Founder or Joiner? The Role of Preferences and Context in Shaping Different Entrepreneurial Interests

Abstract

, and various research conferences. We thank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance for financial support. All errors are our own.

A Careers Perspective on Entrepreneurship

“…This growing body of work starts by acknowledging that most entrepreneurs have experience working in other organizations prior to founding a new firm (Dobrev & Barnett, 2005;Freeman, 1986;Sørensen & Fassiotto, 2011) and builds on the recognition that some firms generate more entrepreneurs than others (Burton, Sørensen, & Beckman, 2002;Elfenbein, Hamilton, & Zenger, 2010;Gompers, Lerner, & Scharfstein, 2005;Klepper & Sleeper, 2005;Sørensen, 2007a). These insights, combined with recent efforts to consider how work experiences and organizational contexts can be contexts that shape and constrain future actions (Nanda & Sørensen, 2010;Roach & Sauermann, 2015), start to offer a more expansive view of entrepreneurship, organizations, and their interrelationships. The next step is to adopt a careers perspective and engage in a more dedicated inquiry into how entrepreneurship intersects with and impacts individual career trajectories and outcomes.…”

Fire in the belly? Employee motives and innovative performance in start‐ups versus established firms

“…A first piece of indirect evidence comes from existing work using samples of scientists and engineers prior to their initial career transitions, i.e., before they were exposed to potential socialization in a particular type of firm. In particular, Roach and Sauermann () surveyed U.S. science and engineering Ph.D. students, collecting measures of both motives and career preferences. The authors found that respondents who were less risk averse and had stronger desires for autonomy found R&D positions in start‐ups relatively more attractive than positions in established firms.…”

“…While a large body of work has examined the characteristics of founders (e.g., Amit et al, ; Eesley & Roberts, ; Hamilton, ; Hsu, Roberts, & Eesley, ; Shane et al, ), little work has studied the characteristics of those individuals who join founders in their entrepreneurial efforts. This lack of attention to “joiners” is particularly problematic in the context of technology‐based ventures, where early employees are critical for firm success but founders often face difficulties attracting the right human capital (Burton, ; Neff, ; Roach & Sauermann, ; Roberts, ). By showing significant differences in employee characteristics between start‐ups and established firms, our study highlights the value of future research on start‐up joiners as a distinct group of employees and as important entrepreneurial actors.…”

Knowledge Worker Mobility in Context: Pushing the Boundaries of Theory and Methods

“…Such movement may occur through the individual quitting employment with one firm to become employed by another or it may involve a change in ownership of the firm or part of a firm, such as through a divestment of a division through a management buyout (Wright, ; Wright et al, ). Alternatively, an individual might move toward an entrepreneurial venture as recipient (e.g., Campbell et al, ), both as founder or as a joiner (e.g., Agarwal et al, ; Klepper, ; Roach and Sauermann, ). Additionally, scholars have more recently started to pay more attention to mobility events from entrepreneurial ventures (back) to incumbent firms (Campbell, ).…”

“…Building on the pioneering works of Arrow (1962) and Levin and colleagues (1987), a large body of research has also been developed using numerous theoretical frameworks, empirical contexts and methodologies to examine the links between labour mobility and knowledge spillovers. This research has tried to explain several aspects of interorganizational mobility: the antecedents of mobility (Carnahan et al, 2012;Di Lorenzo and Almeida, 2017;Gambardella et al, 2009;Hoisl, 2007;Palomeras and Melero, 2010), the environmental and organizational conditions that affect the rate of mobility (Marx, 2011;Marx et al, 2009), the direction of mobility Carnahan et al, 2012;Ganco et al, 2015;Lu et al, 2014;Roach and Sauermann) and the performance implications for firms and individuals (Agarwal et al, 2009;Groysberg et al, 2008;Huang and Ertug, 2014;Mawdsley and Somaya, 2016;Singh and Agrawal, 2011).…”