People Aspects of Entrepreneurship: A Meta-Analytic Review and Roadmap for Future Research

Despite the proliferation of research on entrepreneurship and its success factors across disciplines, our understanding of the impact of people and people management on entrepreneurial performance is rather limited. In this article, I conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship between five people dimensions (HR systems, HR practices, HR investment/function, human capital, and social capital) and four outcome dimensions (HR outcomes, operational outcomes, financial outcomes, and new firm-specific outcomes) of entrepreneurial performance to (a) determine the magnitude of the relationship, (b) test moderators of the relationship, and (c) suggest future research directions. The results from 689 correlations (N = 375,221) show that the relationship between people dimensions and entrepreneurial performance is positive and significant (? = .07). More importantly, the meta-analytic correlation differs significantly across several moderators (e.g., types of people dimensions and outcome dimensions, region, and data structure). Among five people dimensions, HR systems are more strongly related to entrepreneurial performance than other dimensions, especially for proximal outcomes (HR and operational outcomes) than distal outcomes (financial and new firm-specific outcomes). Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.