizing positivity rather than overt negative discrimination.

Hybrid entrepreneurship—pursuing a venture while maintaining paid employment—can enhance or undermine well-being. Based on a longitudinal, qualitative study, we identify two distinct trajectories shaped by envisioned future selves: delayed entrepreneurial gratification with cumulative strains on well-being, and present gratification with supportive effects on well-being. Drawing on role identity theory, we theorize how role internalization and identity centrality relate to the well-being experiences of hybrid entrepreneurs and introduce gratification and rationalization as ways to handle strains on well-being. Our findings offer a deeper understanding of the divergent well-being experiences in hybrid entrepreneurship.

Persistent evidence of a male advantage in equity fundraising has led entrepreneurship scholars to assume that while women face fit penalties in male-typed industries, men are exempt from penalties in female-typed ones. Yet underlying sociological theory implies that lack-of-fit penalties would apply to both sexes. Analyzing 718 equity deals from 408 ventures in Femtech, we find that male CEOs raise smaller deal amounts than female CEOs. Post hoc analyses and interviews provide interpretive triangulation consistent with two plausible explanatory accounts, embodied task competence and moral legitimacy. This challenges the assumption that men are exempt from fit penalties in female-typed industries.

This study examines how major family transitions—marriage, childbirth, divorce, widowhood, and the co-occurrence of marriage and childbirth within the same observation interval—are associated with entry into self-employment as households reallocate risk, care, and income responsibilities. Using longitudinal Canadian data from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (2012–2020), it draws on life-course theory, household bargaining perspectives, and the capability approach to conceptualize self-employment entry as a process of contingent capability reallocation rather than simply a reflection of stable entrepreneurial preferences. The findings show that identical life events generate divergent entry responses across gendered breadwinner roles, caregiving demands, and life stage. Marriage and childbirth are positively associated with entry on average, but these associations are contingent: marriage is most strongly associated with entry among newly married secondary-earning women, while childbirth suppresses entry for primary-earning mothers and attenuates for new fathers as caregiving intensity rises. Divorce shows no uniform association: it is positively associated with childcare-expense responsibility but negatively associated with prior primary-earner status. Widowhood is associated with reduced entry, with no working-age moderation. Finally, the co-occurrence of marriage and childbirth within the same biennial interval is associated with higher entry than either transition alone.

We conduct a large-scale labor-market experiment using more than 8,000 fictitious résumés to uncover the demand-side mechanisms behind the adverse treatment of the self-employed entering wage employment. We find that, compared to wage earners, self-employed individuals face lower callback rates across industries and skill groups. This adverse treatment is concentrated in the lower-skilled, non-managerial market of associate professionals, with a 28% drop in callback. Results suggest that self-employment leads to the development of generalist skills (useful for managerial roles) at the cost of specialist skills. Furthermore, perceived behavioral fit of the self-employed seems to be penalized in associate positions.

This paper introduces the Entrepreneurship in the Population (EPOP) survey, a nationally representative data source for understanding entrepreneurial activities across the United States since 2022. The EPOP survey is distinguished by its focus on a broad set of entrepreneurial activities and collects a wealth of information on the behaviors, challenges, and resources available to entrepreneurs. This data brief provides information on the design and measurement approach of the survey, discusses how to work with EPOP data, and outlines future plans for the survey, including a longitudinal data collection to support research on trajectories of current and prospective entrepreneurs.

A tension exists between the potential entrepreneurial strengths associated with neurodiversity and the systemic barriers neurodiverse individuals face within entrepreneurial ecosystems. Applying Ecological Systems Theory, we analyze how neurodiverse entrepreneurs interact with the nested layers (Micro- to Chrono-system) of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This multi-level perspective reveals how inter-system (mis)alignments create friction, necessitates theorizing neurodiverse ecological niches, and positions neurodiversity as influencing ecosystem co-evolution. We offer a dynamic, interactionist framework that resolves theoretical limitations and provides a foundation for building more inclusive and effective entrepreneurial environments supportive of cognitive diversity.

Accent is a powerful, yet still socially acceptable, basis of discrimination that shapes interpersonal evaluations and access to opportunities, potentially disadvantaging entrepreneurs seeking funding. Bridging role congruity theory with sociolinguistic literature, we hypothesize that entrepreneurs whose regional accents align with the stereotypical entrepreneur are more likely to secure funding. We test this hypothesis in entrepreneurial pitching contexts using an observational study and two pre-registered experiments that manipulate entrepreneurs’ accents in pitch videos through a professional voice actor and AI. Across the UK, Italy, and the United States, the results support our hypothesis, providing robust evidence of accent-based discrimination in entrepreneurial fundraising.

Mainstream entrepreneurship has traditionally focused on the human behaviors involved in the exploitation, innovation, and transformation of human-centric systems. However, this anthropocentric view is inadequate in addressing today’s grand challenges. Assuming human superiority in solving Earth’s problems can be misleading. We challenge this assumption by adopting an ecocentric perspective that incorporates natural non-human actors (NNHAs). Using actor-network theory, we take a relational approach to explore how entrepreneurial behaviors can be theoretically advanced from inclusive, distributed, mutualistic, and co-creative relationships between human and NNHAs. We advance ecocentric entrepreneurship by redefining entrepreneurial agency, interactions, places, and ecosystems.

Effectuation research posits that effectual networks are composed of self-selecting stakeholders who purchase voice to gain influence in how the effectual process proceeds when they commit to co-create. However, entrepreneurship scholars wrestle with theorizing the social action underlying a theory originally based on the individual decision-making of experts and, specifically, explaining how voice emerges prior to commitment to influence effectual network formation. This study combines the literatures on effectuation and hybrid institutional logics to examine how intermediaries can shape the creation of effectual networks among their members. Through a multiple case study of six makerspaces, the findings reveal how voice emerges and becomes collectivized in the transition from informal collaboration to co-creation. Makerspaces with a high degree of hybrid logics support voice emergence through three social interaction mechanisms: project socializing, market logic embedding, and community logic extending. The study builds a model of effectual network formation via voice emergence moderated by logic hybridity, thereby sharpening the parameters of effectual networks pertaining to voice and co-creation.

Hybrid entrepreneurs who retain salaried or academic roles are often viewed as insufficiently committed by investors. Yet, maintaining a hybrid employment status can also be a strategic pathway into high-growth venturing. Drawing on Role Congruity Theory, we examine how Venture Capital funds and angel investors evaluate hybrid founders and how founders adapt over time. Using 17 semi-structured interviews with investors and hybrid entrepreneurs in two European ecosystems and two longitudinal case studies of research-intensive ventures, we inductively theorize hybrid venturing as a congruity alignment trajectory and derive propositions linking investor role expectations, founder adaptation, and ecosystem support structures.