Entrepreneurial Teams, Gender, and New Venture Survival: Contexts and Institutions

Abstract

The link between new venture survival and the presence of founding teams is investigated, in particular the effect of the gender composition of teams. Furthermore, we study venture survival, gender, and institutional change. A unique longitudinal database is employed, covering a large number of Swedish ventures established during 6 specific years, . These data capture the initial gender diversity of start-ups. The contextualization of entrepreneurship involves situational and temporal boundaries, and we elaborate on contextual factors at different levels of analysis. Our results show that ventures founded by teams have a higher probability of surviving, but show no overall team gender homogeneity/heterogeneity effect. However, we find some support for the fact that ventures founded by all-female teams have lower survival chances. Nevertheless, the clearest negative effect is found for female solo start-ups. Furthermore, our results support the fact that institutional transformation may gradually have increased the likelihood of ventures founded by females to survive.

Teams in new ventures: gender, human capital and motivation

“…However, existing studies do not really provide evidence on the process through which gender impacts on team formation and new venture performance (Ben-Hafaïedh, 2017). Box & Larsson Segerlind (2018) show that the analysis of the effect of different gender compositions leads to mixed results: the hypothesis of a lower survival probability for all-female teams only receives weak support, while the authors find the strongest negative effect only for female solo start-ups.…”

“…Some empirical evidence shows a positive effect of founding team size, and the human capital of teammates on firm performance (Delmar & Shane, 2006). Box & Larsson Segerlind (2018), in particular, confirm that firms with an entrepreneurial founding team had a significantly increased survival probability, also because a team can provide faster access to resources due to the larger network (Menzies et al, 2006). Entrepreneurs learn about and gather useful information on the environment also from other individuals committed to their venture, tapping into their experience and through them into their social network (Jack et al, 2008).…”

“…The need for a deeper understanding of the role of entrepreneurial team is considered to be urgent, especially in terms of its contribution to the life of a business (Davidsson and Gordon, 2012; Aldrich and Kim, 2007; Zhou and Rosini, 2015; Box and Larsson Segerlind, 2018). This paper specifically studies how female nascent entrepreneurs build their start-up teams when creating new ventures and how the resulting characteristics affect successful business creation.…”

Gender differences in solo entrepreneurship in modern countries

“…The paper examines the peculiarities of the activities of solo entrepreneurs with higher education and their reluctance to use employees. The article (Box & Segerlind, 2018) examines the creation of new businesses on the example of Sweden. The study (Koe, 2016) describes the activities of solo entrepreneurs in Malaysia.…”

Top management teams characteristics and firms performance: literature review and avenues for future research

“…The research on TMT has examined the influence of several team characteristics on firms' performance such as aggregated TMT characteristics (Kor, 2003) and size (Bruton and Rubanik, 2002;Chaganti et al, 2008), as well as the heterogeneity of the people in the team (Tanikawa and Jung, 2016;Nielsen and Nielsen, 2013). However, TMT studies show inconclusive and controversial findings of many team characteristics (Box and Larsson Segerlind, 2018;Kakarika, 2013;Nielsen, 2010;Zhou and Rosini, 2015). For example, the effect of TMT demographics on performance has been found positive (Carpenter, 2002), negative (Stuart and Abetti, 1990;Michel and Hambrick, 1992) or insignificant (Stuart and Abetti, 1990).…”