Entrepreneurship education and training experiments are usually encouragement designs, where training is offered to a randomly assigned treatment group. In encouragement designs, some subjects assigned to the treatment condition do not actually take the treatment, and some subjects assigned to the control condition manage to receive the treatment. A new modeling approach is warranted in order to account for this non-compliance. Field experiments in entrepreneurship must anticipate four subject types: Compliers, NeverTakers, AlwaysTakers, and Defiers. By anticipating two-sided non-compliance and using these terms, entrepreneurship researchers can estimate the effect of interventions on entrepreneurs who actually comply with the training as well as the efficacy of the overall program. Integrating this straightforward methodological innovation using instrumental variables regression can add precision and credibility to entrepreneurship education and training experiments.

The rise of business accelerators, angel groups, and startup competitions has meant that founders increasingly pitch their businesses to investors in group settings, raising the question of whether the order in which ideas are pitched affects outcomes. We test in a field experiment whether range-frequency theory or the theory of bounded rationality better predicts the effect of serial position on pitch outcomes. We find that range frequency theory better predicts the empirical patterns than the theory of bounded rationality.JEL Codes: M13, G30, G40

Despite its rarity, venture capital raising has captured the media’s attention rather than the far more common occurrence of venture death. We shed light on a situational factor that influences why founders overoptimistically believe they can beat the odds of failure when already familiar with the low base rates of market entry success. Drawing upon the entrepreneurial cognition literature regarding the availability heuristic, we theorize that frequent media mentions make information about fundraising more “available” to prospective entrepreneurs, increasing their motivation to start a venture by causing them to overestimate the magnitude of funding they will be able to raise. We find significant support for this theory through a mixed methods approach—encompassing a ten-year archival study, a randomized experiment (N = 317), and an entrepreneur survey (N =110)—that accounts for macroeconomic factors and personal characteristics, including levels of dispositional optimism and prior knowledge. Implications for both theory and practice are considered.

Despite concerted efforts to enforce ethical standards, transgressions continue to plague US corporations. This paper investigates whether the way in which a corporation pursues its goals can influence ethical violations, manifested as involvement in discrimination. We test this hypothesis among franchises, which employ a considerable amount of low-income workers adversely affected by discrimination. Drawing upon Regulatory Mode Theory, we perform a linguistic analysis of franchise mission statements to determine their degree of locomotion and assessment language. EEOC archival data for the past decade reveals that regulatory mode predicts franchise involvement in discrimination. Discriminatory behavior is associated with franchises whose mission statements motivate employees to embrace urgent action (locomotion mode) over thoughtful consideration (assessment mode). Two experiments demonstrate that participants exposed to high locomotion mission statements tend to disregard ethical standards due to their need for expediency, making significantly more discriminatory managerial decisions than those exposed to high assessment mission statements.

Are female founding CEOs penalized when raising funds for their ventures based on industry served? Across an observational study conducted on ventures seeking funding (N = 392) and an experimental study conducted on investors allocating venture funding (N = 130), we find evidence for a "lack of fit" effect: Female-led ventures catering to male-dominated industries receive significantly less funding at significantly lower valuations than female-led ventures catering to female-dominated industries. In contrast, male-led ventures attain similar funding and valuation outcomes regardless of the gender dominance of the industries to which they cater. We confirm that this is because investors perceive lower degrees of fit between founding CEO and venture for female-led ventures catering to male- as opposed to female-dominated industries (with no perceived fit differences for male-led ventures across industries). Degree of investor sophistication emerges as a potential attenuating factor, appearing to help reduce gender bias from perceived lack of fit.

Issue Evolution is a rare form of voter realignment where a single issue drives massive partisan shifts. These types of realignment occurred regarding race relations in post-war America, and regarding reproductive rights beginning in the mid-1980s. The current American gun rights debate meets the requisite conditions for issue evolution: longevity, salience, and ease of acquisition. Opposition to gun rights requires organization, attention, and political activity, whereas visible support for gun rights can be as simple as owning a firearm; the expression of advocacy for this issue is inherently asymmetric. This paper presents seven decades of persistent national polling (N = 79,608) alongside Congressional voting records that portray steady partisan divergence and asymmetric support slowly shifting towards gun rights, away from gun control. The gradual process by which new voters have joined the Republican Party on the merits of gun rights foreshadows an enduring association between gun rights and the Republican Party.

Despite concerted efforts to enforce ethical standards, transgressions continue to plague US corporations. This paper investigates whether the way in which an organization pursues its goals can influence ethical violations, manifested as involvement in discrimination. We test this hypothesis among franchises, which employ a considerable amount of low-income workers adversely affected by discrimination. Drawing upon Regulatory Mode Theory, we perform a linguistic analysis of franchise mission statements to determine their degree of locomotion and assessment language. EEOC archival data for the past decade reveals that regulatory mode predicts franchise involvement in discrimination. Discriminatory behavior is associated with franchises whose mission statements motivate employees to embrace urgent action (locomotion mode) over thoughtful consideration (assessment mode). Two experiments demonstrate that participants exposed to high locomotion mission statements tend to disregard ethical standards due to their need for expediency, making significantly more discriminatory managerial decisions than those exposed to high assessment mission statements.

Top government contractors continue to apply digital innovations toward defense purposes, and according to polling, US citizens support an increasing private role along with a decreasing public role in delivering safety and security. This public-private hybrid defense model has evolved recursively where private organizations deliver digital defense services that public defense entities increasingly rely upon. A relationship like this depends on perceptions of capabilities and intentions; private organizations must signal to taxpayers their advanced digital capabilities alongside their benevolent intentions toward citizen welfare and protection. While public opinion indicates that taxpayers expect fewer defense capabilities from the government, these structures still broadcast their enduring intentions to provide citizen protection. Our linguistic analysis of the websites of US public and private security-focused organizations reveals increasing concern with safety and security across both groups. Public-private partnerships are a modern standard in defense, and this relationship in the United States shows no sign of tilting away from government leadership.

Male entrepreneurs are known to raise higher levels of funding than their female counterparts, but the underlying mechanism for this funding disparity remains contested. Drawing upon regulatory focus theory, we propose that the gap originates with a gender bias in the questions that investors pose to entrepreneurs. A field study conducted on question-and-answer interactions at TechCrunch Disrupt New York City during 2010 through 2016 reveals that investors tend to ask male entrepreneurs promotion-focused questions and female entrepreneurs prevention-focused questions, and that entrepreneurs tend to respond with matching regulatory focus. This distinction in the regulatory focus of investor questions and entrepreneur responses results in divergent funding outcomes for entrepreneurs whereby those asked promotion-focused questions raise significantly higher amounts of funding than those asked prevention-focused questions. We demonstrate that every additional prevention-focused question significantly hinders the entrepreneur's ability to raise capital, fully mediating gender's effect on funding. By experimentally testing an intervention, we find that entrepreneurs can significantly increase funding for their startups when responding to prevention-focused questions with promotion-focused answers. As we offer evidence regarding tactics that can be employed to diminish the gender disadvantage in funding outcomes, this study has practical as well as theoretical implications for entrepreneurship.

For almost forty years gun ownership and the motivational underpinnings of why guns are valued has received little attention in psychology. Using motivation science tools that explain value creation (regulatory focus and regulatory fit), we tested for fit between the prevention orientation and gun ownership. Our field experiments demonstrate fit between gun ownership and prevention. Our research is agnostic regarding the legal and moral components of the gun rights debate. Instead, we examine the malleability of gun value as a function of regulatory focus and regulatory fit, and provide evidence for fit effects with distinct motivational environments.

Women may only make up just under a quarter of senior leadership positions in organizations in the United States, but they still hold 52% of professional-level jobs – which require leadership and management skills and capabilities. Leadership research and practical advice is often translated through a generic lens, failing to highlight contextual differences related to gender that might be affecting female leadership behaviors. Additionally, leadership research on gender often takes the perspective that we need to understand the differences between women and men so that women can better embrace the more agentic and masculine aspects of leadership. This symposium seeks to better understand specific contexts and types of leadership roles and how these differ for women in the workplace in order to embrace the different value that women can bring to a variety of leadership roles. This symposium will examine four very different work environments and types of roles, while still contributing a common theme of better understanding female leaders and providing practical examples of how women can approach certain leadership issues at work.

This document is authorized for use only by DANA KANZE (dkanze19@ gsb. columbia. edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@ harvardbusiness. org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. the country. The prevailing hope among academics, policy makers, and practitioners alike has been that this gap will narrow as more women become venture capitalists. However, homophily does not seem to be the only culprit behind the funding gap. Over the past several years, the US has seen an increase in the number of female venture capitalists (from 3% of all VCs in 2014 to an estimated 7% today), but the funding gap has only widened.Research my colleagues and I conducted offers new evidence as to why female entrepreneurs continue to receive less funding than their male counterparts. We observed Q&A interactions between 140 prominent venture capitalists (40% of them female) and 189 entrepreneurs (12% female) that took place at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, an annual startup funding competition. Our study then tracked all funding rounds for the startups that launched at the competition. These startups were comparable in terms of quality and capital needs, yet their total amounts of funding raised over time differed significantly: Male-led startups in our sample raised five times more funding than female-led ones.

OBJECTIVES Using theories from decision-making and behavioral economics, we conducted a study to improve understanding of the decisions of Restrained Eaters. We identified Restrained Eaters via the Revised Restraint Questionnaire. METHODS One hundred two (N = 102) participants were each randomly assigned to an endowment condition and asked to list their thoughts about 2 products. RESULTS We found a significant interaction of endowment and thoughts on decisions. Research findings suggest the behavior of Restrained Eaters depends upon both endowment and thoughts, and that they exert self-control beyond food decisions. CONCLUSIONS This work suggests decisions Restrained Eaters make can be manipulated via endowment and how they are instructed to structure their thoughts.