Impact investing is widely expected to direct capital to locations where social and environmental challenges are most severe. Yet such opportunities are often found in places geographically distant from major pools of investment capital. We examine how geographic distance affects the realisation of impact investment deals and how host-country conditions alter that relationship. Integrating transaction cost economics with the location logic of the eclectic paradigm, we argue that impact investment decisions reflect the joint consideration of anticipated transaction value and governance costs. Distance raises the costs of screening, contracting, monitoring, and supporting ventures, while severe sustainability challenges can increase a location's mission-specific attractiveness by signaling greater unmet need and potential scope for additionality. By contrast, trade and investment risk increases transaction hazards that make distant deals harder to execute. We test these arguments using PitchBook data on 3126 impact deals closed in 2022–2023. We analyse 3606 realised investor–venture ties against matched unrealised alternatives in a choice-based sampling design. Distance reduces the likelihood of deal realisation. Challenge severity modestly weakens the distance penalty for a subset of sampled dyads, whereas trade and investment risk strengthens it across most observations. These findings contribute to impact investing by explaining why severe unmet need does not automatically translate into realised investment relationships. They extend transaction cost reasoning in entrepreneurial finance by incorporating mission-adjusted transactional value. They refine international business location logic by distinguishing mission-specific locational attractiveness from host-country transaction hazard.
Societal challenges are complex and usually require solutions at the local level that involve diverse stakeholder groups. Research on civic wealth creation has defined the concept of “regimes of support”, which can include philanthropic organizations, local public administrations, or impact investors that are well-positioned to generate social, communal, and economic wealth. However, contextual factors such as existing community social capital influence the specific ways in which regimes of support gain awareness about the needs and opportunities of the community and hence contribute to civic wealth creation. Therefore, our study examines how regimes of support promote civic wealth creation considering different levels of community social capital. Leveraging a qualitative multiple case study of six Spanish community foundations, we develop the concept of civic listening as a strategic ability through which regimes of support seek, attract, and co-create awareness about needs and opportunities of enterprises, community members and other regimes of support. We further show that civic listening can be enhanced through the practice of catalyzing communal work, and that the deployment of civic listening is associated with existing levels of community social capital. Overall, we advance empirical and theoretical research on civic wealth creation by challenging and complementing some of the initial conceptual insights of this literature, as well as discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our contributions within and beyond the context of community foundations.
Positive social impact is the aspirational raison d'être of social entrepreneurship, driving its mission and actions, yet it remains theoretically ambiguous across the academic literature. This systematic integrative review identifies two distinct perspectives through which social impact is theorized in social entrepreneurship research: social impact as utility and social impact as reform. The former adheres to a functionalist paradigm rooted in economics and conceptualizes social impact as changes in social utility through the mobilization of capital, whereas the latter aligns with an interpretivist paradigm rooted in sociology and conceptualizes social impact as the reform of social systems through the mobilization of agency. By examining the outcomes and mechanisms of social impact associated with each perspective, we develop a multilevel organizing framework that clarifies and synthesizes the extant literature, while laying the groundwork for a programmatic theory of social impact.
We develop a theory explaining the conditions influencing entrepreneurs' decisions to formalize versus remain informal. Building on the behavioral theory of the firm, we argue that formalization is a viable strategy for informal entrepreneurs with growth needs who perform below opportunity-based aspirations to generate new sources of revenue, and for entrepreneurs with survival needs who perform above necessity-based aspirations to secure a durable livelihood. Conversely, entrepreneurs performing above their opportunity-based aspirations avoid formalization to maintain informal advantages, whereas entrepreneurs performning below their necessity-based aspirations perceive survival as particularly salient and thus avoid formalization. Moreover, the likelihood of formalizing, as a function of the performance relative to both necessity- and opportunity-based aspirations, is moderated by the level of meso-institutional support for formalization. We contribute by conceptualizing formalization as a complex strategic decision surrounded by severe uncertainty with important consequences for informal entrepreneurship. This reconceptualization enables us to frame aspirations as an important source of heterogeneity among informal entrepreneurs, shaping how they evaluate and respond to the prospect of formalization.
On crowdfunded microlending platforms, entrepreneurial narratives commonly frame ventures around either social (SVO) or economic (EVO) value orientations. Although not inherently conflicting, prior research shows that these value orientations can differ in their effects on funding performance, suggesting that the value orientations alone do not fully account for funders' decisions. Drawing on norm-based evaluation, we argue that narrative value orientations elicit distinct expectations among funders, leading them to evaluate whether the entrepreneur aligns with or violates those expectations. This alignment or misalignment, in turn, shapes their deservingness judgments through either moral or utility-based evaluation paths. Building on the emotions-as-social-information literature, we propose that emotional variety serves as a key cue influencing these paths and funding decisions, determining how value orientations translate into funding performance. Specifically, we hypothesize that high emotional variety accelerates funding for SVO narratives by facilitating deservingness judgments through a moral path, but slows funding for EVO narratives by hindering deservingness judgments through a utility-based path. We test the research model using two complementary studies: a field study based on Kiva platform data and a controlled online experiment. The results support our hypotheses, and additional experimental analyses further clarify the distinct evaluation paths activated by value orientations, through which emotional variety influences funders' deservingness judgments and funding decisions via inferential and affective mechanisms. By providing an alignment perspective, this study advances research on crowdfunded microlending, hybrid ventures, and entrepreneurial communication, while offering practical insights for entrepreneurs, microfinance institutions, and platform designers pursuing hybrid objectives.
This study extends current knowledge on time and temporal work in entrepreneurship by exploring how corporate entrepreneurs navigate the temporal complexity underlying their situated entrepreneurial endeavors. By drawing on a sample of corporate entrepreneurs operating in large and established Finnish organizations, I develop a model of temporal work which unpacks the practices that corporate entrepreneurs skillfully deploy to leverage and influence the temporal structures that condition their entrepreneurial work. Moreover, the study elucidates the nature of time-represented by the two opposing temporal 'forces' of chronos and kairos underlying corporate entrepreneurship-as a pivotal element at play in corporate entrepreneurial processes, further illuminating the consequences of such temporal work for corporate entrepreneurs and their employing firms.
Regional differences in entrepreneurship are persistent over time. However, little is known about the historical roots of this persistence and the mechanisms linking these roots to entrepreneurial activity over time. In this paper, we aim to explore the persistence of regional entrepreneurship in the U.S., which we trace back to the gold rushes of the 19th century. In this exploratory paper, our focus is mainly on the migration of entrepreneurially minded individuals as a mechanism through which the gold rush influenced entrepreneurship over time. We find empirical evidence of selective migration from entrepreneurial regions and from individuals employed in entrepreneurial occupations to gold rush counties over a period of 100 years. Moreover, migration to the gold rush counties made people more entrepreneurial compared to both migrants moving elsewhere and non-migrants. We also find some evidence that states strongly affected by the gold rush have in contemporary times more entrepreneurship-friendly laws and regulations as well as a more entrepreneurial culture. Lastly, we show that gold rush regions, compared to neighboring regions without a gold rush, have persistently higher entrepreneurship rates from the earliest available data in 1910 to the present. Taken together, our analyses indicate that the gold rush and subsequent migration patterns had a long-term positive effect on entrepreneurship.
Female entrepreneurship is increasingly common, yet we know little about how it affects women's romantic prospects, a crucial outcome with implications for family formation. We propose that female entrepreneurs, particularly those pursuing growth-oriented ventures, face diminished romantic prospects, potentially shaped by gendered trait inferences and concerns about time demand. Using two field experiments, supplemented by a survey experiment, we provide causal evidence that female entrepreneurs are on average penalized in romantic relationship initiation, but are preferred by male entrepreneurs. Further analysis offers suggestive evidence on mechanisms underlying this romantic penalty. By examining the impact of female entrepreneurship on romantic prospects, our study extends the family embeddedness perspective in entrepreneurship research. It also contributes to female entrepreneurship research by documenting a romantic penalty as a previously underexplored challenge.
People with dark skin can be discriminated against, generating various adverse outcomes for them. Due to this colorism, entrepreneurs have exploited colorism-based opportunities-products and services that lighten skin color. Through an inductive qualitative study of skin-lightening businesses and their customers in cities across India, we move beyond supply and demand economics to theorize the psychological and social drivers that motivate people to treat the symptoms of this discrimination (yet, in doing so, reinforce this discrimination and exacerbate income inequality). Therefore, the study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature with new research on the process of exploiting colorism-based opportunities and their positive and (unintended) negative consequences. Executive summary: We set out to explore the business of skin lightening. The skin-lightening industry is large in scale and scope. Entrepreneurs and their customers aim to lighten skin color to avoid or minimize colorism. Colorism is a "social hierarchy based on gradations of skin tone within and between racial/ethnic groups" (Glenn, 2008: 2811) in which individuals with darker skin are disadvantaged compared to those with lighter skin. While there is substantial research on racism, in comparison, research on colorism is limited, especially on how entrepreneurs exploit opportunities to alleviate some of the discrimination their customers face because of their darker skin color. We use the term colorism-based opportunity to refer to a situation in which an entrepreneur can offer a product or service to reduce how much an individual is perceived (by themselves and others) as inferior because of their darker skin tone.
Entrepreneurship research has long emphasized the importance of competencies. Unfortunately, the nature and role of competencies in the entrepreneurship process is somewhat fragmented and atheoretical. To fill these gaps, we outline a dynamic, integrative, and inclusive theoretical model, which draws on theories of social cognition, ambidexterity, human capital, and identity. Our model explains how metacompetencies shape entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which, in turn, drives specific entrepreneurial behavior, including entry, pivoting, persistence, and exit. We then develop propositions and discuss the model's implications for future competency research, training, and education. A key takeaway of our integrative model is that competencies acquired through experience and education are likely to enhance a prospective entrepreneur's self-efficacy, ambidexterity, human capital, and identity, all leading to greater entrepreneurial action.
Most research on social entrepreneurship highlights the positive effect of compassion on creating wealth for beneficiaries. However, while compassion drives social entrepreneurs to take prosocial actions that benefit others, the actions it motivates can also be destructive due to the complex, interdependent nature of social issues. This paper explores the paradox of compassion in social entrepreneurship. We argue that compassion reduces the likelihood of destroying beneficiary wealth through two key mechanisms-fostering a more comprehensive understanding of beneficiary problems and triggering doubt about how social entrepreneurs are building beneficiary wealth. Yet, this relationship can be modified by the adverse effects of obsessive social entrepreneurial passion. We explore why social entrepreneurs are susceptible to developing obsessive passion and how it undermines the shielding effects of compassion, thereby increasing the risk of destroying beneficiary wealth. Our study contributes new insights by clarifying when and how compassion and passion may fail to safeguard beneficiaries, advancing theory on how social entrepreneurship relates to beneficiary wealth.
Husbands are often presumed to hold back women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, we challenge this frequently voiced preconception and argue that some husbands provide resources to their wives' business development. Building on both social role theory and rational resource allocation theory, we consider the unique context of sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting husbands' influence consists of two dimensions: Husbands as constraints and husbands as resource providers for their wives' businesses. The two dimensions result in four profiles of husbands that are hypothesized to differentially predict women entrepreneurs' business success. Based on interviews with 192 husbands (one wave) and women entrepreneurs (two waves) in Ethiopia, latent profile analysis identified three out of the four postulated profiles: The Indifferents, the Copreneurs, and the Regulators. Husbands' gender role beliefs and their relative contribution to the family income differentiate between the profiles. Our findings indicate that husbands' resource provision improves women entrepreneurs' business success, even in the presence of constraining behavior. We conclude that husbands may make a difference in otherwise resource-poor environments, and they may deserve more attention toward a better understanding of successful women entrepreneurs.
Communities in developed economies increasingly face devitalization due to uneven development and economic fragility. How do some local communities create civic wealth — social, economic, and communal wealth that enhances the local community — amid the downward spiral of collapsing industries, relocating businesses, and brain drain? In this paper, we develop a conceptual model that theorizes how community entrepreneurs leverage community members' sense of place, i.e., the attachment and identification that individuals have with a place, to activate an upward spiral of civic wealth creation (CWC) in the context of devitalization. We connect research from human geography, environmental psychology, and related fields with community and entrepreneurship research to unpack how leveraging sense of place activates three core processes of CWC in devitalized communities: engaging community members, mobilizing place-based resources, and collaborating for local innovation. Our model depicts how sense of place is key to building communal wealth — capital created to enhance the community's capacity, cohesion and cultural assets — which in turn is essential to ensuring the other types of civic wealth (i.e., social and economic) benefit the community, thus creating upward momentum. With our model, we contribute to research at the nexus of community and entrepreneurship, including growing literature on CWC.
Entrepreneurial pitching is normally framed as a unidirectional scripted performance, with entrepreneurs presenting pre-crafted narratives for investor evaluation. We reframe pitching as an interactional process in which stories are scrutinised, challenged, and negotiated through investor-entrepreneur exchanges. We apply sequential analysis to video recordings of the question-and-answer sessions of 14 investment pitches in the UK. Our analysis identifies four recurrent interactional patterns: Unencumbered Storytelling, Resisting Presuppositions, Giving Ground, and Pushing Back. We also show how collective investor dynamics can further shape the trajectory of the pitch story. These findings demonstrate that investors are not passive evaluators but active participants whose individual interventions and collective questioning trajectories enable and constrain entrepreneurial storytelling. By foregrounding the interactional dynamics of pitching, we shift understanding of entrepreneurial storytelling, viewing it as a negotiated process rather than a scripted performance, and highlighting how the persuasiveness of entrepreneurial narratives depends on their capacity to accommodate investor challenges while preserving the integrity of the story.
Despite considerable scholarly attention to uncertainty management in entrepreneurship, it remains unclear how entrepreneurs' perceived environmental uncertainty shapes entrepreneurial actions, such as innovation actions, in their firms. A positive view interprets innovation as a promising approach to uncertainty management, thus suggesting a positive effect; while a negative view sees uncertainty as an obstacle to innovation, thereby proposing a negative effect. We reconcile this tension based on the typology of perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU)—i.e., state, effect, and response uncertainty, which respectively focus on the nature of environmental changes, the consequences of any changes for focal firms, and the availability or effectiveness of potential responses. We posit that state and effect uncertainty perceived by entrepreneurs encourages innovation actions, whereby the positive influence of state uncertainty is stronger than that of effect uncertainty. In contrast, we expect response uncertainty perceived by entrepreneurs to discourage innovation actions. Using hand-collected multiple-wave multiple-informant survey data on 146 small firms in Malaysia, we show evidence for most of our arguments. Our study disentangles the distinct impacts of three types of perceived uncertainty, thereby advancing a more fine-grained understanding of when perceived uncertainty catalyzes or paralyzes entrepreneurial action.
Venture boards shape how high-growth ventures learn, decide, and access resources under uncertainty. This special issue advances venture board research by shifting attention from boards as structure (composition and formal attributes) to boards as capability (routines and relational processes that channel attention, orchestrate advice and monitoring, and enable timely decisions). The eight articles collectively explore board composition, its changes over the venture life cycle, consequences on boards, and outcomes. Building on these contributions and the wider literature, this editorial advances five directions for future research: theorizing boards as capabilities and mechanisms, embracing epistemological and methodological pluralism, unpacking micro-level decision dynamics, comparing venture boards with other sources of advice, and situating venture boards in their entrepreneurial ecosystems.
How do changes in property rights shape individual entrepreneurship in weak institutional settings? Although secure property rights are widely viewed as essential to entrepreneurial action, most research treats them as static arrangements rather than evolving institutions. As a result, we know little about how property rights reforms influence individuals' decisions to engage in entrepreneurship, or how these effects vary across social and institutional contexts. We address this gap by examining China's 2014-2018 agricultural land titling program, which formalized land use rights through a quasi-natural experiment. Using individual-level survey data and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that land titling increases farmers' likelihood of entering self-employment, especially among marginalized groups and in regions with stronger complementary institutions. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of property rights, showing how institutional reforms allow individuals to reassess uncertainty and realign incentives in ways that motivate entrepreneurial action. Executive summary: This paper investigates how institutional reforms to property rights influence individual decisions to pursue entrepreneurship in contexts of weak institutions and deep social stratification. Although secure property rights are widely recognized as foundational to entrepreneurial activity, existing research has largely focused on macroeconomic outcomes or treated the connection as conceptual or assumed. We address this gap by leveraging a rare quasi-natural experiment: China's 2014-2018 agricultural land titling program, which clarified and formalized land use rights across the countryside through a centrally mandated, GPS-based registration process. Drawing on a nationally representative individual-level panel survey and using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that land titling significantly increases the likelihood that farmers transition into self-employment. Importantly, this effect is not equally distributed across the population. The reform has a particularly strong impact among individuals from marginalized social groups-those with rural hukou, no Party membership, or outsider status in village lineage structures-who had previously been disadvantaged in informal institutional systems. We theorize that for these individuals, land titling reduced uncertainty, unlocked dormant asset value, and, crucially, made entrepreneurship a more credible and accessible path. In contrast, more privileged individuals experienced smaller shifts in motivation, having already been able to navigate informal channels of influence and protection. We also find that the reform's impact is amplified in regions with more developed market institutions, underscoring the importance of institutional complementarity in enabling reform outcomes. Theoretically, the paper integrates insights from property rights theory and stratification research to explain how institutional reforms activate entrepreneurial behavior not only by shifting in-centives, but by altering perceived opportunity structures in stratified environments. Rather than treating institutional change as uniformly enabling, we show how entrepreneurial responses are shaped by social positioning and local institutional capacity. In doing so, the study contributes to entrepreneurship research by offering direct, individual-level causal evidence on how and for whom property rights reforms matter. It advances the behavioral foundations of institutional theory and offers practical implications for inclusive policy design in emerging economies.
Entrepreneurship theory has often posited the founder as the central agent of venture creation; from identifying opportunities, to mobilizing resources, and driving execution. We examine how venture studios - organizations that systematically create new ventures by taking over traditionally founder-led processes - challenge this assumption. Drawing on an inductive multiple case study of 16 venture studios with 50 primary and secondary interviews, we reveal how venture studios develop and validate ideas independently from founders prior to recruiting them, and how they coordinate the entrepreneurial process when these functions are separated. Our findings contribute to the literature on the individual-opportunity nexus, the entrepreneurial process and open the research agenda on venture studios as a new phenomenon in entrepreneurship.
Research recognizes that founders may struggle to identify as an entrepreneur. Yet, little is known about the process through which they may identify as not an entrepreneur. We bridge this gap by drawing on a longitudinal, qualitative study to develop the concept of entrepreneurial disidentification and clarify how and why it unfolds and evolves over time. Our findings reveal how entrepreneurial experience can disconfirm an identity as an entrepreneur through both social identity and role identity mechanisms. In doing so, we expand the explanatory reach of founder identity theory and extend its theorization of multiple identities and founder agency. We also advance understanding of identity tensions in the context of social entrepreneurship by problematizing the relationship between empathy and intersectionality.
We study whether advanced computing infrastructure catalyzes entrepreneurship by exploiting the staggered establishment of China’s National Supercomputing Centers (NSCs) from 2007 to 2022. We find that NSCs significantly increase local new firm entry by strengthening network effects, attracting skilled labor, improving capital allocation, and intensifying government support. Importantly, these effects are conditional on local market environments, depending on computing demand, capacity to convert public computing resources into practical use, and the degree of competitive activation. We also note that while NSCs contribute to narrowing the coastal-inland entrepreneurship gap, their benefits appear to be uneven within inland regions, being more concentrated among highly skilled individuals and attenuated in markets dominated by leading incumbents.
