Clear and present danger: Planning and new venture survival amid political and civil violence

Abstract

Many entrepreneurs in developing economies face unstable environments due to violence and civil unrest. Yet, we know very little about how environments characterized by high levels of political and civil violence affect new venture processes and survival. Moreover, it is unclear whether standard theories about organizational strategy, such as planning, hold true in such environments. We explore these issues using a sample of 730 new ventures in Colombia from 1997 to 2001. We find that political and civil violence decreases firm survival, increases the benefits of incremental (operational) planning, and decreases the benefits of comprehensive (strategic) planning.

Untapped Riches of Meso-Level Applications in Multilevel Entrepreneurship Mechanisms

“…Although entrepreneurship has been associated with technological change (Schumpeter, 1934), economic growth (Wennekers & Thurik, 1999), and employment growth (Coad et al, 2014), the transformational mechanisms behind these outcomes are unclear -even as policymakers encourage entrepreneurship as a way to transform society (Spinosa et al, 1999). typically occurs in situations that prompt state regulatory interventions, such as when entrepreneurs operate at the boundary of the formal and informal economy, engage in contentious activities, find ways to develop activities that escape taxation, or directly challenge state-sponsored monopolies (Hiatt & Sine, 2014;Monin & Croidieu, 2012).…”

Lords of the Harvest: Third-Party Influence and Regulatory Approval of Genetically Modified Organisms

“…Given that larger firms are likely to command both greater resources and greater power to affect regulatory decisions (Stigler, 1971;Carpenter, 2004), we controlled for firm size, defined as number of employees (Hiatt & Sine, 2013). We also controlled for a firm's technological prestige using patent-citation relationships (Stuart, 1998).…”

Institutions and Entrepreneurial Activity: The Interactive Influence of Misaligned Formal and Informal Institutions

“…For example, regulatory changes to allow smaller amounts of minimum capital have also been applied in many countries, but to differing effects in each context (van Gelderen et al 2006). In the wake of civil conflict, formal institutions may set the rules of the game orthogonal to entrepreneurial vitality even while informal shared understandings may run counter to those regulations (Hiatt and Sine 2014). Further, an informal institutional environment can encourage actors to start firms but the formal environment can make the development and growth of those firms problematic (Aldrich and Yang 2012).…”