Drawing on the Resource Dependence Theory and feedback seeking literature, in this study we aimed to explore founding team characteristics (educational specialization background, diversity of educational level as well as the presence of high-status scholars in the prospective founding team) and entrepreneurial decision making in nascent startup teams. To do it we use the data from an Italian longitudinal database for the Spinner Program (2001-2006) which supports the prospective founding team in their decision of starting up or not offering personalized services. We used Factorial method analysis to check the correlation of the characteristics of the teams and discriminant analysis to construct a set of functions, called discriminants that may be used to characterize groups’ separation. Our analysis revealed that: a) the more diverse the founding team’s background is in terms of educational specialization, the more different are the fields in which they ask for feedback in their journey toward the establishment decisions; b) the more diverse is the educational level of the founding team, the more different are the fields in which they ask for advice in their establishment decisions; c) having tenured professors has a negative effect on the feedback seeking attitude of founding teams in their establishment decisions, and that prospective founding teams with individual tenured academic have a lower propensity to ask for advice in their area of competence. We believe that our findings, although still preliminary, can be very useful for several reasons. They can provide some useful insights to the existing scholarly literature on the feedback seeking theory. Applying this to the entrepreneurial field would be beneficial because entrepreneurial decisions are always made under conditions of risk and uncertainty, especially in the pre-startup phase. The findings are also insightful from the practical and management perspective. They can be useful to design a better service business model for all the organizations that work to support pre-startups development. At a management level, these findings could enlighten the problems connected to the founding team’s composition.
The influence of organizational tenure, teams diversity of educational background and level on the decision-making process of pre-startups.
Antonelli G.
;Simonetti B.
2021-01-01
Abstract
Drawing on the Resource Dependence Theory and feedback seeking literature, in this study we aimed to explore founding team characteristics (educational specialization background, diversity of educational level as well as the presence of high-status scholars in the prospective founding team) and entrepreneurial decision making in nascent startup teams. To do it we use the data from an Italian longitudinal database for the Spinner Program (2001-2006) which supports the prospective founding team in their decision of starting up or not offering personalized services. We used Factorial method analysis to check the correlation of the characteristics of the teams and discriminant analysis to construct a set of functions, called discriminants that may be used to characterize groups’ separation. Our analysis revealed that: a) the more diverse the founding team’s background is in terms of educational specialization, the more different are the fields in which they ask for feedback in their journey toward the establishment decisions; b) the more diverse is the educational level of the founding team, the more different are the fields in which they ask for advice in their establishment decisions; c) having tenured professors has a negative effect on the feedback seeking attitude of founding teams in their establishment decisions, and that prospective founding teams with individual tenured academic have a lower propensity to ask for advice in their area of competence. We believe that our findings, although still preliminary, can be very useful for several reasons. They can provide some useful insights to the existing scholarly literature on the feedback seeking theory. Applying this to the entrepreneurial field would be beneficial because entrepreneurial decisions are always made under conditions of risk and uncertainty, especially in the pre-startup phase. The findings are also insightful from the practical and management perspective. They can be useful to design a better service business model for all the organizations that work to support pre-startups development. At a management level, these findings could enlighten the problems connected to the founding team’s composition.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
